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With this year's hurricane season now underway, much of the British Virgin Islands is scrambling to rebuild stronger structures in conjunction with new building codes. But for some residents, this has not been possible because of a shortage of construction workers and building supplies, while others lack property insurance.

With hurricane season approaching, one solution to dealing with risks involves incorporating disaster risk management principles into development planning by identifying the countries’ disaster risk, working to reduce this risk, actively preparing for disasters, implementing disaster risk financing mechanisms, and reconstructing in resilient ways.

This document outlines a project led by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office to support the OECS to develop, prepare to implement, and finance an Eastern Caribbean Climate Change Implementation Plan. The project considers both mitigation and adaptation

Some 25 Government communicators, including statutory bodies and media professionals recently completed a two-day training workshop on ‘Media Relations in Crisis for Disaster Preparedness’. The sessions highlighted the role of the media in providing the public with information in order to reduce any possible loss of life and damage to property and the environment.

Despite a massive humanitarian effort over the past six months in the Eastern Caribbean, Cuba and Haiti, there is still much work to be done to rehabilitate water and sanitation and other infrastructure damaged by powerful hurricanes Irma and Maria, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on Tuesday.

CARIBE WAVE 18 provided an opportunity for the British Virgin Islands to test its tsunami warning systems, contingency plans, and promote tsunami preparedness. This year’s exercise included some newcomers from the financial sector, banking, supermarkets and insurance companies. Several schools throughout the Territory participated as well as a number of public officers and private sector agencies.

Six months after two of the most powerful hurricanes recorded over the Atlantic wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, women and men in island countries like Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, British Virgin Islands and St. Maarten are working around the clock to build back better, with another hurricane season only four months away.

The UK government has dedicated far less financial resources for uninsured losses from Hurricane Irma in UK territory in the Caribbean. The government needs to start investing in making the territories more resilient and reduce the need for post-disaster expenditure in the future.