Working to protect children in the Caribbean from disasters

Thalia Balkaran: Working to protect children in the Caribbean from disasters

This story is part of the Columbia Climate School’s series celebrating women’s work in honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2022.Read more about the day and our related blog post here.

When Thalia Balkaran was growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, her family could get through the hottest part of the day with just a standing fan. Air conditioning is almost a necessity these days. Through her experience conducting research at the University of the West Indies and projects in the Caribbean, Balkaran has interacted with locals in diverse communities who have witnessed other changes over the years, including increased coastal erosion and rising sea levels. While hurricanes have been around, storms are thought to be getting more severe and more frequent.

Climate change is increasingly endangering people around the world, and Balkaran wants to help communities prepare for the worst. During a two-year postdoctoral position at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, she will be responsible for bringing community recovery programs to the Caribbean island of Dominica. She will pay particular attention to disaster preparedness in institutions caring for children, one of the most vulnerable groups during disasters.

In an interview with State of the Earth, Balkaran explained how she plans to help improve children’s resilience in the face of disaster. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

What is the main goal of your research?

We’ll look at child care centers, schools, emergency shelters, family daycares, foster care, hospitals, and other organizations that serve children and see what plans they have in place to deal with disasters. For example, children spend a lot of time at school. Do you have a plan for dealing with disasters such as earthquakes during the day? Are there plans to reunite the children with their parents? My job is to research various organizations serving children to help them understand how to better prepare for catastrophic events and create a resilient system.

Disaster planning and response frameworks are often produced at the global and national levels. This means that communities and stakeholders responding to disasters often have limited input, and they may not have the tools and information they need to properly plan and respond.

To address this issue, Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness designed the Resilient Children/Resilient Communities (RCRC) program, which is designed to focus on building child-centered resilience from a community perspective. It brings children’s service agencies into the conversation, connecting the different intertwined organizations and allowing them to discuss their respective roles and responsibilities. This places disaster management at the local level and allows strategies to be implemented to increase the capacity of communities to meet the needs of children during disasters.

The RCRC initiative has been applied to four counties in New York, Arkansas and North Carolina, as well as some locations in Puerto Rico. The purpose of my research is to apply this project to the Caribbean region of Dominica.

Dominica and the rest of the Caribbean face hurricanes, earthquakes and many other disasters. But one of the most devastating events occurred in 2017, when Hurricane Maria severely affected the island.Guess so 90% buildings were damaged. improve climate resilience is a key goal for Dominica and this move fits that goal.

In her doctoral dissertation, Balcaran studied the impact of hurricanes on tourism livelihoods in Tobago and Jamaica. Here, she is interviewing a diving stakeholder, Alvin Douglas of Frontier Divers, Tobago, as part of her research.Photo courtesy of Thalia Barkaran

What challenges do you face in this job?

The biggest challenge to date has been editing the RCRC tool for the small island environment. It uses the Community Readiness Index, an assessment tool, a questionnaire that helps us understand how children are cared for in a community when a disaster strikes. However, the structure and organization of disaster management in the small Caribbean islands are different, so not every section of the questionnaire is applicable to Dominica.

To overcome this hurdle, I plan to interview key local stakeholders who can guide me in editing the tool to fit the environment of the small island. They can tell me, “Okay, this works for the community, but we don’t have that.” Or maybe there are aspects of their community that aren’t included in the questionnaire that I need to include.

What’s your next step?

I’m currently in the planning stages, but I intend to focus on the Kalinago area, an indigenous community on the island that was particularly affected by Hurricane Maria. I had a preliminary meeting with the head of Kalinago and he has approved the project.

Once I’ve adjusted the Community Preparedness Index, we can apply it to assess how prepared communities are for disasters and where there are gaps. This gives us a baseline score. Then, after training with the RCRC initiative, including helping these organisations understand how to better meet the needs of children, we apply the index again and there should be a higher score, which means a better level of readiness.

My plan for the first year is to see what’s going on in the community and hopefully be there by the end of the year to do some training.

How do you think your work contributes to a sustainable tomorrow ( theme International Women’s Day this year)?

Disaster and sustainability are intertwined. My research contributes to the theme of a sustainable tomorrow. Sustainable Development Goals. These UN-led global goals are a blueprint for sustainable development. One goal of the RCRC initiative is to reduce the time children spend away from school after a disaster in order to resume normal educational activities. This will contribute to the achievement of Goal 4, which focuses on quality education. Under Goal 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, one of the main goals is to reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected by disasters, with a focus on those in vulnerable situations; by focusing on children in areas previously affected by disaster events , this research contributes to the achievement of Goal 11. Under Goal 13 (Climate Action), one of the goals is to increase capacity for effective planning and mobility related to climate change in small islands that value youth and marginalized communities in developing countries – by focusing on children in Dominica, the research has Contribute to Goal 13. Child-related measures implemented by the RCRC initiative to reduce disaster risk also contribute to climate change-related planning as climate change is expected to affect the intensity and frequency of climate-related disaster events.

How do you find meaning in your work?

As a female researcher representing small Caribbean islands, I have the opportunity to support the causes of island nations and highlight their unique needs and vulnerabilities.

It has always been important to me to use the education and knowledge I have acquired to effect real-world change. I am particularly interested in issues such as climate change, disasters and small islands. I have always found it important to use research to help the vulnerable and vulnerable, who are often disproportionately affected by catastrophic events. It is this desire that drives me to continue my research in the field of disasters.

Participating in the process of building resilience helps me find true meaning and purpose in my work. With climate change, we know the next big storm is brewing; it’s satisfying to be able to help people and organizations serving children be better prepared for the next event.