[Left to Right] Hein Knegt, Regional Envoy for the Caribbean, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands; Prime Minister of Saint Maarten
Leona Marlin-Romeo; Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of CDEMA and Clemens Butcher, Reservist Officer of the Netherlands Naval Command on
Curaçao, following the signing of the MoU between CDEMA and the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – CDEMA and the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at CDEMA headquarters ensuring cooperation on disaster risk management.
The MoU, which was signed by Prime Minister of Sint Maarten, Leona Marlin-Romeo and executive director of CDEMA, Ronald Jackson, will apply to the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands including the public entities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. The cooperation aims to limit the impacts of climate change by strengthening the conditions necessary for sustainable regional development.
Prime Minister of Sint Maarten Leona Marlin-Romeo expressed her strong belief that the partnership will indeed benefit Sint Maarten and the territories of the Kingdom to unite and face the challenges ahead.
After hurricane Irma devastated the island in 2017, it became crucial to have a well-functioning and equipped disaster management organization especially for coordination and information management. She said, “With this MoU that we will be signing today, the Kingdom of the Netherlands aims to further embed the Dutch Royal Navy and other assets at its disposal into regional disaster coordination mechanism, enabling them to deliver the Kingdom’s assistance even faster and more effectively to any nation in the…
