Can Dominica’s Indigenous community cope with the next hurricane?

The Lid is On

Dominica is described as highly disaster-vulnerable: the country is regularly hit by hurricanes and, when the last one swept through in 2017, it caused huge devastation across the island.

The government, led by President Sylvanie Burton, the first woman and the first member of the indigenous Kalinago community to be the country’s Head of State, wants to make Dominica the world’s first ‘climate resilient country’. But, as the climate crisis threatens to lead to increasingly intense and frequent hurricanes, is this feasible?

Conor Lennon from UN News met President Burton and Lorenzo Sanford, the youngest-ever chief of Dominica’s Kalinago community to find out how they plan to achieve their goal.