The third session of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group (ICG) for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (CARIBE EWS), will be held in Panama, from March 12 -14.

The session will be opened by Patricio Bernal, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC); Paul Sanders, Chief Executive Officer of the Office of Disaster Preparedness & Management of Trinidad and Tobago and Chair of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Early Warning System for the Caribbean; and Fernando Solorzano, second Vice-President of the Republic of Panama and Administrator of the Panama Maritime Authority.

This meeting will give the go-ahead for implementing a real-time data-sharing system between the region's major seismic monitoring networks, as a step towards establishing a regional system by 2010, at the latest, and replacing the temporary service being provided by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC). An implementation plan, drafted by a group of experts from the Member States and the Secretariat of the IOC, will be submitted for approval by Member States during the meeting.

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, established in 1960, set up a tsunami early warning system for the Pacific as early as 1965. Following the tsunami of December 2004, which hit the coasts of the Indian Ocean, the IOC received a mandate to help countries on the Indian Ocean to set up a rapid tsunami early warning system of their own. At the same time, the IOC has coordinated the establishment of other rapid early warning systems in the Caribbean, North-East Atlantic and the Mediterranean. When completed, the international community will have in place a global, rapid tsunami early warning system.

The Caribbean region, with its population of nearly 40 million, is by no means spared the risk of tsunamis. The most recent catastrophes occurred in the San Blas Islands (Panama) in 1882, in Puerto Rico in 1918 and the Dominican Republic in 1946.

The ICG/CARIBE EWS was set up in 2005, on the initiative of the IOC. Its first meetings were held in Bridgetown (Barbados) in 2006 and Cumaná (Venezuela) in 2007.

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