EnVIsion Tomorrow Program Flows

As part of our research process, we evaluated several plans and reports related to recovery from the 2017 storms. In this evaluation a stark contrast began to emerge between plans created by the community and from individuals on island and those created by mainland researchers. While all of the reports clearly had the best of intentions in mind, some had inconsistent levels of genuine community engagement and had a noticeable lack of community voice and representation. This observation was most salient in the comparison of the island-specific, St. Croix community recovery plans created in 2018 with a diverse set of on-island stakeholders, and the RAND report on Recovery in the US Virgin Islands, which was released in 2019 by a mainland USbased research group.

The St. Croix Community plan included a detailed history of each island acknowledging colonialism and community-oriented recommendations. While the RAND report lacks substantive engagement with the territory’s history and has little mention of the community plans already in existence while proposing major structural governmental changes that expand beyond the territorial government’s purview. From our observations and discussions with partners on the island, this dynamic seems to be a consistent issue with planning and governance between the territory and the mainland.

An example of the disconnect from the RAND report is the report’s consistent emphasis on a need to change FEMA’s match funding requirement for territories (outlined in Finding 2). While we believe this to be a meaningful recommendation, this requires Congressional approval over which USVI has limited political power. A vestige from the colonial forces that continue to dictate governance in the territory, Virgin Islanders cannot vote in presidential elections and there is only one VI delegate in the Congress (a non-voting member of the House of Representatives).