Building Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change in the Caribbean

Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes was in Washington to attend the High-Level Conference on Building Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change in the Caribbean. This Conference was organized by the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group/Inter-American Development Bank. The Caribbean region’s already high vulnerability to natural disasters is likely to be exacerbated as the frequency and severity of disasters increase from climate change effects. But for several reasons, countries in the region invest little in building resilience and rely heavily on ex-post external assistance to recover from such disasters. Reducing the human and economic costs of natural disasters and climate risks requires a greater shift in policy focus towards ex-ante resilience building and a broad disaster risk management strategy. The conference brought together key stakeholders, including senior policymakers, public, private, and multilateral development partners, to explore incentives to shift the focus of policies towards building resilience and innovative disaster risk financing policies and instruments that would help in this regard.

Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes was also invited to a breakfast meeting with the Managing Director and Chairwoman of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, and Prime Ministers of Jamaica, Barbados, Bahamas, Sint Maarten, Anguilla, and the President of Dominica.