Organization: World Bank
Session Lead: Mary Boyer
Time: 9:00-12:30
Summary: The Caribbean region is exposed to a variety of natural hazards, which have significant negative impacts on their economic and fiscal stability. The global trend toward increasing climate variability is likely to exacerbate many of these hazards. Costs of recovery and reconstruction from disasters can result in increased debt, unsustainable budgetary deficits and unreliable funding streams for many countries in the Caribbean. Absence of macroeconomic stability makes it harder for Caribbean countries to implement poverty reduction policies. The Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) aim to reduce their fiscal vulnerability and enhance their long-term resilience and capacity to adapt to extreme and recurrent natural hazards.
This session will provide an overview of the Disaster Risk Financing Technical Assistance (DRF TA) available to Caribbean OCTS through the EU-funded program Caribbean OCTs Resilience, Sustainable Energy and Marine Biodiversity (ReSEMBiD). Assistance through the DRF TA include identifying the unique challenges mitigating the contingent liability to natural hazards in Caribbean OCTs, development of innovative disaster risk financing (DRF) options, capacity building within OCTs on better understanding of regional sovereign risk transfer mechanisms such as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), and working with OCTs to promote informed decision-making on disaster risk financing. While this session is specifically geared towards government officials and ReSEMBiD focal points in OCTs, it is open to all.
Biographies
Mary Boyer
Mary Boyer is a Disaster Risk Management Specialist who joined the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice of the World Bank in 2015, working primarily on disaster risk finance in the Caribbean. Prior to the Bank, she worked on counterinsurgency and stabilization programming in Afghanistan through USAID (Creative Associates Int’l). She also worked to assist countries in developing drought contingency plans in order to join the inaugural risk pool of African Risk Capacity. Mary holds degrees in anthropology, peace studies, international relations and economics from University of Notre Dame and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, respectively.
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