Event Summary
Organization: World Bank
Description
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 9:00 – 11:00
Room: C4
This session launches one of the first report series published after the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season highlighting country-specific recommendations to strengthen disaster risk finance strategies in the Caribbean. The reports are the result of a close, three-year collaboration with Ministries of Finance within the Governments of Belize, Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Lucia that analyzed the gaps in sovereign fiscal protection against disasters and climate-related risks and developed customized solutions based on the priorities and economic contexts in each of the countries. In seeking achievable country-specific recommendations, the reports quantify these governments’ contingent liabilities to natural disasters, suggest Public Financial Management and regulatory reforms, and evaluate the resilience of the domestic insurance market to disasters.
Working together with the Ministries of Finance these reports have already served as inputs to Climate Change Policy Assessment papers, national fiscal policy papers, and analytics for development of contingent lines of credits such as Cat DDOs. Countries have begun implementing report recommendations to increase capitalization to contingency funds and to prepare national Disaster Risk Financing Strategies. More broadly, the reports have been used for policy dialogue, facilitating governments’ discussions with donors and multi-lateral agencies, and have increased access to contingent financing.
This session will highlight key report findings, lesson learnt and speak to the process used to develop these reports from participating country, donor and World Bank perspectives. We gratefully acknowledge the funding received by the ACP-EU-Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Program in completing these reports.