Revisiting Resilience in the Caribbean: a Multi-System Approach

Abstract:

This paper proposes a holistic approach to resilience in the Caribbean, from reduction of asset losses due to natural hazards, to macroeconomic stability, poverty reduction, and increase in human capital. It combines the latest research on resilience in the region with new data and modeling on the impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism sector and compound risks with the 2020 hurricane season. The framework developed by Hallegatte et al (2017), which quantifies a country’s well-being losses due to natural disasters, is adapted to the Caribbean context (where disasters affect a very large share of the population and installed capital when they strike) and extended to assess the welfare impacts of any income or consumption shock on Caribbean households and the benefits of different policy responses. This framework allows exploring the links between resilience to multiple shocks and broader development outcomes. This analysis is complemented by an analysis of debt sustainability in a context of high disasters losses and the COVID-19 pandemic, with a comparison of macroeconomic instruments for funding resilience. The presentation will focus on the difficulties in combining different definitions of resilience and linking different systems models for guiding decision makers who want to build more resilient societies.