With an intense Atlantic Hurricane Season predicted, any vulnerable developing state that suffers a hit this year will have to finance recovery while contending with the fiscal and price challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Against this backdrop, a panel of economists and sustainable development experts will make the case for more affordable financing for vulnerable Small Island Developing States (SIDS), during a seminar at the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) 52nd Annual Meeting.

Scheduled for Wednesday June 15, 2022, at 3:00 pm AST, the event will centre on CDB’s Recovery Duration Adjuster (RDA), a framework which the Bank is proposing as the global standard for vulnerability and resilience measurement. Beyond measurement, the RDA is also able to evaluate a country’s social and economic conditions to determine the level, and terms of financing required for rescue and recovery from shocks, and then repositioning for future growth and development.

“The pandemic has provided an opportunity to rethink sustainable development and special consideration must be given to the unique vulnerabilities of small states,” CDB President, Dr Hyginus “Gene” Leon explained. “Multilateral organisations have been challenged to think creatively about solutions to address small states’ vulnerabilities which led to the formulation of the United Nations Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI); however, CDB has upgraded the MVI with the Recovery Duration Adjuster.”

Entitled Measuring Vulnerability and Resilience for Small States: The Recovery Duration Adjuster, the seminar will feature an overview of the RDA from CDB Economist, Jason Cotton. This will be followed by a panel discussion involving Dr. Keith Nurse, member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and Principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, Hon. Simon Stiell, Grenada’s Minister for Climate Resilience, the Environment, Forestry, Fisheries, and Disaster Management, Professor Eric Strobl, from the Department of Economics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland, and Ambassador Aubrey Webson, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the United Nations. Mr. Ian Durant, CDB’s Director of Economics, will moderate.

The seminar will explain the methodology of the RDA and demonstrate how it considers factors such as the structural issues constraining growth and development in developing countries; the scale and impact of shocks, such as natural hazards, geopolitical events, or macro-economic disruptions; a country’s internal resilience capacity and access to finance, to determine the duration to recovery (which is often much higher in small states) and propose how concessional finance should be determined after the event.

The hybrid event is part of the activities for the 52nd Annual Meeting of the CDB’s Board of Governors. It will be held at Beaches Turks and Caicos Resort and streamed live on CDB’s social media platforms. CDB’s Annual Meeting activities began on June 1, 2022, with a webinar series scheduled to run until June 9, 2022. The final week of activities will be held in the Turks and Caicos Islands from June 13 to 16, 2022.