Working together to build resilience in the Caribbean, representatives from the United States, eighteen Caribbean countries, the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency, the eastern Caribbean’s Regional Security System, universities, and other non-governmental partners gathered for the first working group of the U.S.-Caribbean Resilience Partnership on October 23-24 in Barbados.

The Partnership employed a whole-of-society approach, involving the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and academia to achieve shared goals.  Major themes included promoting regional integration and using science to assess disaster-based risk.  Participants also discussed plans to improve resilience under new initiatives launched by the United States, including:

• $5 million in funding for a Caribbean-wide energy initiative – one benefit of which will be to reduce electricity outages resulting from the impacts of hurricanes and floods
• $1.5 million in funding to support the implementation of the U.S.-Caribbean Resilience Partnership. This funding will support technical exchanges and consultations between U.S. interagency resilience experts, ministries, and disaster management officials from the Caribbean region
• $2 million in funding to improve the ability of Caribbean partners to prepare for and mitigate the effects of disasters
• $1 million in funding for small grants for civil society and NGOs on enhancing community-led disaster resilience in the Eastern Caribbean
• A multilateral program to improve regional capacity for hurricane forecasting in the Caribbean Sea and tropical North Atlantic Ocean