"The vicious cycle of disaster followed by public sector borrowing makes effective development planning near impossible," he said, adding that rules on government borrowing presented an unsustainable trap for Caribbean countries repeatedly devastated by multiple disasters.

Rowan Douglas of Willis Towers Watson, a leading global risk management, insurance brokerage and advisory company, said that in 2017 "We had the worst insured-losses in history, worse than any time before."

However, the insurance and reinsurance business had not gone bust because 25 years ago the industry had decided to "encode risk into capital, encode climate and disaster risk into credit risk."

The meeting was held to mark the International Day for Disaster Reduction, held on 13 October each year, and this year addressing the reduction of economic losses from disasters; target c of the Sendai Framework, the global roadmap for disaster risk reduction.

Date:

17 Oct 2018

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)

Themes:

Advocacy & Media, Disaster Risk Management

Regions:

Americas, Europe