CCRIF’s new excess rainfall product discussed at donor meeting

THE Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) hosted a strategic donor meeting at the offices of the CDB in Barbados recently, to discuss ways to support CCRIF’s new excess rainfall product and to co-ordinate with donors’ disaster risk management initiatives in the region.

In his opening remarks, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) President Dr. Warren Smith indicated that the CDB was pleased to facilitate this discussion, which will increase co-operation among CCRIF, donors and regional organisations, “in enhancing the disaster risk management capacity of the region as a whole and co-ordinating our efforts in keeping with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness”.

Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) President, Dr. Warren Smith,
as he addressed participants at the strategic donor meeting.

CCRIF’s recently appointed CEO, Isaac Anthony,
is happy with the outcome of the donor meeting.

The meeting brought together international development partners, including the UK Department for International Development (DFID), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Inter-American Bank, and the European Union among others. Regional institutions represented included the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC). Other participants included His Excellency Ambassador Appio Claudio Muniz Acquarone of Brazil and Mr. Yu Bu, Alternate Director for China to CDB and First Secretary of the People’s Republic of China to Barbados.

Donors have played a key role in helping CCRIF to meet its key objective of providing a cost-effective way to pre-finance short-term liquidity after a catastrophic event, allowing governments to begin recovery efforts immediately. A good example of this was the US$8 million payout made to Haiti 14 days after the devastating 2010 earthquake. This payout – which came before any other direct donor support – enabled the Haitian public sector and emergency services to continue to function in the weeks and months after the earthquake. By contributing towards the capitalisation of CCRIF, donors indirectly helped the Facility to reduce its expenditures on reinsurance, increase the financial security of the Facility, and decrease the premium charged to member countries.

One of the main items of discussion was CCRIF’s new coverage option – the CCRIF/Swiss Re Excess Rainfall product – which is now being made available to all CARICOM countries. Discussions focused on potential donor support to enable Caribbean countries at risk from extreme rainfall to take advantage of this innovative product. The excess rainfall product will complement the Facility’s tropical cyclone coverage, which is based on wind and storm surge losses. The excess rainfall product was developed in direct response to interest expressed by many CCRIF participating countries and stakeholder partners in enhancing existing options to include coverage against damage produced by heavy rain and its triggering of floods and landslides. Donors were impressed with the product’s potential to help all countries in the Caribbean region – including those which are not at significant risk from tropical
cyclones, such as Guyana and Suriname.

A number of commitments came out of the meeting:

• Donors committed to examine how they could support the roll-out of the CCRIF/Swiss Re Excess Rainfall product.

• CCRIF agreed to assist donors with helping governments to better understand the role of parametric insurance in disaster risk management and the importance of engaging in wider disaster risk reduction activities beyond insurance.

• The Inter-American Development Bank will seek to enhance its partnership with CCRIF in developing a technical co-operation initiative that would be designed to help countries better understand and assess their risks from natural disasters, and help them find ways to incorporate these risks into national decision making and planning.

• CCRIF committed to organise a regional meeting of key stakeholders and donors on the concept and implementation of a ‘Country Risk Officer’ initiative – for specially designated government officers who would act as a central point of contact for co-ordinated disaster risk management in their country.

CCRIF’s recently appointed CEO, Isaac Anthony, was pleased with the results of the meeting.

The meeting “provided an opportunity to create a mechanism for inter-organisation information sharing and collaboration that can be used to deal with a variety of development issues that face the Caribbean. CCRIF – and its current and future member countries – will certainly benefit from this co-
operative approach,” he said. (PR/RSM)