The World Bank will be hosting a webinar in Jamaica this Wednesday (January 18) on sustainably managing public resources in the Caribbean for climate resilience.

The World Bank has pulled together a top panel of its experts in the field to speak at the webinar. The experts include World Bank Director for the Caribbean, Lilia Burunciuc; Regional Director Robert Taliercio and Doerte Doemeland, World Bank practice manager – Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Competing the list is Fernando Blanco, author of Fiscal Rules and Economic Size in Latin American and the Caribbean and principal economist at the International Finance Corporation, which is a member of the World Bank Group of the World Bank Group.

The webinar will discuss the positive impact of climate resilience financial planning on smaller countries. The focus is on the Caribbean, which is highly exposed to recurrent, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification.

Weather-related damage and losses from disasters in the Caribbean tend to be high in proportion to gross domestic product, as many of the territories, populations and centres of economic activity are impacted.

This means sustainable economic growth and development in the region depends greatly on how countries mitigate climate change impacts and strengthen climate change adaptation and resilience.

As such, a well-designed and implemented financial framework with appropriate rules is essential in enabling countries to manage prudently in good times while concurrently planning for rainy days, particularly as many Caribbean countries are also already heavily in debt.