The head of the Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion, Re­cov­ery and Re­silience Build­ing Team at the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) Cri­sis Bu­reau, Ronald Jack­son, says a new re­port is call­ing for a reimag­in­ing of de­vel­op­ment strate­gies in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) with a re­silience lens.

The Ja­maican-born Jack­son, a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), told the Glob­al Plat­form for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion that the Re­gion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment Re­port for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) “es­sen­tial­ly presents the de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion as be­ing un­der pres­sure”.

Jack­son said that the re­port goes in­to a set of ar­gu­ments that seeks to de­pres­surise or to re­lease this par­tic­u­lar pres­sure.

“It points to the fact that the re­gion is nav­i­gat­ing a com­plex land­scape marked by height­ened un­cer­tain­ty, re­cur­ring and over­lap­ping cri­sis and mul­ti­ple in­ter­linked stres­sors, rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nolo­gies and deep­en­ing so­cial frag­men­ta­tion and in­creas­ing­ly chang­ing cli­mat­ic con­di­tions,” Jack­son said.

“These fac­tors, as many of us know, have ex­posed pro­found vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties across the re­gion are im­pact­ing the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry, chal­leng­ing its abil­i­ty to sus­tain and ad­vance hu­man de­vel­op­ment.

“Sig­nif­i­cant progress has oc­curred, but that progress has been un­equal,” Jack­son said, adding that progress has slowed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in re­cent years, and and is vul­ner­a­ble to re­ver­sals.

He said the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic marked a crit­i­cal turn­ing point, trig­ger­ing the first-ever de­cline in the Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex(HDI) since its in­cep­tion.

Jack­son said that al­though LAC has since re­cov­ered, the pace of ad­vance­ment re­mains slug­gish, show­ing lit­tle in­di­ca­tion of re­turn­ing to its pre-pan­dem­ic tra­jec­to­ry.

“More than half of the peo­ple in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean lack ad­e­quate cop­ing mech­a­nisms to man­age even the mod­er­ate ad­verse event with­out en­dur­ing per­ma­nent neg­a­tive im­pacts on their well-be­ing.”

He said that al­most one in every four peo­ple still lives in pover­ty in the re­gion, and an ad­di­tion­al 31 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is cat­e­gorised as vul­ner­a­ble with­in the mid­dle class.

How­ev­er, those ex­ist­ing just above that pover­ty line, are at risk of slip­ping back in­to pover­ty when­ev­er the ad­verse events oc­cur.

“While un­cer­tain­ty has been on the rise glob­al­ly, it has reached es­pe­cial­ly acute lev­els in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean with­in this par­tic­u­lar year,” Jack­son said.

“Tra­di­tion­al risks are both more fre­quent and more in­tense, and nov­el threats are emerg­ing due to rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nolo­gies, deep­en­ing so­cial frag­men­ta­tion and in­creas­ing­ly chang­ing cli­mate.

“More­over, mul­ti­ple ad­verse events and haz­ards are in­ter­act­ing with each oth­er and with un­der­ly­ing struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in com­plex and of­ten un­fore­seen ways,” Jack­son said, not­ing that the sit­u­a­tion amounts to a  “poly cri­sis”, with weath­er-re­lat­ed events in LAC hav­ing more than dou­bled in the last few decades.

“In the Caribbean, the year­ly av­er­age in­crease from 5.2 events for the pe­ri­od 1963 to 1999  to 10.7 events now is even more pro­nounced. The num­ber of weath­er-re­lat­ed events near­ly tripled from a year­ly av­er­age of 14.5 for the pe­ri­od 1963 to 1999 and 41.9 from the pe­ri­od 2000 to 2023.”

Jack­son said es­ti­mates sug­gest that 31 per cent of LAC pop­u­la­tion is ex­posed to risks of ex­treme weath­er haz­ards ag­gra­vat­ed by cli­mate change.

“A crit­i­cal chal­lenge is that cli­mate re­silience is not re­strict­ed to a wealthy na­tion or com­mu­ni­ties that can af­ford adap­ta­tion. This would fur­ther en­trench in­equal­i­ties and ex­ac­er­bate the im­pacts of the cli­mate cri­sis on the most vul­ner­a­ble.”

Jack­son said ev­i­dence demon­strates an in­verse re­la­tion­ship be­tween the hu­man de­vel­op­ment in­dex lev­el and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty de­fined as the propen­si­ty, or pre­dis­po­si­tion of so­ci­eties to be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by cli­mate haz­ards.

He said LAC is in­creas­ing­ly wor­ried about cli­mate change and de­mands con­crete po­lit­i­cal and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­spons­es.

“The grow­ing aware­ness about cli­mate change in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ad­vanc­ing agency and a way to move for­ward on green growth strate­gies.

“How­ev­er, sur­veys over the last decade have con­sis­tent­ly shown that a high­er pro­por­tion of peo­ple pri­ori­tise eco­nom­ic growth over en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion,”  Jack­son said, not­ing that the re­port states that the de­vel­op­ment agen­da in LAC “is in need of a new play­book, one that fits our times.

“What worked in the past will no longer suf­fice. That is part­ly be­cause there is much un­fin­ished busi­ness, but it is al­so be­cause, as times have changed, our in­stru­ments our in­sti­tu­tions our in­fra­struc­ture must change to meet the new chal­lenges.”

Re­silience is at the cen­tre of this new “play­book” but not as a byprod­uct of growth, pover­ty re­duc­tion or cli­mate change adap­ta­tion.

Re­silience must be “a core el­e­ment of the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment strate­gies, recog­nis­ing that with­out it, de­vel­op­ment progress will be slug­gish at best and will face re­ver­sal at worst,” Jack­son said.

The re­port pro­pos­es a con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of re­silience from a hu­man de­vel­op­ment per­spec­tive.

This con­cept aims to en­able peo­ple to en­joy valu­able lives in terms of ca­pa­bil­i­ty and agency in such a way that the im­pact of crit­i­cal, per­va­sive shocks on their lives is pre­vent­ed and mit­i­gat­ed.

It is al­so fo­cused on how peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly in the most dis­ad­van­taged parts of the re­gion, can shape their lives, and if ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed, re­bound and flour­ish again.

“Hu­man De­vel­op­ment is re­silient when peo­ple’s ca­pac­i­ties or ca­pa­bil­i­ties are safe­guard­ed such that most shocks are pre­vent­ed or mit­i­gat­ed,” Jack­son said.

He said three broad pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives can be de­fined with­in the con­cept of re­silient hu­man de­vel­op­ment: the abil­i­ty to pre­pare for the un­known; the ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond to haz­ards; and the means to re­bound if ad­ver­si­ty strikes, not new to many of us.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, we can think of three mech­a­nisms through which these ob­jec­tives can be achieved, in­stru­ments to nav­i­gate un­cer­tain­ty, in­sti­tu­tions that em­brace com­plex­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture that un­leash­es the pow­er of lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties,” Jack­son said.

GENE­VA, Jun 3,  CMC –

CMC/kc/ir/2025