Small island developing states (SIDS) are particularly susceptible to disasters such as hurricanes, typhoons, and floods. Their small population sizes and economies paired with relative geographic remoteness can compound the vulnerability.
A new case study from the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) examines the challenges of building climate resilience in one such country. “Building Resilience to Climate Change and Disasters in a Small Island Developing State – Lessons from Dominica” offers insights into how this island nation worked to confront this dynamic.
Dominica sits at the eastern edge of the Caribbean. It is a small country – a third the size of Greater London – and highly vulnerable to natural hazards and disasters. It regularly experiences intense storm surge flooding and landslides. Its mountainous landscape makes rebuilding difficult in the wake of extreme weather events.
The new case study, produced by CIF’s Climate Delivery Initiative (CDI), traces Dominica’s rebuilding through the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project and pays particular attention to how it addressed the impacts of two devastating storms: Tropical Storm Erika in 2015 and Hurricane Maria in 2017. The project focused on Dominica’s efforts to build back stronger, deploying climate-resilient structures and systems as part of reconstruction and recovery.
Before the project could launch, the first challenge was one of coordination: Dominica had not taken a loan from the World Bank in years and this gap in lending engagement constrained its ability to mobilize sufficient finance for building resilience at scale. The convening power and concessional terms leveraged by CIF through its Pilot Program on Climate Resilience (PPCR) helped bridge this gap. Responding to the impact of storms represented additional challenges, including adapting to new needs to provide immediate emergency responses and adjusting to infrastructure disruptions. A final important delivery challenge was the recurring high turnover of staff in the project coordination unit which managed the project. Across the Caribbean, highly skilled technical staff working on climate adaptation and resilience are in high demand, which exceeds the available personnel. This resulted in low staff numbers to cover the extensive responsibilities for project delivery.
Adapting to overcome these challenges may suggest lessons for other climate resilience projects, particularly in small island developing states. These include:
The case study adds to the body of work of CIF’s Climate Delivery Initiative (CDI). The initiative seeks to break down operational barriers, inherent to climate finance projects, by building an evidence base to identify, record, and respond to delivery challenges. CDI contributes to CIF’s mandate as a learning laboratory by gathering insights and lessons from past projects, such as this one in Dominica, to inform and improve future climate finance programs, within the CIF and the wider climate finance community. Read more about CDI here.
See the full case study and summary brief here.
This case study examines the experience of Dominica’s Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP) — the country’s largest World Bank-associated climate resilience program — from project approval in May 2014 through its near-completion in 2022. This case study focuses on the project’s delivery challenges and solutions. It aims to provide lessons from the project on how the teams addressed delivery challenges — that is, the kinds of problems that hinder development interventions and prevent practitioners from translating technical solutions into results on the ground. It thus explores the major challenges during implementation, the solutions put in place by the government in response to challenges, how the solutions were developed and deployed, and key lessons.