Enhancing the Resilience of Caribbean Micro, Small & Medium Sized Enterprises to Multi-hazards

The landscape of risk in St. Lucia and the Caribbean is constantly changing with new interactions between climate-driven, environmental, socio-economic and biological risk. In St. Lucia, one hazard can lead to another with cascading effects across systems that can severely hamper progress in achieving national development objectives.

As the St. Lucia Chamber of Commerce continues its efforts at strengthening the capacity of members to withstand externally generated shocks, our program of building more resilient businesses through engagement in disaster risk reduction and resilience, we have partnered with the ARISE Network and the United Nations Department for Disaster Risk Reduction to present this important and valuable E-Symposium.

We recognize that the majority of members are classified as micro, small and medium businesses and so we accept that increasing the level of resilience of MSMEs is critical as a positive vector for social change, economic diversification, reducing poverty and achieving greater gender inclusion. The socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region will be of historical dimensions. In light of this context, we seek to assist businesses (particularly SMEs) in the areas of understanding of risk, business continuity, and disaster risk reduction in general as these are considered key to ensure a quick and resilient economic and social recovery.

The objective of the e-symposium is to:

i) inform businesses on concepts of risk reduction and resilience and the components and nature of risk;

ii) demonstrate the value of adopting resilient practices for businesses;

iii) encourage the exchange of experience, good resilience practices and challenges unique to the MSME sector; and,

iv) introduce participants to UNDRR’s set of toolkits for risk reduction and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The e-symposium will be delivered by Dr. Alexander Mirescu, who has had over a decade of experience in disaster risk reduction and urban resilience. His full biography can be found here.

This is a free event and we encourage persons to register early as space is limited. Sponsored by: