Building a Sustainable and Resilient Saint Lucia

Climate change represents a clear and present danger to the lives and livelihoods of every citizen of our country. Our response to the climate crisis, which is already impacting our development in several different ways, will force us to conduct our affairs in very different ways. It can no longer be business as usual. 

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While our development agenda is based on a transformation of our models of governance and development, there will be a need for us to make targeted interventions in various sectors in order to build resilience to the effects of climate change.

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Our resilience agenda is built on an appreciation of the need for harmony and balance among people, profits and planet, among economy, equity and ecology. 

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Our goal is to build resilience at the household and community levels and rekindle the spirit of togetherness, community action and koudmen that have long been characteristics of life in our country.

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CDEMA Pathway to Resilience

 

We endorse the CDEMA approach to building resilience, which is based on five pillars, namely (i) social protection for the marginal and most vulnerable; (ii) enhancing economic opportunities; (iii) safeguarding infrastructure; (iv) environmental protection; and (v) operational readiness and recovery.

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This approach recognizes the importance of the following nine components in achieving resilience:

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• Policy, legislation and regulations

• Data-driven and evidence based decision making

• Capacity building

• Research and development

• Knowledge management

• Youth involvement and investment

• Use of citizen science

• Effective governance

• Gender inclusiveness

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We believe resilience is built one household, one community, one sector at a time. The approaches recommended in this section seek to allow us to prudently manage the risks associated with natural disasters, build resilient systems and efficiently and effectively respond and recover following a natural disaster. This requires us to develop our (i) anticipative capacity, (ii) preventative capacity, (iii) adaptive capacity, (iv) transformative capacity, and (v) absorptive capacity.

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