Building Back Better: Reckoning with Size in Pursuit of Resilience

As the member States of the United Nations prepare to reaffirm commitment to four global development platforms at summit meetings to be convened in September on climate change, SIDS, SDGs and financing for development, this side event is intended to offer the small, highly vulnerable, heavily indebted middle income countries of the Caribbean yet another strategic opportunity to argue persuasively the newly compelling reasons why they are deserving of special consideration where support for their sustainable development process is concerned. The advent of catastrophic category five hurricanes in the Caribbean has made planning for and investing in resilience even more urgent for the countries of this subregion. How these middle-income countries, ineligible for concessional financing, achieve risk reduction and resilience-building in the face of persistently low growth, declining ODA and FDI, high levels of indebtedness and a harsh international environment replete with challenges like de-risking and blacklisting is the conundrum that they face today.