This online summer course provides an introduction to disaster risk financing (DRF) and the relationship with fiscal and economic policy and to Caribbean governments’ primary tool DRF tool – CCRIF SPC. The course is for recent university graduates, current university students and other persons with an interest in areas such as disaster risk management, environmental sustainability, economics, geography, etc.

Participants are exposed to a range of topics and in-depth information on:

• Natural Disasters and the Caribbean Hazard Landscape
• Introduction to Economic Theory
• The Impact of Natural Disasters on the Economy
• The Relationship between Disaster Risk Management and Disaster Risk Financing
• Understanding Disaster Risk Financing
• Disaster Risk Financing Tools
• The Linkages between Insurance and Social Protection Strategy – Case Study on the Climate Risk Adaptation and Insurance in the Caribbean Project (CRAIC)
• Introduction to CCRIF’s Parametric Insurance Policies and Models
• Differences between Parametric Insurance and Indemnity Insurance
• Overview of CCRIF’s Country Risk Profiles and Applicability to Development Planning
• Introduction to Integrated Risk Management

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the linkages between disaster risk management and disaster risk financing
• Understand ex-ante and ex-post disaster risk financing instruments
• Better appreciate the importance of both risk transfer and risk mitigation in disaster risk management
• Understand the importance of closing the protection gap and the linkages with social protection strategies and shock responsive social protection
• Understand the difference between parametric and indemnity insurance
• Understand the role of microinsurance in reducing vulnerabilities
• Understand CCRIF’s parametric models that underlie its policies
• Understand the elements of CCRIF policies
• Understand how the country risk profiles are used for CCRIF policies and how they can be used for other national uses
• Understand the role of the WeMAp Tool for monitoring hazard events and forecasting tropical cyclone impacts in country disaster preparedness and the infusion in country disaster plans and regional hurricane plans
• Understand the concepts related to integrated risk management

Participants who successfully complete the course will receive a CCRIF/UWI certificate, which carries 2 continuing education units/credits.

Conditions for receiving the certificate are:

• participation during at least 80% of the time of the course (measured by the Zoom platform analytics that captures time online of each participant on each day/session)

• participation in class discussions, group exercises, Mentimeter exercies, Zoom chat, etc

• completing a final test with a grade of at least 60%

Participants must turn on their cameras during the sessions.