Environmental risk management in the Caribbean

The Caribbean region is composed of 34 islands ranked from middle to high-income countries, except Haiti that is considered as the poorest one in the hemisphere. As small island developing states, these countries have to face challenges induced by their specific characteristics and their geographical localization at both the global and domestic levels. Among these challenges, the eradication of poverty is one of them. Although consensually definedby the international institutions, in the Caribbean, poverty definition in the Caribbean derived the Caribbean Development Bank methodology applied for analyzing the extent, depth, andseverity of the phenomenon. This chapter exposes the determinants and characteristics of poverty in the region based upon a set of Country Poverty Assessments realized in 12 countries—all borrowing members at Caribbean Development Bank—between 1995 and 2009. Some theoretical concepts explain the persistence and nature of poverty in a country like Haiti, whosecaseiscompared to the Dominican Republic, its neighbor on Hispaniola. The two countries are economically divergent and high recipient of remittances. The impact of this external financialassistance on poverty reduction in both these economies is also questioned. We conclude thatin Haiti poverty is due to non-monetary causes, whereas in the rest of the Caribbean it is amultidimensional phenomenon and policies have to be redesigned to better target the real and identified causes of poverty in the area.