A methodological approach to gender analysis in natural disaster assessment: a guide for the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Statistics on social exclusion: the EU methodological approach

Includes bibliography

Education and knowledge: basic pillars of changing production patterns with social equity

Includes bibliography

National public investment systems in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tabago

Includes bibliography

Report of the seminar on the results of the social vulnerability index

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean and secretariat of the Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (CDCC); has been involved for the past three years in the execution of a project NET/00/035: Development of the Social Statistical Databases and a methodological approach for a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI); funded by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The project had been conceptualized to produce two outputs, one a social statistical database, and the other, the development of a methodological approach for an SVI. The project was in response to the articulated needs of governments in the subregion, specifically, and the wider international body of policy makers, in general, for greater availability and a better quality of social statistical data and indicators to measure the vulnerability of small States.

The impact of climate change on the macroeconomy in the Caribbean

In this study, an attempt is made to assess the economic impact of climate change on nine countries in the Caribbean basin: Aruba, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. A methodological approach proposed by Dell et al. (2008) is used in preference to the traditional Integrated Assessment Models. The evolution of climate variables and of the macroeconomy of each of the nine countries over the period 1970 to 2006 is analyzed and preliminary evidence of a relationship between the macroeconomy and climate change is examined. The preliminary investigation uses correlation, Granger causality and simple regression methods. The preliminary evidence suggests that there is some relationship but that the direction of causation between the macroeconomy and the climate variables is indeterminate. The main analysis involves the use of a panel data (random effects) model which fits the historical data (1971-2007) very well. Projections of economic growth from 2008 to 2099 are done on the basis of four climate scenarios: the International Panel on Climate Change A2, B2, a hybrid A2B2 (the mid-point of A2 and B2), and a ‘baseline’ or ‘Business as Usual’ scenario, which assumes that the growth rate in the period 2008-2099 is the same as the average growth rate over the period 1971-2007. The best average growth rate is under the B2 scenario, followed by the hybrid A2B2 and A2 scenarios, in that order. Although negative growth rates eventually dominate, they are largely positive for a long time. The projections all display long-run secular decline in growth rates notwithstanding short-run upward trends, including some very sharp ones, moving eventually from declining positive rates to negative ones. The costs associated with the various scenarios are all quite high, rising to as high as a present value (2007 base year) of US$14 billion in 2099 (constant 1990 prices) for the B2 scenario and US$21 billion for the BAU scenario. These costs were calculated on the basis of very conservative estimates of the cost of environmental degradation. Mitigation and adaptation costs are likely to be quite high though a small fraction of projected total investment costs.