The Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean is developing these activities in Peru, Costa Rica and Saint Vicent and The Granadines.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), through its Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean, is strengthening the capacity of specialists and officials of Latin American and Caribbean countries to assess the damages and losses caused by disasters, with activities in Peru, Costa Rica and Saint Vicent and The Granadines.

In the case of Peru, the training session in Damage and Loss Assessment (DaLA) was conducted in Cusco from 16 to 19 June at the request of the National Center for Estimation, Prevention and Disaster Risk Reduction. This course served as the first step towards the inauguration of a certification process for public servants in that country involved with disaster risk reduction and management.

Participants studied the application of the methodology in specific sectors: agriculture, water and sanitation, commerce, education, health, housing and macroeconomic impacts.

ECLAC’s experts will also collaborate in a training session for officials from Saint Vicent and The Granadines, from 22 to 26 June, along with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and will offer another course for the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy of Costa Rica, to be held from 3 to 5 August.

Latin America and the Caribbean ranks as one of the regions most affected by disasters. Since 1972, when the organization assessed the consequences of the earthquake that struck Nicaragua that year, ECLAC has taken part in more than 90 estimations of the social, environmental and economic impacts of disasters in 28 countries in the region.

Most of the disasters studied by the Commission have climatic or geophysical origins and killed 311,127 people between 1972 and 2001, affected the lives of another 34 million and had a total economic impact of around 213 billion dollars, at 2000 prices. Of this amount, 140 billion dollars correspond to damages and 70 billion to losses.