📋 Tender Overview
Saint Lucia faces various climate-related threats to its development. GFDRR is addressing these threats via efforts to enhance technologies and support knowledge-sharing activities that benefit stakeholders and communities across the country to increase resilience to natural hazards.
Saint Lucia is exposed to several disaster and climate-related threats which pose significant risks to its economic and social progress. These climate-related perils, including hurricanes, floods, landslides, droughts, and rising sea levels, have increasingly impacted the nation’s infrastructure and public services.
Enhancing disaster preparedness measures and bolstering post-disaster response capabilities are crucial for safeguarding public safety, preserving development gains, and increasing resilience. Through the EU-funded Caribbean Regional Resilience Building Facility (CRRBF) and the Canada-funded Canada-Caribbean Resilience Facility (CRF), GFDRR has improved the effectiveness of technologies such as hydromet observation networks and open platforms that can be used to host, analyze, and share critical resilience data. Such applications will inform disaster readiness and response in Saint Lucia. This work builds on efforts recently completed under the ACP-EU Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Program (ACP-EU NDRR) which included a comprehensive evaluation of Saint Lucia’s institutional arrangements and disaster risk management systems and offered a tailored, strategic plan for strengthening those arrangements and systems going forward.
To enhance resilience, it is crucial to integrate disaster risk management tools into decision-making processes and critical infrastructure investments. Through the CRRBF, a World Bank team actively pursued this objective through the Strengthening the Integration and Application of Resilient Technologies and Practices in Critical Work and Systems Project. This was achieved by developing data management platforms and installing modern weather stations which now support the Government of Saint Lucia in making more disaster-resilient decisions. These systems and platforms were established for use by the government and its stakeholders to create, share, and analyze disaster risk and climate change data. The hydrometeorological observation networks in particular were set up so that officials could make use of the latest flood forecasting and remote sensing technologies like LiDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging). This support ensures that investments address disaster risk throughout planning, design, construction, and maintenance, making the final infrastructure more resilient when an extreme event occurs.
To build long-term capacity in the use of these technologies, knowledge-sharing activities embedded project impacts and lessons with stakeholders and beneficiary communities. Workshops, including the Integrated HydroMet Data Dissemination System training and the LiDAR and Orthophotography survey training, were conducted to benefit the key agencies managing the portal, such as the Saint Lucia Meteorological Services and the Water Resource Management Agency. These efforts have strengthened government institutions by improving their capabilities and use of disaster risk information systems.
In addition, another CRRBF initiative that benefitted Saint Lucia was the Resilient Housing and Affordability Assessments in the Caribbean Project. It concluded a Rapid Housing Sector Assessment in June 2022 that identified existing supply and demand issues in the housing sector. As part of this assessment, imagery was collected in the Castries, Dennery and Gros Islet districts, encompassing more than 7.5 km2 and over 9,000 structures. Together, these resources provide the government with up-to-date information that can support the design of targeted measures for reducing housing vulnerability.
The successful implementation of these activities relied on the enhanced technical capacity of the Government of Saint Lucia. Through the CRF, experts were provided to address capacity gaps in infrastructure, technical coordination, coastal engineering, environmental safeguards, and procurement. This support incorporated disaster and climate resilience principles into significant infrastructure projects, including the restoration of the Piaye Bridge, improvements to the Anse La Raye Road, and the construction of several community centers. Moreover, this work enhanced the application of disaster and climate risk information in decision-making across the country and led to government stakeholders demanding, with greater proficiency, higher standards in the designs submitted by firms and contractors.
GFDRR’s engagement with Saint Lucia will further build on these accomplishments with the initiation in 2023 of the ACPEU Disaster Risk Management Program. Under this Program, a new project is underway that aims to enhance and improve urban and infrastructure resilience in Castries, as well as strengthen emergency preparedness and response systems across the nation.
