CCRIF signs agreement with CEPREDENAC

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) and CEPREDENAC (the Coordination Center for the Prevention of Disasters in Central America and the Dominican Republic) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

CEPREDENAC is the specialised institution of the Central American Integration System (SICA) for natural disaster prevention, mitigation, and response. The Governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic are active members, while Belize is in the process of becoming a member. CEPREDENAC’s inter-sectoral agenda is harmonised with other specialised regional entities in areas such as hydrological resources, agriculture, nutrition, and food security. CEPREDENAC is akin to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) in the Caribbean, with which CCRIF has had an MOU since 2009 (when it was known as the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency – CDERA).

CCRIF chief executive Isaac Anthony views this MOU as an important step towards collaboration between the Caribbean and Central America, and says, “We are pleased to formalise this partnership between CCRIF and CEPREDENAC, which will facilitate South-South cooperation and be a bridge for the Caribbean and Central America. It will encourage us to share knowledge, lessons learned, and good practices and more importantly, will be a key conduit to enable the two regions to work together on solutions to common challenges that they face as they seek to financially protect their economies, peoples, and communities from the impacts of natural hazards.”

The focus of the MOU between CCRIF and CEPREDENAC is to:

• Enhance institutional strengthening through data sharing and knowledge exchange.

• Facilitate the exchange of experiences, lessons learned and best practices in disaster risk management, risk transfer and insurance within the context of advancing sustainable development in Central America and the Dominican Republic to share with members and introduce robust solutions for disaster risk financing and insurance such as those CCRIF provides to protect and increase financial resilience.

• Enhance and strengthen the understanding of each organisation’s mandate amongst each entity’s core stakeholders.

• Provide information on the work of each organisation through various communication media.

• Raise awareness of CCRIF in Central America and the Dominican Republic through information sharing related to research, exchange programmes, and horizontal cooperation programmes.

• Advance partnership building through South-South cooperation by facilitating the exchange of technology and knowledge among the countries of Central America and the Caribbean.

• Promote activities and programmes that align with the tenets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.