In recent decades, the frequency and destructive capacity of disasters have increased, irrespective of their origin or the speed at which they unfold. Latin America and the Caribbean is a highly exposed region. Devastating hurricanes buffet the Caribbean islands and the coasts of Central and North America. At the same time, prolonged droughts, affecting vast geographic areas of the Central America Dry Corridor and the Southern Cone, threaten food systems and the safe provision of drinking water for communities, generating new conflicts over the control of this vital resource and access to it. Paradoxically, out-of-season torrential rainfall increasingly catches areas unprepared, causing significant losses and damage. Such phenomena are becoming a structural element that increasingly requires public policies for risk management in general and social protection in particular.

Human-induced climate change plays an incontrovertible role in many of these phenomena. In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that rising global temperature trends are a fact, and there is no longer any possibility of returning to the state of the climate that existed in earlier times. The last window of opportunity involves ensuring that temperatures rise by no more than 1.5°C, to avoid the worst-case scenario predicted by the simulations for the end of this century. 

No one is immune from the ravages of a disaster; and the clearest proof of this is the health, social and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This biological disaster has led countries to adopt emergency measures that have had a profound impact on national economies, labour markets and the general welfare of the population. Latin America and the Caribbean has been the hardest hit region; as of October 2021, it accounted for 18.5% of infections and 30.3% of deaths globally, despite having just 8.4% of the world’s total population.

This has had a devastating impact on the region’s economies. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has estimated that in 2020 GDP shrank by 6.8%, while the social impact can be encapsulated as a massive withdrawal of women from the labour market, 22 million additional people living in poverty (raising the total to 209 million, 33.7% of the Latin American population) and a 2.9%. rise in the Gini coefficient. In short, the region today is more unequal, with more people living in poverty and more women permanently withdrawing from the workforce, owing in part to their increased burden of unpaid care work.

The social impacts of disasters compound the economic losses. Accordingly, coping with disasters —whether or not directly related to climate change— requires a form of governance that applies multisectoral risk management that is not confined to the national emergency response agencies. 

In this context of burgeoning change, disaster risk management must include generating capacities to respond and adapt as these phenomena unfold in their different stages. The aim should be to harness permanent and emergency policies in the different sectors and levels of government. Disaster risk management also requires a social protection component to support the adaptation of production processes, along with public and private infrastructure, ecosystem protection, land-use planning and sustainable financing. 

Ministries of Social Development play a central role in facilitating risk mitigation, impact containment and transformative recovery from the crises caused by disasters. They are strategically placed to foster the social and institutional resilience of social protection systems to cope with present and future risks. The promotion of social resilience, by strengthening prevention, adaptation and response capacities —especially among the most vulnerable households— is crucial in this regard. Institutional resilience implies strengthening public capacities to address short-, medium- and long-term requirements in a comprehensive and coordinated manner; and it requires institutions based on legal frameworks and management models that fulfil the standards of a quality public policy: effective, efficient, sustainable and transparent.