Barbados

Small Island Developing States will this week seek to plot a course to a safer and more resilient future as part of their preparations for a major conference next year. The Inter-regional preparatory meeting for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which opens today in Bridgetown, Barbados, brings together nations from the three SIDS regions – Caribbean, Pacific and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean South China Seas (AIMS) – to forge the way forward.

As the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season kicks off, all 16 member governments of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) have committed for the sixth year in a row to renew their hurricane and earthquake insurance for 2012-2013 and earned themselves a 25% premium rebate.

The magnitude 4.0 earthquake recorded off the coast of Antigua on 11 May is "a warning that the Caribbean should prepare for a much more severe earthquake to come," says a leading expert.

Yuwan Malakar has good reason to be focused and driven these days. The 30-year old environmental management major from Nepal has just had his first paper on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) published in one of the highly respected online journals of the Policy Studies Organization.