The Disaster Overview in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNDRR and OCHA, 2023) shows that the region is the second most prone to disasters in the world. Between 2000 and 2022, approximately 190 million people were affected by 1,534 disasters. The report estimates that this number has increased between 2019 and 2022, highlighting a 38% increase in the number of people affected by storms and a 19.5% increase in those affected by floods. Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and the impacts associated with them are increasing. These disasters disproportionately affect women and vulnerable populations. 

The Regional Human Development Report, which in its latest version in 2025 has focused on the issue of resilience, analyzes the dynamic pressures on the social, economic and environmental conditions that lead to crisis situations. The differentiated impact of these dynamic pressures is conditioned by structural factors of poverty and inequity in access to development opportunities, and they have been grouped into three: the fragmentation of social cohesion, rapid technological growth, and the behavior of climate and disasters. 

While these dynamic pressures interact closely, in this discussion we will focus primarily on identifying entry points to ensure resilience to disasters and climate change. Some highlights are: 

• Increased exposure and conditions of vulnerability. More than half of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lacks mechanisms to manage even moderate-level adverse events. About 1 in 4 people still live in poverty. In addition, an additional 31% of the population, categorized as vulnerable within the middle class (just above the poverty line), is at risk of falling back into poverty in the event of an adverse event.
• Exacerbation of climatic events. An estimated 31% of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean is exposed to risks from extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, including droughts, heatwaves, and floods. In the Caribbean, the annual average of extreme weather events increased from 5.2 in the period 1963-1999 to 10.7 in the period 2000-2023. In Latin America, this phenomenon is even more pronounced; The number of meteorological events almost tripled, from an annual average of 14.5 in the period 1963-1999 to 41.9 in the period 2000-2023.
• Impact on development. With only 9% of the world's population, one in four disasters globally affected the Latin American and Caribbean region between 1997 and 2017 (UNDRR, 2021). The effects of disasters have a significant impact on development progress. Between 1998 and 2017, 53% of global economic losses caused by climate-related disasters occurred in the LAC region. On 20 occasions since 1995, tropical cyclones have caused an estimated impact of more than 10 per cent of GDP in the Caribbean, representing an extreme impact of storms, particularly on small island developing States.

In the first week of June, the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction was held in Geneva, which emphasized three priority aspects: (1) the need to increase financing in risk reduction and its more appropriate use, (2) ensure the most resilient investment in infrastructure, and (3) promote risk governance that integrates government, private sector, and civil society actors at all territorial levels.

The last three decades have seen significant achievements in conceptualizing and institutionalizing a risk-reduction approach, as opposed to the traditional emergency response approach. Our region of Latin America and the Caribbean has contributed considerably to this conceptual, methodological, and management instrument development. However, we must recognize that there is still much to be done to reverse the processes of increasing risk conditions. To this end, we must promote forward-looking approaches that address the root causes and dynamic pressures that are leading to an increasing increase in risk conditions. 

In this context, this discussion will be aimed at analyzing the main challenges and opportunities to trigger risk management processes that are closely linked to the dynamics of development in the region.