The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) signed a Letter of Agreement in February 2007, which formalized the terms of a Grant in the amount of US$800,000 in support of the Regional Disaster Risk Management for Sustainable Tourism in the Caribbean Project. The Grant financed the development of a regional disaster risk management strategy for sustainable tourism including the formulation of standards for vulnerability assessments and risk mapping applied to the tourism sector; and institutional strengthening of the CDEMA, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), and other stakeholders in disaster risk management for sustainable tourism.
The project was executed by CDEMA, in conjunction with CTO, the CARICOM Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), and the University of the West Indies (UWI). Each agency brought its respective institutional mandate, expertise, and regional constituencies to the execution of the project. CDEMA is the project’s executing agency, and to facilitate its coordination, CDEMA established an Executing Unit consisting of a Project Coordinator, and a Technical Officer. The Executing Unit specifically, and the execution of the project as a whole, was guided by an Advisory Committee which was established with the participation of CDEMA, CTO, and CROSQ, and representatives from the tourism sector of five beneficiary countries (the Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Turks & Caicos Islands).