The World Bank aims to bolster countries’ resilience to natural disasters and other crisis by approving a measure that would give them fast access to emergency funds drawn from their existing loan programs after such an event. The changes to the Crisis Preparedness and Response Toolkit would provide immediate access to up to 10% of undisbursed funds from existing loans.
They come as part of a broader World Bank initiative to address climate change and broaden lending capacity. The bank will also improve access to separate emergency financing for crises under initiatives that will require resilience building and measures to increase crisis preparedness.
Finally, the bank approved an expansion of catastrophe insurance products for large disasters, including bonds that pay out after disasters that meet certain criteria.
“We hear client after client, from very low-income to middle-income countries, say, ‘When a crisis hits, we’re unprepared financially and we’re having to make all kinds of terrible trade-offs that we don’t want to have to make,'” noted World Bank Managing Director for Operations Anna Bjerde.
