Changing building practices is just one a number of development problems that need to be addressed. But there currently exist both the opportunity and the political commitment to “build back better” after the 2017 hurricanes.

Barriers to building back better

Figure 1: Representative tropical island typologies. From top left: A young, active volcanic island (with altitudinal zonation) and limited living perimeter reefs (red zone at outer reef edge), through to an atoll (centre bottom), and raised limestone island (bottom right) dominated by ancient reef deposits (brown + white fleck). Source: IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)

Early warnings, building codes, and ecosystems: lessons for building back better

“People live on land that they don’t own, they use builders who aren’t registered, the buildings have no permits… and so they can’t get mortgages, so can’t afford to invest, retrofit or improve their homes.”

A construction worker takes a break from repairing Dominica’s road network (Banco Mundial LAC, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)