Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
Nelson King, Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson, Lloyd Kam
Williams
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean L 12 ife, May 3–9, 2019 BQ
By Luis Felipe López-Calva
Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva
is UN Assistant Secretary-
General and UNDP Regional
Director for Latin America
and the Caribbean
UNITED NATIONS, April
24, 2019 (IPS) — Sustainability
is constitutive of the concept
of development. Just as
economist Amartya Sen has
argued that there is no point
in discussing the relationship
between development
and democracy, because
democracy is constitutive of
the concept of development,
there is no point of trying
to disentangle sustainability
from the notion of development
itself.
A key foundation to promoting
sustainable development
is thus strengthening
resilience. We know that the
development trajectory is not
linear. Shocks of many different
types disturb this path,
and vulnerability to these
shocks can slow down (or
even reverse) progress. Resilience
is the ability to return
to a predetermined path of
development in the shortest
possible time after suffering
from an adverse shock.
For countries in the Caribbean,
the challenge of
strengthening resilience is
particularly acute as nations
suffer recurrent extreme
weather-related events.
Countries are continuously
struggling to rebuild in the
wake of the economic, social,
and environmental damages
inflicted by frequent exogenous
shocks, such as tropical
storms — storms which climate
scientists have warned
us are only getting wilder
and more dangerous due to
global warming.
This makes the probability
of distribution over intensity
of shocks one with “thicker
tails” which in turn makes
insurance more complex and
expensive. As a recent IMF
report found, “natural disasters
occur more frequently
and cost more on average
in the Caribbean than elsewhere—
even in comparison
to other small states.” Since
1950, 324 disasters have
taken place in the Caribbean,
inflicting a loss of over
250,000 lives and affecting
over 24 million people.
This #GraphForThought
uses data from the International
Disaster Database
EM-DAT to look at the damages
caused by storms in the
Caribbean during the period
1963-2017. As the graph
cycles through time, we see
countries repeatedly experiencing
storms.
Each grey dot represents
a country’s loss in property,
crops, and livestock due
to total storm damages in a
given year — expressed as
a percentage of its national
GDP (using GDP from the
year before the storm).*
On average over time, we
can see that countries in the
Caribbean suffer yearly losses
due to storm damages equivalent
to 17 percent of their
GDP (for years that they were
hit by storms). Of course, this
varies greatly across nations
both due to the severity of
storms as well as the size
of countries’ GDP—ranging
from an average loss of 1%
in Trinidad and Tobago to
an average loss of 74 percent
in Dominica. In 2017 alone,
Dominica lost the equivalent
of 253 percent of its GDP
(during Hurricane Maria).
This was just two years
after it lost the equivalent of
92 percent of its GDP (during
Hurricane Erika). These
losses are compounded by
losses resulting from other
extreme natural events, such
as earthquakes, floods and
droughts.
The repercussions from
these damages have longterm
consequences at the
national level. A recent crosscountry
study on the impact
of cyclones on long run economic
growth found that
impacts on GDP persist as
much as twenty years later.
Moreover, they find that
“for countries that are frequently
or persistently
exposed to cyclones, these
By Bronx Borough President
Ruben Diaz Jr.
The destruction of our city’s
gifted and talented programs,
especially in black and brown
communities, is one of the
main reasons we see a lack
of diversity in our specialized
high schools. A high quality
education for our accelerated
learners must be available at
the earliest ages.
The most recently
announced results of the Specialized
High School Admissions
Test (SHSAT) put the crisis
our city’s public education
system faces into clear focus.
Of the almost 4,800 students
admitted to the city’s eight
specialized public high schools
this year, just 506 are Black
or Latino, down slightly from
last year. This inequity is unacceptable.
Numerous options have been
proposed to lessen this shameful
gap and move more public
school students in every community
from middle school to
Stuyvesant, Bronx Science,
Brooklyn Tech and their counterparts.
A true fix to the problems
facing our high schools must
begin in the earliest grades.
This city must recommit to
a robust gifted and talented
program in every community,
and reverse the eradication
of these programs that began
under Mayor Bloomberg and
continues unabated during the
de Blasio administration.
The most recent results of
the SHSAT found that Black
and Latino students continue
to lose ground when it comes
to specialized high school
admissions. Slightly less than
11 percent of all seats at the
eight specialized high schools
were offered to Black or Latino
students this year, despite
those two groups making up
roughly 70 percent of all public
school students.
At Stuyvesant High School,
the most prestigious of the specialized
public high schools,
just seven Black students and
33 Latino students were offered
admission out of a total of 895.
At Staten Island Tech, just one
Black student was offered a seat
in next year’s freshman class.
We can easily draw a direct
correlation between these
numbers and the populations
of the city’s 86 gifted and talented
programs, which provide
students with accelerated
learning options at the earliest
ages. Of the 15,979 children in
those programs, just 21 percent
are black or Latino. In
many minority communities,
such programs do not even
exist.
I have advocated for expanded
gifted and talented options
in every community throughout
my career. I am a product
of the gifted program that once
existed in P.S. 31, a District #7
school in the South Bronx.
Today, there are no gifted programs
in all of District #7 and
the results of that exclusion are
crystal clear. Just seven students
received offers this year
to the specialized high schools
out of District #7.
Our children can do this
work. Black and Latino stu-
OP-EDS
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Continued on Page 14
Continued on Page 14
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After the rain: The
lasting effects of storms
in the Caribbean
NYC gifted, talented
programs under threat
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