Participants discussed possibilities for debt relief and singled out extreme poverty as one of the root causes of Central America s vulnerability to natural disasters. They noted that lack of sustainable environmental practices and poor disaster prevention and response were major contributing factors to the enormous loss of life and suffering which continues. This means that infrastructure should be built to better withstand natural disasters. It means reconstruction of homes in less precarious areas and with more resilience. It means building new national institutional capacities to prevent and to mitigate events of this type.
Education is paralyzed at present.
While these people must leave their shelters, they must not return to the areas where they were living because these were high risk areas. They must therefore be provided with new land, with new services and with livelihoods i.e. employment opportunities. These are not simple issues. Therefore we must start now with the knowledge that this will take years to resolve. But unless we start now, they will either return to where they came from and will become victims again when the next natural disaster strikes, or they will be tempted to migrate or emigrate.