Evaluation of a National Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan: A Case Study of Dominica

In 2017, Hurricane Maria caused losses exceeding 230% of GDP in Dominica, prompting the small island developing state to pledge to become “the world’s first climate-resilient nation.” To achieve this goal, Dominica issued a Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan (CRRP) as a resilience framework for 2020-2030. Here, we provide a mid-term evaluation of this national climate-resilience plan by assessing to what extent individuals’ lived understandings of resilience align with the CRRP’s framings and priorities. Drawing on 101 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024-2025, we derive 37 resilience components and compare them to the 32 identified CRRP components. We use sentiment analysis to assess perceived resilience progress. Themes central to lived resilience but under-represented in the CRRP included faith, mentality/flexibility, activism, everyday experiences of disaster aid, and the practical realities of evacuation and sheltering; by contrast, “continuity of essential services” appeared in the CRRP but did not emerge from interviews. Perceived strengths clustered around strong communities and social capital, improved housing and risk communication, and environmental stewardship, while persistent weaknesses centred on economic security, access to finance, and uneven institutional enforcement. Multi-hazard concerns beyond hurricanes, including seismic and volcanic risk, were repeatedly raised throughout. Ultimately, we demonstrate how this comparative framework can support disaster managers and policymakers in tracking climate-resilient development in small island developing states and other highly exposed regions.