Niels Holm-Nielsen is Regional Coordinatorfor Disaster Risk Management in Latin America and the Caribbean for theWorld Bank. Niels joined the Latin America group as a Disaster Risk Managementspecialist in 2008 from MENA. He has in the past couple of yearsled the Disaster Risk Management program in Colombia and the Caribbean,leading the preparation and Board approval of several DRM Investment operations,Emergency Recovery Operations, and a Cat DDO, in addition to a large portfolioof grant funded projects. In MENA he worked on water management, climateadaptation, and disaster risk management operations in Iran, Jordan andYemen. Before joining the World Bank he worked for the Inter-American DevelopmentBank (IADB) for five years, where he helped create the corporate policyon disaster risk management, and briefly for the United Nations EconomicCommission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile.