Caribbean Natural Resources Institute calls for strong commitments to tackling climate change

The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is calling on the global community to support CARICOM’s position advocating for a cap on the world’s temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Centigrade as part of their deliberations during the United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place in Paris from Nov. 30 – Dec. 11, 2015.

CANARI has been working with rural communities across the Caribbean islands for the past 10 years and hearing first-hand accounts of how climate change is already affecting lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable. A strong and legally binding international agreement is essential to support vulnerable Caribbean people to take action to adapt to climate change.

“Climate change is here… it is real” was the message from fisherfolk leaders as they shared their experiences of how sea level rise and storm surge are damaging their boats and coastal fishing facilities in a participatory video they prepared with CANARI.

Small scale fisherfolk are seeing changes in the fish that they catch. For the past couple of years they have also been plagued by a massive influx of Sargassum seaweed choking beaches and bays and making it impossible to fish sometimes. Their already vulnerable livelihoods are at risk.

Even inland rural communities are feeling the effects of climate change as storms become more intense causing landslides, flooding, and damage to their crops, homes
and key infrastructure. A village in north Trinidad told their story of the problems they were facing and what they need to build their resilience in a photostory they
developed with CANARI called “Caura’s Water Woes”.

CANARI has also started to work with rural microentrepreneurs to assess how climate change will impact on their business along the value chain. Entrepreneurs then plan how they will take action to ‘climate proof’ their businesses.

CANARI documented the story of Toute Bagai, where rural women entrepreneurs built a greenhouse to help ensure the supply of plant materials they use as harvesting from the forest becomes more uncertain with climate change.

CANARI worked with local communities, civil society and government stakeholders in Dominica and Tobago to capture their knowledge about the vulnerabilities of their islands to climate change using Participatory ThreeDimensional Modelling (P3DM). The models that were built captured a wealth of information on what were the
key areas for adaptation action on the ground.

Caribbean communities urgently need support so that they can take the on the ground actions needed to build their resilience to climate change. They are hoping that Paris is more than a global talk shop and results in adequate finance to address climate change that is easily accessible to Caribbean SIDS.