Section 1: Background
The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) is coordinating action to address climate change across the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region on behalf of governments, with a focus on “Empowering People to Act on Climate Change”.
To deliver its mandate, the CCCCC has developed the Revised Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change (2019-2029). This includes eleven Strategic Elements and associated Goals to inform a path towards enhancing the resilience of the region and ensuring that the welfare of Caribbean residents is not adversely impacted by the multi-faceted impacts of climate change. One of the guiding principles of this Framework is "Effective and sustained involvement of civil society and the private sector". Section 3.6 identifies an explicit role for civil society to:
- Act as a bridge between vulnerable communities and government
- Effectively represent the concerns and needs of vulnerable communities
- Increase community awareness and engagement on climate change issues
- Engage in community-based adaptation and mitigation projects
- Participate in decision making processes
In order to support civil society’s role in a whole of society approach to tackling climate change across the region, the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is developing a Civil Society Engagement Strategy for the CCCCC. This aims to enable and guide strategic, meaningful and effective engagement of Caribbean civil society in climate change actions under the Regional Framework and the associated Implementation Plan being developed.
CANARI is therefore conducting a survey to better understand how civil society in the CARICOM region is currently being engaged in climate actions and what are recommendations for enhancing engagement so that civil society can play an effective and meaningful role in delivering actions to address climate change in the CARICOM region.