Addressing Climate Change in the Caribbean: A Toolkit ... - CANARI

Climate change can present opportunities
Climate change is often thought of as a threat, but it could also be considered an opportunity to find
new and innovative ways of doing beneficial things, like introducing a community insurance scheme
to help reduce economic losses after disasters, or developing a seed bank so that farmers will have
a local source of seeds if their crops are wiped out by bad weather, disease or pests, or even
adopting new technology that will save energy such as solar heaters and energy-saving light bulbs.
Adapting to climate change at the community level can build upon and sustain livelihoods, and
should take advantage of community knowledge, resources, and networks. What your community’s
adaptation plan will look like will depend on the threats it faces and how severely it is affected by
each threat.
2.1.1 Community audit
A good place to start is by doing a community audit. Your community audit will be a careful review
of your community and the people who live in it in order to understand how it is affected by climate
change and to identify steps that need to be taken to ensure that it can stand up to the impacts of
climate change. You can examine how climate change affects livelihoods, health or infrastructure.
Your community might be a geographic area or it might be a group of people with a common
interest, for example farmers, fishers, migrant workers, people living with HIV, etc.
Below are some basic steps you can follow when doing a community audit.
• Organise a workshop with members of your community or group to look at
how you are affected by climate change.
Many people are familiar with the terms “climate change” or “global warming” but may not
know exactly what the terms mean or understand how climate change relates to them and
their lives. A community workshop or meeting is a good way to begin to explore the issues
collectively.
See Box 2 Tips for Communicating Climate Change.
• Part of the workshop should be used to explain climate change and its threats.
You must make sure everyone has a basic understanding of climate change and its threats.
Start with what people already know. Before launching into formal presentations about
climate change, encourage community members to share what they know about climate
change and how they think it affects them. Engage them in a discussion about changes in
weather patterns they might have observed in their community or island. Find out if they
think conditions are the same now as when they were young. Ask them what changes they
have seen over the years. Let them explain how these changes have affected people’s lives.
In more structured presentations, look at global and regional trends, as well as projections
for the region and your country, if available. The information in Section 1 of this Toolkit can
be adapted for use in presentations. Invite your country’s UNFCCC Focal Point, national
climate change experts from your country’s meteorological office, disaster response agency,
environmental protection agency or a local university to make presentations. You can also
Climate Change Community Toolkit/Christian Aid (Caribbean) 17