Vulnerability, Impact and Adaptation Analyses in the Caribbean (VIAAC)

Caribbean countries are particularly exposed to extreme climate-related events, which will be exacerbated by climate change.  

Individually, these countries have distinct and varying degrees of vulnerability due to their unique environmental, socio-economic and institutional challenges.  Since most of the countries currently struggle to deal with the negative effects of climate variability, developing pragmatic adaptation solutions to cope with present and future changes is an absolute imperative.

Vulnerability, impact and adaptation (VIA) analyses will therefore help countries in the region to better plan for climate change adaptation.  In this context, under the Regional Gateway for Technology Transfer and Climate Change Action in Latin America and the Caribbean (REGATTA) initiative implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the CARIBSAVE Partnership is conducting three [3] VIA analyses at the national and local scale in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Haiti.

These VIA analyses are focused on water resources, agriculture, coastal areas and the tourism sector and provide an understanding of the countries’ and watersheds’ exposure to climatic events based on current climate variability and future change, such as hurricanes and sea level rise.  The VIA analyses also have an emphasis on evaluating the key ecosystem services that contribute to livelihoods in order to provide a clear understanding of their status and sensitivity to climate changes, as well as to identify opportunities to implement ecosystem-based adaptation options as part of an overall adaptation strategy.

The main outputs from this 12-month project will be (1) National and Watershed VIA documents; (2) Policy Briefs and (3) Community Adaptation Plans (CAPs) or Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPAs). The VIA documents will create a basis for the evaluation of actual and potential threats / risks to key sectors, activities and ecosystems in the countries and watershed communities; as well as identify corrective adaptive actions.

As decision support tools, these outputs will be developed based on the findings of the respective VIAs as their basis to support decision makers in determining where scarce resources should be targeted to address ‘high vulnerability’ areas..

The results will demonstrate, amongst other things, the importance of including non-climatic determinants of vulnerability to climate change of livelihoods and communities benefiting from ecosystem services in watershed areas. They will also improve the understanding of the main approaches to climate change vulnerability assessment and to what extent their findings are useful for implementing and facilitating adaptations at both the national and local levels.

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For more information, contact the Project Manager, Dr Donovan Campbell at donovan.campbell@caribsave.org.

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