The Caribbean Nat­ur­al Re­sources In­sti­tute (CA­NARI) is spear­head­ing a new ini­tia­tive in the Caribbean that aims to give com­mu­ni­ties on the front­lines of the cli­mate cri­sis a voice in de­ci­sions that shape their fu­ture.

The “Gen­er­at­ing Am­bi­tion for Lo­cal­ly Led Adap­ta­tion (GA-LLA)” pro­gramme is set to dri­ve ac­tions to en­hance re­silience in com­mu­ni­ties most vul­ner­a­ble to the cli­mate cri­sis. Fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands, this €15 mil­lion pro­gramme is be­ing led by the In­ter­na­tion­al In­sti­tute for En­vi­ron­ment and De­vel­op­ment (IIED) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with nine glob­al part­ners, in­clud­ing CA­NARI.

“Cli­mate fi­nance re­mains trapped in top-down sys­tems, fail­ing to reach those who need it most, in­clud­ing dis­ad­van­taged women, youth, house­holds in pover­ty, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and In­dige­nous and Ma­roon com­mu­ni­ties,” a state­ment on Wednes­day said.

The GA-LLA ini­tia­tive is chang­ing this by bring­ing fund­ing and de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er clos­er to the ground. Root­ed in the eight glob­al prin­ci­ples of Lo­cal­ly Led Adap­ta­tion (LLA), the pro­gramme em­pow­ers lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, en­ter­pris­es, and re­source users and man­agers by strength­en­ing lead­er­ship, am­pli­fy­ing voic­es, and en­sur­ing ac­cess to fund­ing for sus­tain­able, gen­der-re­spon­sive and in­clu­sive so­lu­tions.

The goal is to dri­ve sys­temic change and shift pow­er in cli­mate adap­ta­tion, en­sur­ing lo­cal ac­tors have the re­sources and lead­er­ship to shape their own re­silience.

CA­NARI’s ef­forts in the Caribbean will fo­cus on four in­ter­con­nect­ed ar­eas:

Sup­port­ing lo­cal ac­tors in im­ple­ment­ing adap­ta­tion ac­tions by pro­vid­ing grants, train­ing, men­tor­ing and doc­u­ment­ing best prac­tices/mod­els in adap­ta­tion fi­nanc­ing.

Gen­er­at­ing ev­i­dence and knowl­edge to dri­ve scale-up of LLA by con­duct­ing as­sess­ments and re­search around LLA and how it is ap­plied, pro­mot­ing cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism, and com­pil­ing case stud­ies on suc­cess­es, in­no­va­tion and best prac­tices.

In­flu­enc­ing key fi­nance ac­tors to in­crease sup­port for LLA by de­vel­op­ing rel­e­vant ad­vo­ca­cy mes­sages/prod­ucts, fa­cil­i­tat­ing mul­ti-stake­hold­er di­a­logues and en­gag­ing in key re­gion­al and glob­al in­flu­enc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and events.

Em­bed­ding learn­ing and mon­i­tor­ing in lo­cal re­al­i­ties to in­form de­ci­sion-mak­ing by de­vel­op­ing a mon­i­tor­ing, eval­u­a­tion and learn­ing frame­work, fa­cil­i­tat­ing learn­ing ex­changes and track­ing pro­gramme progress.