Earth Today | Small islands, big solutions

Recently, it has been important to point out what resilience means. It does not mean you avoid being affected. Instead, it has to do with how a country, a community, a person responds when they are affected.

To quote Prince Buster, ‘Yuh pick him up, yuh lick him dung, he bounce right back. What a hard man fi dead’. This is any Caribbean Small Island Developing State. Season after season, the region has weathered hurricanes, droughts, volcanoes, floods and other natural disasters, and we continue to shine bright.

Despite being responsible for less than one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Caribbean’s response to this global threat is anything but small. Using regionally incubated examples, we are making great strides in climate solutions that are focused on the long term and are purpose-fit for our regional communities.

For example, in our own work at the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF), regional mangrove restoration projects are proving that nature offers a shield no concrete wall can match. A recent IUCN report states that healthy mangrove ecosystems can reduce wave height by up to 66 per cent, effectively absorbing wave shock, trapping sediment, and mitigating storm surge, erosion and flood risk.

The region has also embraced rainwater harvesting and low-water irrigation techniques to keep crops thriving through our new unpredictable rain cycles.

This wave of innovation is guided by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) principles. For centuries, Maroon communities in the Cockpit Country and traditional fishing villages along our bays have managed ecosystems through generational ecological wisdom. By centring IPLC principles and co-designing climate policy alongside frontline communities, the region is demonstrating that ideas fail without local ownership.

Climate resilience isn’t just imported engineering. Building back better across our islands means refusing to simply replicate what was lost to the last storm. When a hurricane or flood damages our coastlines, our response is no longer just to pour more concrete, it is asking how nature can help us hold the line.

By pairing modern science with traditional ecological knowledge, we are transforming disaster recovery into an opportunity for lasting renewal, ensuring that every time we rebuild, we do so with an eye on the decades ahead. We are turning back to our basics – the nature and the people to create long-term solutions so that both may thrive.

Contributed by Karen McDonald Gayle, chief executive officer, Caribbean Biodiversity Fund.