Climate Resilience

Climate resilience is the ability of communities, ecosystems, and economies to prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to climate-related shocks like floods, droughts, and extreme heat. It involves proactive measures—such as upgrading infrastructure, restoring natural barriers, and establishing early warning systems—to reduce vulnerability and ensure long-term sustainability. 

For the Caribbean, this is not a future concern. Rising sea temperatures, coral bleaching, stronger hurricanes, and shifting fish populations are already reshaping the lives of fishing communities today. A climate-resilient fisheries system is one that can absorb these shocks: it uses up-to-date environmental data to adjust fishing practices, protects critical marine habitats that buffer coastlines, diversifies livelihoods so families are not dependent on a single fish stock, and ensures that the people most affected by climate change have a voice in the decisions that shape their response to it.