Subaltern learnings: climate resilience and human security in the Caribbean

Abstract

The UN's invocation of "human security" a generation ago promised a world increasingly governed by a "people-centred" security agenda (UNDP, 1994, p. iii). In this paper, we focus on arguably the most vital global security challenge faced throughout the planet today: climate resilience. We outline how advancing smart climate action and securing climate resilience can be aided by securitization practices that recall the earlier emphases of the UN's human security concept. The paper draws upon evidence from the Caribbean as a territory defined dominantly as part of the Global South yet offering vital knowledges of productive climate security governance that can be instructive to the Global North. The impacts of global warming are particularly evident for the people of Small Island Developing States such as those located in the Caribbean (IPCC, 2018). By analysing the case of Cuba as a country increasingly resilient to extreme weather events, and by interrogating the genealogy of the broader Caribbean's hurricane culture, we show how an effective human security vision for climate justice and resilience can be achieved by recognising and integrating the valuable forms of locally-attuned knowledge that continue to emerge and coalesce in vulnerable geographies.

Adapting to Climate Change Through Disaster Risk Reduction in the Caribbean: Lessons from the Global South in Tackling the Sustainable Development Goals

“…This regional perspective -which can provide instructive lessons to territories where climate change is still less tangible, like those located in the Global North -is aligned with a 'climate dialectic' that recognises not only the physical impacts, but also 'the wider justice and development implications of climate change' (Rhiney & Baptiste, 2019, p. 75). Despite the fragmentation imposed on the territories of the Caribbean by colonial and imperial campaigns, the current disaster risk reduction translocal policies and initiatives exemplify how global warming and extreme weather events are contributing to re-making connections in the region (see Jerez Columbié & Morrissey, 2020). The histories of the Atlantic hurricane belt -the region we know as the Caribbean, including the northern littoral of South America, the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida peninsula -cannot be told without considering a common environmental history (Johnson, 2011;Schwartz, 2005;Soluri et al, 2018).…”

Introduction: Can the Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement, and Agenda 2030 Provide a Path Towards Societal Resilience?

“…The forms of solidarity exemplified by Caribbean SIDS can contribute to decolonising the Climate Change Adaptation, Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development Goals agendas by integrating the knowledge that emerges from vulnerable communities whose survival to processes of colonisation and postcolonial reconstruction is already an example of resilience. A decolonised Global North -one that acknowledges the debt it acquired through slavery, colonialism and imperialism -could play an active role in shaping a new sustainable development model through reparations and climate justice (see Fanon, 2004;Jerez Columbié and Morrissey, 2020;Narayan, 2019).…”

Mobilising the Language of Emergency: Human Security and Climate Action Discourse

“…It also showcases strategies that locate climate security emphases on local vulnerabilities whilst at the same time conceiving cross-regional climate change mitigation in a transnational integrated manner. 34 The framework, moreover, can be a fillip for more collaborative responses to climate insecurities in the global north. 35 To achieve that, it is imperative to be open to learning from the global south by recognising and reproducing proven successes in cooperative climate action.…”