The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre joins REAP

The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) has joined the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership. The Partnership aims to connect financing to early action plans and improve early warning systems and the capacity to act on the risks they identify.

The CCCCC recognizes the common efforts that this collaboration will contribute at local, regional, and global levels to help drive a systematic shift towards anticipatory action that will save lives and protect livelihoods.

The Partnership was launched in 2019, at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, and its Partners aim to achieve the following targets by 2025:

1. The development of integrated Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) legal frameworks and plans at the local and national level in at least 50 countries.
2. The scaling-up of access to predictable financing for early action.
3. Increased coverage and effectiveness of early warning systems to enable action.
4. Early warning systems, including new or improved heatwave early warning systems, that are connected to longer-term risk management systems and which deliver actionable information to at-risk communities.

“Climate change is a risk multiplier; thus, identifying and understanding climate risks is critical to managing and mitigating these risks as well as to enabling early action and adaptation. Using climate data to inform evidence-based decision-making, including the deployment of early warning systems that can save lives, is one of the core mandates of the CCCCC. While Early Warning Systems (EWS)are important at the national level, these systems, if integrated across the Caribbean into a single network, can serve as a powerful tool in the Region’s early action response to the adverse effects of climate change,” says Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director of the CCCCC. With a mandate to coordinate climate change response in the Caribbean, the CCCCC, through partnerships with donors such as USAID, EU-GCCA+, has provided early warning systems to all CARICOM countries, with more than 150 automatic weather stations already installed and operated. “These stations collect several atmospheric parameters that feed into Meteorological Offices within Member States and all of that data is housed at the Centre within its Regional Clearing House database –a dedicated climate change resource that contains the largest repository of climate change information and data specific to the Caribbean”, Dr. Young noted.

As part of its strategic plan for the next 5 years, the Centre will advocate for increased uptake of climate data and innovative tools for evidence-based decision-making in the region. Member States can also expect additional early warning systems, which will be a combination of AWS, evapotranspiration stations, and Coral Reef Early Warning Systems under the EU-Intra-ACP GCCC+ Programme currently being implemented by the CCCCC, which is funded by the European Union.

In a discussion to operationalize the partnership, Head of the REAP Secretariat, Mr. Ben Webster emphasized that the Partnership seeks to create the link between the infrastructure, the technology, and the communities that they serve. This helps to “ensure that everything we are doing along this entire value chain, from systematic observations to early warning systems, to early action capability, to risk communications to the financial instruments required, is connected to achieve effective early warning that leads to early action”.