Food Insecurity at the Time of Climate Change: Sharing and Learning from Bottom-Up Responses in the Caribbean Region

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For the Greater Caribbean states - especially Small Island Developing States (SIDS) - climate change is re-shaping the relationship between land and people. Recent storms have wiped out the entire sugar cane production of Cuba, banana plantations in Jamaica, St Lucia and Dominica, and decimated nutmeg exports from Grenada, while the decrease in rainfall has in some cases destroyed entire food crops. Furthermore, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) - a grouping of twenty countries in the region - states that over 90% of its food is imported, which makes them vulnerable to sudden economic, political, and environmental shocks, wherein their food supplies can be suspended for indeterminable periods of time, making this region food insecure. Here, top-down interventions have typically paid little attention to the history of the interaction between people and nature, with the unintended consequence of neglecting and erasing the cultural memory and the heritage represented by centuries of collective and bottom up forms of land and maritime resource management. This is particularly problematic in cases involving indigenous communities, women, elder people and the young generations, along with minority ethnic communities with strong connections to the land, where there is the added burden of living with the legacy of colonialism and transatlantic slavery, upon which these economies are built. Indeed, the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade is on oft cited, but rarely acknowledged barrier to policy making around agricultural development in the region and the construction of resilient and sustainable food systems consistent with fostering the welfare and equitable socio-economic development for all.In response, our partnership brings together four academic partners and grass-roots civil society organisations across 5 countries in the Greater Caribbean region: McChesney George Secondary School in Antigua and Barbuda; the Library of African and Indigenous Studies in Belize; the Raizal Youth Organisation in the Archipelago de San Andres, Colombia; the Bernard Lodge Farmer's Association in Jamaica; the Fidecomiso of the Caño Martin Peña Community Land Trust in Puerto Rico. Each partner has specific expertise, ongoing projects and a vision for their future.The work of this multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary partnership will comprise:1. The running of the five workshops in each of the five countries. These will be organised, led, and hosted by the local communities with support from the two local Research Assistants and the academic partners. Workshops will comprise the face-face knowledge co-production component of the partnership through the sharing of local histories and experiences of food insecurity in the face of environmental changes, as well as their locally embedded solutions. Best practices will be identified, mapped and their reproduction collectively discussed. 2. The website - regularly updated and monitored by the two RA's - serves as a tool to share data and serves as a platform for ongoing engagement by participants after the workshops, which will facilitate ongoing analysis and interpretation of insights generated.3. Expand the network via the workshops and the website: reach out and engage more communities within the countries involved in the existing partnership, and to further communities in other Greater Caribbean countries not involved in this partnership. 4. Map the regulatory framework and policy environment of each country as the basis upon which to begin incorporating workshop data into policy relevant insights.5. Develop policy briefs based on findings of workshops and ongoing knowledge co-production. Diffusion to relevant policy makers through direct engagement in the workshops and indirectly with the help of 'Policy Bristol' and the preparation of policy briefs. 6. Publishing academic research on both the process of the partnership's establishment and the knowledge co-produce