CANARI joins global initiative to empower Caribbean communities and drive locally led climate adaptation
Community-led reforestation in the Linton Park Forest Reserve, Jamaica. Credit: CANARI
Port-of-Spain, April 2nd, 2025 – The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is leading implementation in the Caribbean of a new initiative that aims to give Caribbean communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis a voice in decisions that shape their future.
The “Generating Ambition for Locally Led Adaptation (GA-LLA)” programme is set to drive transformative actions to enhance resilience in communities most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Funded by the Government of the Netherlands, this €15 million programme is being led by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in collaboration with nine global partners, including CANARI.
Climate finance remains trapped in top-down systems, failing to reach those who need it most, including disadvantaged women, youth, households in poverty, persons with disabilities and Indigenous and Maroon communities.
The GA-LLA initiative is changing this by bringing funding and decision-making power closer to the ground. Rooted in the eight global principles of Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), the programme empowers local communities, enterprises, and resource users and managers by strengthening leadership, amplifying voices, and ensuring access to funding for sustainable, gender-responsive and inclusive solutions.
The goal is to drive systemic change and shift power in climate adaptation, ensuring local actors have the resources and leadership to shape their own resilience.
Following a planning phase in 2023-2024, implementation is now underway from 2025-2028. CANARI will collaborate with stakeholders in Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago to strengthen local capacities to deliver LLA, build transformative partnerships that emphasise trust and power-sharing, and enhance accountability in climate adaptation financing.
CANARI’s efforts in the Caribbean will focus on four interconnected areas:
- Supporting local actors in implementing adaptation actions byproviding grants, training, mentoring and documenting best practices/models in adaptation financing.
- Generating evidence and knowledge to drive scale-up of LLA by conducting assessments and research around LLA and how it is applied, promoting citizen journalism, and compiling case studies on successes, innovation and best practices.
- Influencing key finance actors to increase support for LLA by developing relevant advocacy messages/products, facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues and engaging in key regional and global influencing opportunities and events.
- Embedding learning and monitoring in local realities to inform decision-making by developing a monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, facilitating learning exchanges and tracking programme progress.
Enabling grassroots leadership, along with sustainable financing is at the heart of this new programme which seeks to ensure long-term resilience and equitable development at the local level. It is also expected to generate strong evidence that more gender-responsive and inclusive climate finance investments are needed to support locally led adaptation efforts, ensuring that funding reaches those who need it most.
For more information on the GA-LLA programme, see: https://canari.org/projects/generating-ambition-for-lla/
