•Small-scale coffee farmers in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains (BM) experience low production from multiple stresses.•BM coffee farmer vulnerability is produced by a dynamic hazard context, low farmer ...capacities, and a political economy that acts as an amplifier.•The ability to invest in agricultural inputs and tools and altitude are importantly associated with production outcomes.•We argue that smallholder farmers in the BM face an intractable situation that requires renewed external support.•This analysis is the first detailed study of vulnerability in Jamaica’s BM region; the BM context is similar to many coffee producing regions.
Coffee is a global commodity that supports the livelihoods of 100 million people worldwide, many of whom are smallholder farmers. While smallholder farmers are known to be vulnerable to social and environmental changes, the complex interactions that shape their vulnerability have not been adequately explored. This analysis identifies the determinants of that vulnerability in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica and discusses how these determinants interact and have evolved. We use mixed methods consisting of household surveys of 434 farmers, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and archival research of coffee industry reports. We show that vulnerability is manifest in low coffee harvests that result from the interacting stressors of climate variability, plant diseases, and market conditions. The impacts of shocks and stressors are further aggravated by low resource endowments that influence the capacity to manage these persistent challenges as well as a political economy characterized by unequal market relations, national policies that promote a vulnerable coffee variety, and a retraction of public investments in smallholders. Using regression methods we show that among the farmer resources, the ability to invest in agricultural inputs and tools as well as the elevation of the farm are importantly associated with production outcomes. We argue that the context of these smallholder farmers produces a Gordian Vulnerability whereby the determinants interact, are changing in form, and appear intractable. Consequently, strategies to reduce vulnerability need to be complex and multifaceted which make them difficult to implement. We argue that reductions in vulnerability will only come about by investments in multiple strategies.
•Climate-induced impacts will not be uniformly felt across the Caribbean.•Vulnerability is highly contingent on wider societal, justice and developmental issues.•We consider the varying effects ...extreme climate events are having on Indigenous Caribs.•Vulnerability of communities is linked to long-term economic and political neglect.
This paper examines climate justice from the perspective of three remote indigenous Carib communities located in northeastern St. Vincent, amidst their vulnerability to climatic hazards. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that explores the impacts climate-induced changes are having on Indigenous peoples through its explicit focus on this distinctive social group. The paper entails a detail case study of the particular ways the recent onset of two consecutive extreme weather events have impacted livelihood activities in these traditional farming villages. Primary data were collected in the aftermath of a severe drought that was followed by Hurricane Tomas in 2010, using a mixed method approach involving a questionnaire survey of 311 households, 70 unstructured interviews and 2 focus group sessions held in each of the three communities. The combined impact of these extreme weather events not only brought to light how exposed and sensitive these communities are to climatic hazards, but also illustrated some of the underlying issues driving vulnerability at the local scale that must be dealt with if climate justice is to be achieved. We argue that the factors driving vulnerability within these communities are partly a function of centuries of economic neglect and political marginalization and are also strongly related to the communities’ characteristically lower-socio economic status, geographic location, heavy reliance on land-based resources, coupled with a range of cognitive barriers that affect residents’ capacity to adapt to a changing and variable regional climate regime.
Rhiney discusses dispossession, disaster capitalism and the post-hurricane context in the Caribbean. He states that he has become increasingly interested in making sense of the post/disaster politics ...that have unfolded in the Caribbean since the devastating 2017 hurricane season. A situation which surprisingly, has little to do with the actual hurricanes themselves, as it does with the ways these disasters become embroiled in a longer history of structural violence that undergird the way the Caribbean has long been experimented with and exploited. Ideas around resilience and 'build back better' are increasingly being used to justify recovery efforts aimed at rethinking existing development paradigms. At the same time, events that have unfolded since Irma and Maria have revealed just how much these 'natural' disasters intertwine with underlying issues of uneven development, inequality, non-sovereignty and economic and political instability.
While it is generally recognized that the projected changes in the global climate will have serious negative consequences for the Caribbean as a whole, it is becoming more and more evident that the ...impacts of climate change will not be uniformly felt across the region. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a review of the Caribbean climate change literature. The paper begins with a brief discussion on the shifting nature of Caribbean vulnerability within the context of the region's longstanding and continued exposure to forces of global economic and environmental change. Particular attention is paid to both the practical and discursive dimensions of vulnerability, and the specific ways the term has been understood and framed in relation to other crosscutting themes such as adaptation and resilience in the broader academic literature. In addition to providing an overview of the regional climate change science literature, the paper offers a critical review of the existing climate change impacts literature for the Caribbean. By drawing on, and taking stock of this growing body of impact studies, the paper seeks to shed light on the differential and multi‐scalar drivers of social and economic vulnerabilities to climate variability and change in the Caribbean as well as highlight some of the existing knowledge gaps that need to be addressed. The paper ends by providing some brief reflections on the emerging themes arising from the discussion and highlights a few key areas for future academic research for the Caribbean in light of existing knowledge gaps observed in the regional climate change impact literature.
Coffee supports the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in more than 52 countries, and generates billions of dollars in revenue. The threats that COVID-19 pose to the global coffee sector ...is daunting with profound implications for coffee production. The financial impacts will be long-lived and uneven, and smallholders will be among the hardest hit. We argue that the impacts are rooted in the systemic vulnerability of the coffee production system and the unequal ways the sector is organized: Large revenues from the sale of coffee in the Global North are made possible by mostly impoverished smallholders in the Global South. COVID-19 will accentuate the existing vulnerabilities and create new ones, forcing many smallholders into alternative livelihoods. This outcome, however, is not inevitable. COVID-19 presents an opportunity to rebalance the system that currently creates large profits on one end of the supply chain and great vulnerability on the other.
Climate Change and Small Island Developing States Thomas, Adelle; Baptiste, April; Martyr-Koller, Rosanne ...
Annual review of environment and resources,
10/2020, Volume:
45, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Despite their heterogeneity, small island developing states (SIDS) are recognized as being particularly at risk to climate change, and, as they share numerous common traits, the United Nations ...recognizes them as a special group. SIDS have been quite vocal in calling attention to the challenges they face from climate change and advocating for greater international ambition to limit global warming. Here, we unpack factors that are helpful in understanding the relationship between climate change and SIDS through a review of studies that span disciplines and methodologies. We assess patterns of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability; impacts and risks; awareness and knowledge; adaptation planning and implementation; mitigation; loss and damage; and climate justice to provide an overarching review of literature on climate change and SIDS.
In this paper, we use a Water Accessibility Index (WAI) to determine differences in urban household water access in an inner-city community characterized by relatively high piped water coverage. The ...case study is based on field data collected in a low-income community called August Town, located in Jamaica's capital city of Kingston. A semi-formal survey was used to document how different socio-economic factors influenced household-level water accessibility within the study area. Data from the survey was later used to develop the WAI. The index revealed the importance of incorporating socio-economic and human-centered factors in the measurement of water accessibility, especially when access to improved drinking water sources is already gained. When used on its own, piped water coverage was found to be an inadequate indicator of water accessibility within the study area. In general, we regard the WAI as a useful management tool for tracking household-level and inter-community disparities, which could contribute greatly in facilitating improvements in water access where it is needed the most.
With the vulnerability of Jamaica’s agricultural sector to climate change being well established, there is a compelling need to incorporate useful adaptation strategies. One such pro-adaptation ...strategy is the farmer field school (FFS) which is currently being used to promote climate-smart agricultural practices among Jamaican farmers through a number of social learning and capacity building initiatives. A hallmark of the field school methodology is its promotion of adaptation by empowering farmers to plan for and cope with the effects of climate change by improving knowledge, awareness and adoption of best practices, while providing a viable income stream to participants. Though the FFS program has been touted as a huge success, with several community groups sustaining their income diversification and adaptation efforts even after the formal project has ended, the extent of participation in these field schools has however been uneven and limited in numbers. Amidst claims of the program’s achievements to date, and plans to replicate and upscale the field school methodology in Jamaica as a climate adaptation strategy, a comparative assessment of the role participation plays in shaping local farmers’ cognitive and behavioural responses towards climate change is very timely. The case study reported in this paper is informed by a comparative mixed methods approach, undertaken in three communities in northern Clarendon, Jamaica. The study assesses the particular ways that participation in the farmer field school program has influenced the knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of FFS trainees about climate change compared to their non-FFS counterparts. Preliminary results indicate that FFS participants perceive themselves as having a higher adaptive capacity in comparison to non-field school participants, amidst both groups having access to similar stocks of assets. Ultimately, our results highlight that cognitive factors (e.g. perceptions of adaptive capacity) and involvement in social networks may be as important as the more commonly researched asset-based indicators in shaping individual adaptive behaviour.
In this short commentary, we discuss the ways in which racial capitalism has developed a historical and ecological landscape through which COVID-19 has emerged, spread, and created uneven impacts ...across long-standing racial divisions inseparable from capitalist accumulation and expansion. We argue that this perspective on COVID-19 (and infectious disease in general) creates strong alliances with calls for reparations rooted in abolition of policing and incarceration, especially in light of the conjuncture of pandemic and uprising in response to police violence in the United States context. By bringing long-standing Marxian notions of alienation and metabolic rift, crucial for understanding the ecological and epistemic fissures leading to COVID-19’s spread, in conversation with writing on racial capitalism and anti-Blackness, we hope to illuminate pathways to a more grounded historical and ecological analysis that supports a radical vision of ecosystem health.
PDF
