| Overview : Caribbean countries share similar economic and sustainable development challenges, including a small population, remoteness, susceptibility to natural hazards, and vulnerability to climate change. The region is the second-most hazard prone in the world, and faces multiple hydrometeorological and geological hazards including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes. Many factors are compounding these risks. Increasing urbanisation, especially on low-lying coastlines, is exposing growing populations, many in informal settlements, and critical infrastructure to greater potential for flooding, storm surge and tsunami. Given the current condition of the marine environment, most coastal areas have few defences against the raging surfs of hurricanes and tropical storms, and the likely consequences would be significant including beach erosion and infrastructure damage. Socioeconomic inequalities often mean that persons with limited resources more frequently occupy high risk areas. The devastating events of September 2017 demonstrated how a single event could reverse decades of development and decimate the entire economy of a country. Islands such as Barbuda, BVI and Dominica are continuing to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria, a process that will take several years. Climate change is magnifying risks and increasing the cost of disasters, where the average annual losses associated with tropical cyclone winds are projected to increase by as much as US$1.4 billion by 2050, not accounting for additional losses from storm surge due to sea level rise[1]. The IPCC suggests that even with a 1.5°C rise in average global temperatures, it would heighten risks to eradicating poverty, reducing inequalities and ensuring human and ecosystem health. The impacts would disproportionately affect disadvantaged and vulnerable populations through, inter alia, food insecurity, water scarcity, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts, and population displacement.[2] Some of the greatest impacts are expected to be felt among agricultural and coastal livelihoods, indigenous people, children and the elderly, poor labourers, and people and ecosystems in the SIDS, which is further contrasted against their comparatively small amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Key economic sectors such as tourism and agriculture are already being negatively impacted in the Caribbean. The IPCC asserts that, “Limiting the risks from global warming of 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication implies system transitions that can be enabled by an increase of adaptation and mitigation investments, policy instruments, the acceleration of technological innovation and behaviour changes… Partnerships involving non-state public and private actors, institutional investors, the banking system, civil society and scientific institutions would facilitate actions and responses consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.”[3] UNDP’s programming agrees with this premise. Its work in Climate Change and Disaster Risk Resilience responds to the Sustainable and Resilient Caribbean outcome (priority 4) in the UN Multi-Country Sustainable Development Framework (MSDF)[4]. This includes work on ecosystem restoration and protection, energy system reform including policy, legislation and licensing, early warning systems, post-disaster recovery, and climate change policy. The latter has included the development of National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) for 8 countries through the Japan-Caribbean Climate Change Partnership (JCCCP)[5]. This portfolio has recently expanded with support from Global Affairs Canada and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the Enabling Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery, Climate and Environmental Resilience in the Caribbean (EnGenDER) project[6]. This project builds on UNDP’s previous and ongoing work, with a specific recognition of the asymmetric needs and capacities of women and men to respond to disasters and climate change; and that the groups with the least knowledge and capacity to take short-term measures to limit the impacts of such are often the most affected. EnGenDER therefore seeks to further integrate gender equality and human-rights based approaches into disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and environmental management frameworks and interventions and identify and address some of the barriers to ensure equal access to DRR and climate change and environment solutions for men, women, boys and girls in 9 Caribbean countries. UNDP wishes to engage an experienced disaster management practitioner, who has strong experience in the Caribbean. The ideal candidate will have a nuanced understanding of interconnected issues of vulnerability, risk, socioeconomic and gender inequality who can quickly and effectively provide technical expertise to advance project objectives and enhance risk resilience in the Caribbean. [1] UNISDR. 2015. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Making Development Sustainable: The future of disaster risk management [2] Allen et al. 2018. Technical Summary. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, et al (eds.)]. In Press. [3] IPCC. 2018. Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. [4] http://www.2030caribbean.org/content/unct/caribbean/en/home/MSDF/overview.html [5] https://www.adaptation-undp.org/projects/japan-caribbean-climate-change-partnership [6] http://www.bb.undp.org/content/barbados/en/home/projects/EnGenDER.html |
