The US-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030 (PACC 2030) is the Biden-Harris Administration’s flagship initiative to support climate adaptation, resilience, and clean energy across the Caribbean region. Parts of the initiative have entered into the implementation phase, with technical assistance, trainings, and stakeholder conferences already underway with both private sector and national-level entities.

Still missing in the strategy, however, are participatory mechanisms to facilitate meaningful involvement of local communities to ensure inclusion and inform on-the-ground implementation. PACC 2030’s focus on national governments and the private sector certainly targets two highly relevant changemakers, yet the strategy overlooks regional and national disparities regarding race, gender, and cultural diversity or socioeconomic inequities. Moreover, it does it acknowledge the lasting impacts of the region’s experience of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

PACC 2030 will not achieve its desired ends unless it also meaningfully engages civil society, given that the impacts of climate change often overlap with and deepen existing inequities along the lines of race and ethnicity, colorism, socioeconomic status, and gender. Tackling this blind spot requires facilitating the participation of historically marginalized groups such as women, youth, and rural populations, including subsistence farmers, who are already disproportionately experiencing the impacts of climate change.

The purpose of the Citizen Advisory Group is thereby to facilitate this participation in the policy process and to ensure that PACC 2030 is implemented:

Alongside targeted outreach, consultations, and trainings to significantly engage subnational marginalized populations to address their needs, particularly women, youth, subsistence farmers, small business owners, and Indigenous peoples and other ethnic group representatives.
In a way that incorporates local wisdom, particularly intergenerational ecological knowledge and practices. Meaningful local involvement and participation is vital to create a bridge between community needs and understanding of sustainability with technocratic knowledge and best practices. Policy implementation is not value free and must be enriched by local wisdom and values to ensure a customized vision of sustainable development with local buy-in and durability.

Organized by the Dialogue’s Energy Transition & Climate Program, the Citizen Advisory Group (CAG) will meet three times between September 2023 and February 2024 to gather civil society input for a final report on climate justice and marginalized identities in the Caribbean. CAG members include a diverse group of civil society voices from across the Caribbean, including representatives from environmental and climate organizations, rural and Indigenous leaders, members of economic and social development groups, activists for women and youth, and educators. For a full list of members, see Anchorbelow.