Subaltern learnings: climate resilience and human security in the Caribbean

Abstract

The United Nations’ invocation of ‘human security’ a generation ago promised a world increasingly governed by a ‘people-centred’ security agenda. In this paper we focus on arguably the most vital global security challenge faced throughout the planet today: climate resilience. We outline how advancing smart climate action and securing climate resilience can be aided by securitization practices that recall the earlier emphases of the United Nations’ human security concept. The paper draws upon evidence from the Caribbean as a territory defined dominantly as part of the Global South, yet offering vital knowledge of productive climate security governance that can be instructive to the Global North. The impacts of global warming are particularly evident for the people of small island developing states such as those located in the Caribbean. By analysing the case of Cuba as a country increasingly resilient to extreme weather events, and by interrogating the genealogy of the broader Caribbean’s hurricane culture, we show how an effective human security vision for climate justice and resilience can be achieved by recognizing and integrating the valuable forms of locally attuned knowledge that continue to emerge and coalesce in vulnerable geographies.