🌿 Strategic Conceptual Pillars

It is necessary to protect and monitor the most representative and resilient threatened species and ecosystems shared across countries, as well as those most vulnerable to climate change. This is an important element reflected in the selection of CBC priorities. Analyzing conservation from a broad geographical scale provides a vision of macro-components important for biodiversity that might be overlooked in national analyses.

Many of the key ecosystems for the Caribbean region—due to the environmental services they provide and their role in supporting regional connectivity and priority species, such as coral reefs, coastal wetlands, and mountain rainforests—are highly vulnerable to climate change, and their resilience has been affected by deterioration caused by non-climate-related processes. Protected areas may be more or less vulnerable to climate change, which can consequently affect their potential to guarantee the long-term conservation of biodiversity values and ecosystem services. The effects of climate change also impact communities settled in CBC areas. The impact of extreme weather events can trigger community pressure on biodiversity resources. Strengthening resilience to climate change thus becomes a cross-cutting strategic pillar, necessary to achieve the objectives of the Caribbean Biological Corridor initiative.

In a complex economic and social context such as the one framing the CBC initiative, where many local communities have limited livelihood alternatives, effective biodiversity conservation cannot be achieved without addressing the human development issues that lead to its degradation. Consequently, the problems of human communities must be at the center of the CBC’s attention.

The CBC promotes the concept that biodiversity conservation is a development imperative, not only because of the inherent value and cultural significance of species and ecosystems but also due to their past, present, and future contribution to social and economic development in vital spheres for sustainable development in the Caribbean and the livelihoods of its communities. Therefore, the actions promoted by the CBC relate to several Sustainable Development Goals while contributing to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

The relevant stakeholders for the CBC, operating within the spheres of governance, civil society, academia, and communities, work at different levels and scales, from local to regional, and form a diverse group. Without the coordinated participation of key stakeholders, the success achieved to date within the CBC framework would not have been possible, nor can its future success be ensured.

In particular, cooperation among the countries that make up the initiative has been its hallmark and one of its indisputable successes, allowing for the materialization of coordinated actions and thereby the optimization and enhancement of the resources available in the region. Focusing on common objectives and ensuring the coordinated action of all through constructive and cooperative social connectivity is an imperative and a challenge for the sustainability and effective functioning of the CBC initiative.