Caribbean countries like Jamaica are highly vulnerable to climate change due to their geography and reliance on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture and tourism. Jamaica seeks to diversify its economy and increase resilience among producers by developing value chains for underutilized natural resources. However, it is unclear how value chains can be designed to increase actors' ability to cope with climate risks. The researcher aims to map network structures and attributes in three Jamaican value chains to identify elements that build adaptive capacity and determine how these outcomes could transfer to the climate context. Semi-structured interviews will be used to study industry clusters in cassava, ornamental fish export, and sea cucumber/fisheries.

1. Climate resilience, networks and alternative livelihoods
- Building adaptive capacity through value chains -
• Caribbean countries such as Jamaica are very vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their
location, geography and high dependence on climate sensitive sectors (such as agriculture and tourism).1
• Many biophysical and socio economic systems in Jamaica are operating beyond their carrying capacity
due to past decisions, management practices and external factors outside the control of local actors.
• In response to these challenges, the country seeks to diversify its economic activities to increase the
resilience of primary producers through the development of value chains for under and non utilised
natural resources.
• Value chains are recognised as the most comprehensive mechanism for involving all relevant actors in
the development of commodity industries3….but how can these value chains be designed so that they
may increase the resilience of actors to cope with the risks that sectors such as agriculture and
fisheries are exposed to?
The “cumulative effect [of climate
change] is reduced food security,
malnutrition, and productivity,
thus increasing the challenges to
achieving poverty reduction and
socio-economic development2”
Dr Kenrick Leslie,
Executive Director
Caribbean Community
Climate Change Centre
Motivation
In other words…
The level to which actors can adapt to changing conditions and increase
their coping capacity depends partly on what entities and what
interactions are occurring in their environment and how actors are
embedded in these landscapes of interactions.
Research questions
• How can network structure(s) and network attributes act
as a barrier and/or an enabler to adaptation?
• How are relationships generated and retained in
networks and how they influence adaptive capacity?
The adaptive capacity of any actor is partly determined by the resilience
that characterises the landscape where the actor operates.
Laura Canevari Luzardo
Department of Geography
laura.canevari@kcl.ac.uk
PhD Supervisors:
Dr Mark Pelling
Dr Frans Berkhout
Funded by:
Methodology
Access to information
Collaboration and concerted action
Status of collective assets
Join production
Exchange and adaptation
Networks of engagement (power and influence)
Networks of dependence (resource flows)
NETWORK CONTEXT
Activities – Resources - Actors
Predominant norms and traditions
Industry standards
Government legislation
Socio- institutional systems
Resource depletion
Climate change
Global environmental change
Production systems
National and
international market
conditions
NATURALAND SOCIO-ECONOMIC
ENVIRONMENT
Conceptual framework
• Detailed, systematic mapping and assessment of network
structures and attributes in three value chains associated
with natural production systems in Jamaica to identify
network structural elements and attributes that help
building adaptive capacity.
• Evaluation of transferability of adaptive capacity
outcomes to the climate context and identification of
additional attributes that value chains may need to
become climate resilient.
• Value chains to be explored:
• Industry cluster in the cassava industry
• Industry cluster for export of ornamental fish
• Value chain for the production of sea cucumber/
off-shore pelagic fisheries
• Use of semi-structured interviews
1) IPCC, (2014): Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1132 pp.
2) Leslie, K. (2014) in “Opinion: The IPCC´s Fifth Assessment Report: What does it mean for the Caribbean?, CDKN Press release, [on-line resource]:
http://cdkn.org/2014/10/opinion-caribbean-launches-ipccs-fifth-assessment-report-climate-change-mean-caribbean/
3) CARDI (2014) Medium Term Plan: Improving Lives Through Agricultural Research
References