The Caribbean

A CARICOM/WFP Caribbean Food Security and Livelihoods Survey in May 2024 estimated that 3 million people, or 43 percent of the population in the English-speaking Caribbean, are food insecure. While there has been a modest improvement compared to 2023, people continue to highlight challenges such as high food and input prices, and the impact of heatwaves, floods, droughts and tropical storms over the past 12 months. The survey highlights the growing hardships and challenges faced by the most vulnerable people.

Climate-related disasters continue to increase in frequency and intensity, reversing significant development gains, paralysing national response capacity, and threatening progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While there is a foundation of regional and national institutions to address the needs of vulnerable people, there is a need improve data access and analysis, coordination and visualization, for improved planning and decision making.

Furthermore, Caribbean states face some of the highest rates debt in the world. Government debts average 90.1 percent of GDP since 2020, placing the region significantly above the World Bank’s threshold for developing countries. Caribbean governments are advocating for more innovative climate financing and access to resources, to increase climate resilience.

WFP Caribbean works with national, regional and international partners to strengthen resilience to the climate crisis, and to other risks. WFP adopts a systems-focused approach as part of its capacity-strengthening efforts, through research and advocacy, digitalization, human-resource development, South-South Cooperation, and by investing in critical infrastructure and assets. WFP works with partners to provide direct assistance to vulnerable people impacted by shocks, when events surpass national and regional capacities.

These investments place the most vulnerable people at the centre of efforts to minimize the combined impacts of climate, economic and other shocks. WFP Caribbean’s 2022-2026 Multi-Country Strategic Plan supports 22 countries and territories across the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean through the provision of expertise in vulnerability analysis and mapping; end-to-end supply-chain management; shock-responsive social protection; food-systems strengthening, and climate-risk financing.

Countries covered by the WFP Caribbean Multi-Country Office include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas (the), Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands.