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Urbanisation, climate change and natural hazards present serious challenges for the Caribbean which Habitat III brought into focus. This paper critically examines problems associated with these complex challenges, to propose a relevant Caribbean specific New Urban Agenda and suggest implementation mechanisms which are essential to forge ahead. It reviews urban issues for fifteen countries that constitute the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). These problems are investigated from the perspective of four pillars of economic, social and environmental sustainability, and governance. The paper reveals that with the application of these main components and related thematic elements, many countries in this grouping are underperforming in achieving the sustainable development goal of safe, resilient and sustainable urban settlements. The main conclusion drawn is that countries of the CARICOM Caribbean should not adopt an imported blueprint to resolve critical urban issues. This is an opportune time for crafting a relevant indigenous New Urban Agenda for CARICOM Caribbean countries and finding the right implementation mechanisms to be at the frontline of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 'Development' financing under the SDGs are likely to reproduce racialized extractive peripheries particularly the Caribbean. • Current global configurations remain silent on historical responsibility for uneven and extreme climate-induced consequences. • Climate finance extracts surplus value from racialized areas, create new bondages, and reflect new forms of coloniality. • Climate reparations address the historical inequity due to colonization and new forms of dispossession due to climate change. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a normative framework for external financing that emphasizes stimulating investor interest to address so-called development challenges. However, their underpinnings reflecting continuities of longstanding structural divergence along racial lines when it comes to determinants of finance and uneven climate devastation are not well explored. Additionally, the current global configuration of "billions to trillions" of development finance remains silent on the historical responsibility and continuing coloniality that reproduce uneven and extreme consequences in climate-impacted Caribbean communities. This paper interrogates the role of the SDGs in reproducing racialized peripheries and extracting surplus value from these formerly colonized communities through the use of financial logics and innovative tools. The adoption of the SDGs at the same time of the International Decade of People of African Descent (2015–2024) appears merely coincidental. A lack of concern about climate justice and reparations for historical harms and climate-related losses is evident. This absence highlights the manner in which financial interests are privileged and mobilized in pursuit of high-yielding returns to be made from climate disaster, debt and dispossession. These contradictions usher in a new era of "bond- age " and coloniality that justify reparations for loss and damage facing frontline marginalised communities centred on climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is affecting Caribbean nations in a significant manner. Yet there is limited research on the varied effects on these island states and the ways in which adaptation has occurred. This paper introduces the idea of climate justice for the Caribbean region, highlighting a series of papers focused on climate justice concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper, "Sea level rise under climate change: Implications for beach tourism in the Caribbean" by Spencer, N., Strobl, E. and Campbell, A (Ocean and Coastal Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2022.106207)., extracts a data set of sandy beach systems in 30 island nations in the Caribbean drawn from a much larger data set of sandy beach systems of the world provided by Vousdoukas et al., 2020. This discussion shows that there are significant problems with the quality of the data set on beaches and the assumptions underlying the predicted loss of beach sediment. In turn this will affect the validity of the economic modelling exercise on the potential impact on tourism in the islands. [Display omitted] • Shoreline change data from Vousdoukas et al. (2020) has many inaccuracies. • Potential sandy beach losses are exaggerated because of the use of the Bruun model. • Validity of the output from economic modelling is affected by these issues. • Better quality data can be obtained from individual islands rather than a world data base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few events have had an impact as the global crisis caused by COVID-19. However, prior to the pandemic, Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries already had severe problems in terms of inequality, environmental degradation, and dysfunctional political systems. Added to this are the growing challenges that climate change poses for this highly vulnerable region. This historic turning point represents a new call to consider future studies to re-imagine and reinvent alternative futures for the LAC region. For this paper, we conducted an in-depth qualitative futures study to identify how Latin American and Caribbean countries could build long-term resilience, focusing on adaptability to climate change risks, considering existing sustainable development challenges and the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economic, environmental, and social aspects. This study's findings provide recommendations for policymakers and decision-makers to achieve sustainable futures for LAC. Finally, it reflects on the value of collective action for a future-proof region. • Latin America and the Caribbean have long experienced inequality, environmental degradation, and dysfunctional political institutions. • Climate change poses growing economic, social, political, technological, and environmental challenges for this highly vulnerable region. • Latin American and Caribbean countries can address sustainable development challenges by focusing on adaptiveness to climate change risks. • A future-proof region requires collaborative and orchestrated action from governments, academics, businesses, and civil society. • Regenerative and inclusive futures for Latin America and the Caribbean require aligning dissimilar efforts toward common sustainable goals. • Futures studies have the potential to identify how Latin American and Caribbean countries can build long-term resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Land cover maps at different resolutions and mapping extents contribute to modeling and support decision making processes. Because land cover affects and is affected by climate change, it is listed among the 13 terrestrial essential climate variables. This paper describes the generation of a land cover map for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for the year 2008. It was developed in the framework of the project Latin American Network for Monitoring and Studying of Natural Resources (SERENA), which has been developed within the GOFC-GOLD Latin American network of remote sensing and forest fires (RedLaTIF). The SERENA land cover map for LAC integrates: 1) the local expertise of SERENA network members to generate the training and validation data, 2) a methodology for land cover mapping based on decision trees using MODIS time series, and 3) class membership estimates to account for pixel heterogeneity issues. The discrete SERENA land cover product, derived from class memberships, yields an overall accuracy of 84% and includes an additional layer representing the estimated per-pixel confidence. The study demonstrates in detail the use of class memberships to better estimate the area of scarce classes with a scattered spatial distribution. The land cover map is already available as a printed wall map and will be released in digital format in the near future. The SERENA land cover map was produced with a legend and classification strategy similar to that used by the North American Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS) to generate a land cover map of the North American continent, that will allow to combine both maps to generate consistent data across America facilitating continental monitoring and modeling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Wave climate is highly variable on the world''s coast and its temporal changes and extremes usually imply consequences like erosion or impacts to infrastructures. Alterations in wave climate were little addressed in the four IPCC reports although variations in wave climate may cause extensive coastal impacts. Changes are also often related to climate pattern variability. This variability as well as long-term trends has been an issue of research in recent years. In the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) an understanding of wave climate and its variability is scant. In this paper we use an extensively calibrated and validated wave reanalysis to describe the wave climatology in the region at different time scales and for scalar and directional wave parameters. Long-term changes are identified in the wave heights and mean direction of the energy flux shows high spatial variability. Correlation patterns of the mean significant wave height and direction of mean energy flux lead to the detection of prominent modes of influence of several climate indices. A wave climate type approach is also used to identify wave variability along the region that allows an identification of different wave climate types in terms of wave parameters and occurrence frequency. In line with the results, the influence of El Niño events shows a higher frequency of occurrence of certain sea-states with respect to non ENSO years. We also explore how climate change affecting storm patterns may be translated into a modification of sea-state occurrence and therefore implying different consequences for coastal zones depending on local wave propagation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The proposition of transition cycles for a low-carbon economy based on human development and climate action. • A climate justice index in line with the United Nations' concepts of sustainable development. • A climate justice index that benchmarks nations with the same level of economic development. • The proposed index can help policy-makers and national government to identify synergy between climate actions and human development policies. Since the climate change context is increasingly the focus of decision-makers, indices capable of helping them in the transition to a low-carbon economy are considered necessary. Therefore, the objective of this work is to propose an index of climate justice that includes factors of human development and climate action. The index was developed using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique and, in this study, assessed the climate justice of 198 nations. After the calculation, statistical analysis was used to compare the climate justice of the aforementioned countries, grouped by level of development and geographical location. The results obtained were: a) there is currently no nation that fully guarantees climate justice to its population; b) there is a difference in the performance of climate justice between the Annex I, Non-Annex I and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) groups; c) nations located in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern Europe are similar in terms of climate justice index performance. The main contribution of this paper is in the fact that the proposed index can help policy-makers and national governments to define climate and development policies, creating a synergy between such policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]