Resistance & Resilience: A Year-Long Conference on Responses to Climate Crisis in Cuba and Puerto Rico

CLAIS is pleased to publish the proceedings from last year’s five-part conference series focused on climate health and resilience in Puerto Rico and Cuba. The year-long virtual series was in collaboration with Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Caribbean Agroecology Institute, Junta for Progressive Action, Universidad de La Habana, Yale Ciencia Initiative & Ciencia Puerto Rico, and the Yale School of the Environment. 

Our special thanks for their support and partnership to Gordon Geballe, Sara Santiago, and Devin Osborne from Yale School of the Environment, Margarita Fernandez of the Caribbean Agroecology Institute, Reinaldo Funes Monzote of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de La Naturaleza y el Hombre, Giovanna Guerrero-Medina of Yale School of Medicine/Ciencia, Bruni Pizarro (former Executive Director of Junta for Progressive Action), and Marta Moret.

 Please see link here for the proceedings. 

Each of the sessions’ recordings can be found at the CaribbeanAgroEcology website.

“Responses to the Climate Crisis from Cuba and Puerto Rico” created an opportunity for expertise and best practices to be shared across politically contested lines to explore and mitigate the threat of climate change in a neutral academic setting. “… The panelists mentioned this conference and other examples of how such obstacles can be circumvented to increase the potential for cooperation between the two countries” –Conference Proceedings. 

Recordings from the event have been watched 6,000 times in total, with the most popular video being viewed over 2,000. It utilized entirely native expertise and representation from the participating islands, and was the first Yale conference series to be held entirely in the native language of it’s speakers, with English language translation available. 

Focused on five inter and cross-disciplinary concepts, with each conference ending identifying potential areas for shared collaboration and/or research to mitigate climate change impacts. The five panels explored: