In the Caribbean small islands such as Jamaica and St. Lucia, and also in the Pacific, barriers to mainstreaming adaptation include competing development priorities, the absence of planning frameworks or 'undetected' overlaps in existing frameworks, serious governance flaws linked to the prevalence of corruption and corrupt people in political and public life, and insufficient manpower and human resources, linked to countries' financial capacity . In addition, the lack of strong governance mechanisms for urban planning has contributed to urban sprawl and expansion that has increased the number of informal settlements, which together with population growth are driving Caribbean small islands to their limits . In the Pacific, only a few countries have embedded climate change adaptation in existing legislation despite the overall regional agreement to A New Song for Coastal Fisheries- Pathways to Change: The Noumea Strategy to improve coastal fisheries management in a changing climate . Many climate change-specific initiatives across small islands have a unidirectional focus on climate risks and shift limited resources away from other important development objectives . Local-level plans are often overlooked: For example, in Mauritius, local-level climate adaptation plans are currently nearly non-existent while district councils have rarely been successful in even accessing international adaptation finance . In Samoa, several national- level programs on adaptation have had difficulties in engaging with the local level even if the decision-making powers on actual land management sit within the communities .
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report