From Climate Crisis to Human Exploitation: New Report Highlights Hidden Risks
- 87network
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Focus on Antigua and Barbuda
Climate change is often discussed in terms of hurricanes, rising seas, drought, damaged infrastructure, and environmental loss. Yet a new report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Free the Slaves reveals another urgent consequence that receives far too little attention: the heightened risk of human exploitation.
From Climate Crisis to Human Exploitation: Examining Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability in Small Island Developing States – Focus on Antigua & Barbuda explores how climate shocks and environmental stress can create the conditions in which trafficking, labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, and abuse become more likely.
The report shows that climate change often increases exploitation indirectly—through what it terms multi-dimensional vulnerability.
When hurricanes destroy homes, drought affects food production, or tourism declines after environmental damage, individuals, families and communities may face:
sudden loss of income
displacement or unsafe housing
food and water insecurity
interrupted education
mental and physical health pressures
debt and reduced coping options
These pressures can narrow choices and make unsafe or exploitative work appear to be the only available option. As the report notes, exploitation rarely happens in isolation. It emerges where systems fail to protect people.
This report is a reminder that climate change is not only an environmental challenge. It is increasingly a driver of human vulnerability.
Why Antigua and Barbuda?
Antigua and Barbuda is a powerful case study. Like many Small Island Developing States (SIDS), it faces high exposure to hurricanes, sea-level rise, drought, water stress, coral bleaching, and changing rainfall patterns. More than 60% of the population lives in coastal areas, while tourism accounts for around 80% of GDP. This combination of climate exposure and economic dependence on climate-sensitive sectors means that environmental disruption can quickly translate into social and economic insecurity.
Gendered Impacts
The research highlights that women and girls often face heightened risks when climate-related economic shocks hit. Where livelihoods are lost, some women may be pushed into precarious informal work, including situations involving sexual exploitation. The report also identifies increased risks of domestic violence during times of economic strain and post-disaster instability.
At the same time, men and boys are not immune. Respondents described movement into informal manual labour such as construction or gardening, where wage theft, unsafe conditions, or delayed payment may occur. Some young men were also reported to experience sexual exploitation, though such cases are often underreported because of stigma.
Existing Responses – But a Coordination Gap
The report recognises that important action is already underway across Antigua and Barbuda and the wider Caribbean. Government initiatives include climate adaptation programmes, early warning systems, support for more resilient housing, and gender-responsive disaster planning. Civil society organisations are contributing through community education, psychosocial support, sustainable agriculture initiatives, and practical local resilience measures. Regional institutions such as CARICOM, the OECS and CDEMA are also playing an active role in disaster preparedness, climate coordination and regional cooperation.
However, the report notes that climate policy and anti-exploitation policy are still too often treated separately. This matters because when exploitation risks are overlooked, disaster response and adaptation efforts may fail to protect those most vulnerable to abuse, trafficking or labour exploitation in the aftermath of shocks.
The report therefore calls for more integrated and prevention-focused responses. For governments, this means investing in climate-resilient infrastructure, including safe temporary shelters for displaced communities, while strengthening water and food security so that households are less likely to resort to harmful coping strategies in times of crisis. It also means protecting livelihoods in climate-sensitive sectors such as tourism and agriculture, supporting diversification of income opportunities, and ensuring that children’s education can continue during and after disasters. Importantly, exploitation risks should be explicitly built into climate, labour and development planning rather than addressed only after harm occurs.
The report also points to the value of community resilience and traditional practices, including climate-responsive housing models such as the Caribbean chattel house, whose lightweight, ventilated and adaptable design offers lessons for modern resilience planning.
At the regional level, CARICOM and other institutions can play a stronger coordinating role by improving cooperation, sharing evidence and good practice, and ensuring that climate mobility, disaster risk reduction and adaptation frameworks recognise the heightened risks of exploitation that often accompany displacement and economic disruption. Stronger collaboration between Member States can help build more coherent and sustainable responses across the Caribbean.
Civil society also remains central to prevention. Community organisations are often closest to those affected and best placed to deliver early awareness initiatives before disasters strike, advocate for safeguards in national climate strategies, and generate community-led research that reflects lived experience. As the report makes clear, reducing climate vulnerability and reducing exploitation are not separate agendas—they are increasingly one and the same.
To accompany the launch, CHRI Director Sneh Aurora and Free the Slaves Senior Programme Manager Marta Furlan discussed the report on the Caribbean Connections podcast, exploring the findings, why the issue matters for the Caribbean, and what practical solutions are needed, particularly building on existing initiatives. The conversation also highlighted that communities already understand these risks—and policy must catch up with lived reality.
From Climate Crisis to Human Exploitation: Examining Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability in Small Island Developing States – Focus on Antigua & Barbuda is available now. It is an important contribution to growing global evidence that climate justice and anti-exploitation work must increasingly go hand in hand.
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