[Blog] The land and the people: reflections on climate resilience in Guinea-Bissau

Author: Maria Dombaxi

Towards the end of his remarks at the RESIslands launch in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau’s Minister of Environment and Climate Action, Carlos Pinto Pereira, became visibly moved as he spoke about communities. Listening to him, we were reminded about the people whose daily decisions give climate policy its meaning: how to earn a living, cultivate land, process fish and protect a home.

His intervention had made adaptation tangible. Communities need timely information about dangerous weather. They need ways to sustain their livelihoods while protecting the ecosystems on which those livelihoods depend. And they need support that continues after equipment has been delivered and an event has ended.

That moment stayed with us because it connected the technical language of climate resilience with the responsibilities behind it. What does protecting the environment mean for someone who needs to cut wood to process fish? What does a warning mean for a family if it arrives too late? What makes an investment worthwhile when its greatest return is a community kept safe?

In Guinea-Bissau, these questions also brought to mind Amílcar Cabral, the agronomist.

Alongside his role as a liberation leader, Cabral worked to understand agriculture and the land. He planned and carried out Guinea’s agricultural census in 1953. His later writing on the characteristics and fundamental problems of agriculture in Guinea drew on that work, leaving a record of scientific engagement with the country’s farming systems.

Reading that history alongside the discussions in Bissau, we see a connection in the attention paid to local conditions. Understanding a territory requires knowledge of how people use it and what they depend on. That is a useful starting point for today’s climate agenda, where national priorities must be grounded in the realities of communities and the evidence available to them.

The minister’s examples illustrated the choices involved. He spoke about fish-processing technologies that can reduce pressure on mangroves while allowing people to continue earning a living. He also stressed the importance of helping communities use these technologies effectively. Equipment needs skills, maintenance and follow-up if it is to become part of everyday practice.

This matters because protecting ecosystems and supporting livelihoods have to be considered together. A household relying on natural resources needs workable alternatives and the means to adopt them. The conditions that make environmental protection possible deserve as much attention as the behaviour we hope to change.

The same principle applies to climate information. During the launch, a member of the National Institute of Meteorology presented evidence on temperature and rainfall patterns, and their implications for agricultural planning. His presentation showed the value of adjusting planting calendars to regional conditions, including the risk of false starts to the rainy season and dry periods within it.

For a farmer, the usefulness of that evidence lies in the decision it informs. When should planting begin? How much risk is involved? What information is available before seed, labour and money are committed?

Participants raised questions about access to climate data and about how institutions can work together to make information available. These are practical questions about the distance between producing knowledge and enabling people to use it. Closing that distance requires trained specialists, coordination between institutions and communication that reaches communities in a form they can understand.

RESIslands can contribute to these foundations. Funded by the Green Climate Fund and implemented by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the initiative supports national capacity, risk-related frameworks, project preparation and knowledge exchange across nine members of the African Island States Climate Commission.

In Guinea-Bissau, work is already under way to make sure that these communities are not left behind. This is preparation for future investment. Its value will depend on whether national institutions can use stronger evidence and expertise to develop proposals that respond to the country’s priorities, and whether those proposals can ultimately secure the resources needed for implementation.

The minister’s remarks also raised a question that belongs at the centre of climate finance: how do we value protection? He spoke about investments such as coastal defences that may generate no direct financial profit but remain essential to safeguarding communities. Their value includes homes protected, livelihoods sustained and losses avoided. Making that value visible is part of preparing a convincing case for investment.

Cabral’s agronomic legacy offers a lens through which to consider this work. It invites attention to the land, to the knowledge needed to understand it, and to the people whose lives are bound to it. Applied to today’s climate challenges, that perspective makes national expertise and community participation central to defining solutions.

We left the launch thinking about the minister’s concern for communities and the practical examples that gave it substance. Climate resilience becomes meaningful in those connections: between a forecast and a planting decision, between a technology and a livelihood, between an investment proposal and a place people can continue to call home.

Source note

Historical reference: Amílcar Lopes Cabral, “A Agricultura da Guiné - Algumas notas sobre as suas características e problemas fundamentais” (1959), Fundação Mário Soares e Maria Barroso, Casa Comum, cota 04342.001.005. The archive records Cabral’s planning and execution of the 1953 agricultural census. https://casacomum.org/id/04342.001.005