How Jamaica Can Lead the Caribbean’s Green and Innovation Economy.

**Carlinton Burrell, CEO of the** **Caribbean Climate Innovation Center.**

Building the Blueprint: How Jamaica Can Lead the Caribbean’s Green and Innovation Economy.

Jamaica has always exported more than it realises. Our music, athletes, and culture have carried the island’s name into every corner of the world.

Today, I believe Jamaica stands on the brink of another export moment, one built not on a single artist or a single sprint, but on the ingenuity of thousands of entrepreneurs, founders, and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) who are quietly reshaping how our region adapts, builds, and grows.

I have spent the better part of a decade working alongside these founders, and I have seen what happens when Caribbean ingenuity is given capital, mentorship and a platform: businesses are born, jobs are created, and communities that were once written off as vulnerable become sources of solutions.

The scale of the opportunity is enormous. The global green economy is already worth more than US$5 trillion annually and is projected to exceed US$7 trillion by the end of the decade, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. Climate adaptation and green technology represent major areas of investment, with billions in multilateral funding available through institutions such as the Development Bank of Jamaica, the World Bank, the European Union, the Caribbean Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Since 2014, the Caribbean Climate Innovation Center (CCIC) has helped channel funding directly into Caribbean hands, supporting more than 60 woman-owned businesses and commercialising over 50 clean technology products, many of them born from Jamaican innovation.

This is Jamaica’s competitive advantage, and it is one that cannot easily be copied. We sit on the front lines of climate vulnerability: hurricanes, drought, rising seas, and eroded shorelines. Yet that pressure has produced something valuable: entrepreneurs who build for resilience by necessity, not by trend. When a founder in St. Elizabeth designs a solar-powered irrigation system or a Kingston start-up engineers climate-smart packaging, they are not chasing a market. They are solving a problem they live with. That authenticity is exactly what global investors and partners are looking for.

None of it happens through one organisation working alone, and I want to be honest about that. Our partnership with the Scientific Research Council has quietly done some of the heaviest lifting, taking a founder’s raw idea and putting it through the rigorous testing that turns “I think this works” into “This works, and here’s the data.” That partnership is the unglamorous middle of the story that rarely makes headlines, but without it, half of what we’ve built simply would not exist. It is the difference between an idea remaining a dream on someone’s kitchen table and becoming a company that hires its neighbours. Partnerships like this, alongside our work with regional universities, government agencies and international funders, allow us to build a genuine MSME ecosystem rather than a collection of unconnected success stories.

Jamaica already has what most markets spend decades trying to create: culture, creativity, resilience and a global reputation that opens doors. What we are building at CCIC is the infrastructure to convert that reputation into enterprise through funding pathways, technical partnerships and a home-grown ecosystem that keeps the value created here in the Caribbean.

The future of the Caribbean’s green economy will be written by our own founders, institutions and innovators. What we owe the next generation is not simply a pep talk about entrepreneurship. We owe them infrastructure, mentors who have built businesses themselves and access to capital that remains available when the journey becomes challenging.

Jamaica is no longer waiting for its moment in the global green economy. I believe that moment has already arrived.

Carlinton Burrell, CEO of the Caribbean Climate Innovation Center.

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Carlinton Burrell’s article forms part of our August Guest Editor series, Voices Shaping Jamaica’s Future, where leading visionaries share ideas to inspire conversation, innovation and opportunity for Jamaica’s next generation.

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