The Cropper Foundation (TCF) has worked on sustainable development in the Caribbean since 2000. Our programmes cover environmental and climate governance, sustainable agriculture and food systems, circular economy and waste reduction, biodiversity, and arts and culture. The through-line across this work is civil society: strengthening the capacity of communities of farmers, entrepreneurs, conservationists, innovators, artists and others to engage the decisions that affect their livelihoods, quality of life and the region’s future.
Much of what we do at TCF sits in the space between data-heavy institutions and under-resourced constituencies. Policies with far-reaching implications for the people they mean to serve are drafted on tight timelines with little to no meaningful consultation. Environmental commitments are often made in rooms that rarely include the communities most dependent on the ecosystems at stake. We work to narrow that distance, not by speaking for communities but by helping them bring their knowledge and experience into those rooms on their own terms.
Our position on AI
We take the concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) seriously. The energy and water costs of large-scale AI systems are real. So is the use of training data collected without consent, the flattening of cultures by tools designed elsewhere, and the displacement of workers who already have the weakest hand in the labour market. These risks are not abstract for a Caribbean organisation. They land on the same communities our work exists to serve.
So TCF does not adopt AI by default. Where we use it, the application is narrow, the purpose public, and the outcome something people can see, question, and benefit from. Technology should lower the barrier to participation, not raise it. It should extend what farmers, CSOs, and environmental advocates already know, not replace their judgement or their language.
TCF will not use AI for mass automation or surveillance. We will not use it to replace the creative work of Caribbean artists and cultural practitioners, and we will not use it to extract commercial value from communities whose labour and knowledge make that value possible. We continue to weigh the harder questions – about energy, about consent, about who actually benefits – rather than treat them as settled.
How we are using AI in practice
- Project: Civic Engagement and Climate Action in Trinidad and Tobago
- Funder: The United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF)
- Execution Period: 2025 – 2027
Climate discussion in Trinidad and Tobago sits mostly with technical specialists and government institutions. CSOs are routinely asked to read long reports and respond to consultations without the staff or time to do it well. Media coverage is uneven. Community perspectives, when they reach policy at all, often arrive late and diluted.
With support from the United Nations Democracy Fund, TCF is developing a Caribbean-focused generative AI platform that helps CSOs and citizens work through climate data and policy documents in plain, locally grounded language. The aim is not to automate anyone’s position. It is to make engagement possible for organisations that currently cannot engage so that climate policy in Trinidad and Tobago reflects more than the voices already at the table.
- Project: Farming Adaptation and Artificial Intelligence for Resilience (FaAIR)
- Funder: National Geographic Society
- Execution Period: 2021 – 2022
Caribbean island states import between 60 and 80 percent of the food they consume. Most farms are under five hectares. The farming population is ageing. Climate change has disrupted weather patterns that farmers built working knowledge of over decades, and the response, where there has been one, has often leaned heavily on chemical inputs that erode the long-term health of the soil.
FaAIR uses AI practically, not symbolically. Small UAVs collect high-resolution imagery across farms, which is then processed using AI systems that integrate multiple vegetation indices to assess crop health, soil condition, and land cover in near real time. This provides farmers and extension workers with faster and more consistent insights than ground surveys alone can produce.
The purpose of the work is to help small farmers transition toward climate-smart practices by combining longstanding cultural knowledge with new tools, while keeping that transition affordable enough to be realistic and accessible.
In conclusion
AI is not a strategy for TCF. It is a tool we use in specific, limited ways when it clearly helps the people and places our work serves. The slower, harder work of our mission – building trust with communities, sustaining attention to ecosystems over decades, affirming equity through shifting funding cycles and geo-political vagaries – cannot be automated. That work remains ours, and the Caribbean’s.