(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Mr Walter Vergara, Project Leader for the Executing Agency -World Bank – on the Caribbean Community Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change project (MACC) has expressed great satisfaction with the implementation of the MACC project noting that it has been “very successful, with major accomplishments.”
The MACC project is a World Bank/Global Environment Fund (GEF) activity that is implemented by CARICOM through the CCCCC. The Project was designed to influence development-planning initiatives in CARICOM member states especially in small island low-lying States. One of its primary objectives is to build capacity to identify climate change risks, reduce vulnerability and to effectively access and utilize resources to contain the costs of climate change impact.
The project expires on March 31 and the Climate Change Centre has convened a two-day conference in Castries, Saint Lucia with its stakeholders, development partners and key researchers in related disciplines to review the end-of-project assessment report and to “share experiences and visions for the future of the Caribbean under the influence of a changing climate regime in the 21st century.”
Speaking with the CARICOM Secretariat’s Public Information Unit on Monday at the Conference, Mr Vergara pointed to the methodology used for conducting the country assessments and the actual assessments done in participating countries as two impressive outcomes.
He cited the upgrading and networking of the climate and sea-level monitoring infrastructure and the training of Meteorological and Survey Offices to maintain the upgraded stations and manage use of collected data; the strengthening of the Coral Reef Warning Systems (CREWS) monitoring network in participating countries and the capacity strengthening which had been done both nationally and regionally as some of activities of the project of which the World Bank was most proud. He noted that the Climate Change Centre was also a child of MACC and commended the CARICOM Secretariat for its sterling support in the establishment of the centre.
Mr Vergara who is also the lead engineer for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development, in Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) Region pointed to the challenge of mainstreaming climate change into the policy making machinery of Caribbean governments and underscored the critical need for policy makers to have been integrally involved in the project from its inception.
“Nothing is perfect and we could have done a few things differently,” he said but overall the project has been implemented successfully,” Mr Vergara reflected.
One of the things Mr Vegara said could have been done differently was that more resources could have been ploughed into ensuring that the knowledge and information generated was linked to the policy formulation processes. This, he said, would allow for policy makers to be engaged and involved from the inception of the MACC project and would have allowed them to consider seriously all the implications for climate change impact.
Mr Vergara expressed hope that the outcomes of the project would be utilized appropriately and effectively by policy makers in the Region.
Both the World Bank and CARICOM Secretariat Representative Mr Garfield Barnwell shared the view that on the basis of the outcome of the MACC project, the region needed to address Climate Change issues in a more programmatic basis and greater attention should be given to completing the draft regional strategy. Mr Barnwell also highlighted the need for an action plan which would focus on the requirements for mainstreaming Climate Change in the Caribbean.
