Senior officers from the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) are meeting in Jamaica with counterparts from the German Development Bank (KfW) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for discussions on a regional Coastal Protection Climate Change Adaptation (CPCCA) Project being implemented in four Caribbean States.
The teams will be on the island between May 8 and 17 to have talks with grantees and partner organisations, and to visit the four sites that have been approved for funding support under the project for the Local Adaptation Measures (LAMs) aimed at improving the ability of vulnerable communities to withstand the impacts of Climate Change.
The CPCCA Project is being implemented by the CCCCC also called the 5Cs, with technical support from IUCN and with €12.9 million in grant funding from the KfW. It seeks to minimise the adverse impacts of climate change by restoring the protective services offered by natural eco-systems like coastal mangrove forests and coral reefs in some areas while restoring and building man-made structures such as groynes and revetments in others.
The LAMs projects in Jamaica are being managed by a mix of non-governmental and government institutions. Participating organisations are the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) in Montego Bay, the University of the West Indies Centre for Marine Sciences (UWI-CMS), for the East Portland Fish Sanctuary; the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation (C-CAM), for the Portland Bight Protected Area; and the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation, in the Negril Environmental Protected Area.
The Jamaican project areas of the Portland Bight and Negril Environmental Protected Areas, East Portland Fish Sanctuary, and the Closed Harbour also called ‘Dump-up’
Beach in Montego Bay, are four of the 16 areas being targeted in the Caribbean. The other 12 projects are being rolled out in Grenada, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
While in Jamaica, the teams will pay a courtesy call on Hon. Daryl Vaz, Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, with responsibility for the Land, Environment, Climate Change and Investment at Jamaica House on Tuesday, May 9. The team is also scheduled to tour the Portland Bight Protected Area on Wednesday, May 10, and are guests at UDC’s launch of the Montego Bay Project on Friday, May 12, 2017.
