Grenada’s National Ecosystem Assessment Launched

The Region recently joined the Government of Grenada to celebrate the launch of its National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) on Thursday, 26 October 2023.

This pioneering initiative provides the Government and people of Grenada with a centralised repository of evidence on the nation’s natural environment. More importantly, it sheds light on the indispensable environmental services that are integral to their well-being.

NEAs collate and synthesise current knowledge on the status, trends and threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services in target countries. These assessments also provide information on the economic, social and intrinsic value of those ecosystems and ecosystem services for use in national and local level decision-making, as it pertains to natural resources management and sustainable development of the country.

The report, which can be viewed online, used processes developed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) tailored for the specific national areas of interest. Multidisciplinary authors were recruited nationally, regionally and internationally to produce the NEA, utilising existing studies and data. The Grenada NEA was conducted using a wide range of stakeholders including civil society, youth, government, regional institutions, and private citizens, and incorporated local and indigenous knowledge.

Grenada NEA Project Manager and Senior Technical Officer at the Caribbean Natural Resource Institute (CANARI), Dr. Natalie Boodram, highlighted that a whole-of-society approach was applied to coordinate the process which included training on ecosystem valuation and foresight scenarios, communication of environmental information, design and execution of communication campaigns and capacity-building for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Tools. A Citizen’s Guide to the NEA was also developed to ensure that the NEA information was packaged in a format that Grenadian civil society can easily use to communicate with private sector, youth, policymakers and other stakeholders, regarding the value and importance of specific ecosystems and sites.

Source: CARICOM TODAY