As the world prepared to negotiate a global development agenda for the 2015 – 2030 period, small island developing states were also engaged in negotiating the Barbados+20 agenda for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, for approval in September 2014 in Samoa. The outcome of these processes would provide guidance to national governments and the international community for investments in sustainable human development.
While all this intense negotiating effort was happening, it was realized that communities and by extension civil society, the intended beneficiary of these efforts, were not consulted as widely as they should, or could, to ensure that concerns, interests and priorities were taken into account by the international community. It is in this context that the Saint Lucia National Trust partnered with the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology and the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action –St. Lucia (CAFRA), and with financial and technical support from the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP), conducted a consultation to seek the views of Saint Lucia’s civil society on priorities for national sustainable development.
The Civil Society Consultation was hosted at the Golden Palm Events Centre in Rodney Heights, Gros Islet on August 6 – 7, 2014, and facilitated extensive discussion among a wide cross-section of civil society organisations (CSOs), community-based organisations (CBOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
To learn more about this consultation and the process, click here to access the Consultation Report.
First CSO consultation.