Efforts towards climate change adaptation and planning generally to tend to take place at the international level and civil society is generally not adequately informed and engaged. This lack of awareness, particularly as it relates of some of the opportunities presented through climate change adaptation initiatives, is one of the main reasons why civil society is unable to the drive and benefit from climate change responses.

Having recognized this, Saint Lucia National Trust agreed to partner with the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) and the World Resource Institute (WRI) to implement a project in Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago with the aim of increasing civil society engagement in policy and institutional analysis for climate change adaptation.

The goal of the project was to increase understanding of effective climate change adaptation policy, institutions and actions and improve national capacity for participatory climate change policy design and adaptation. Through this project, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago were able to utilize the WRI’s Adaptation: Rapid Institutional Analysis (ARIA) toolkit which is an indicator-based survey of existing policies and practices that can be applied by civil society organizations to their national situations. The application of this toolkit at a national level resulted in access to useful environmental data which was validated at a workshop, held in October 2013 at the Coco Palm Hotel, Gros Islet, Saint Lucia. The workshop was attended by key Civil Society Organisations and public sector agencies and the resulting three priority areas that were identified for focused research in Saint Lucia were food security, water resources, and livelihoods and culture. Some of the key national outputs of this project include:

  • A policy Brief on Enabling Civil Society in Saint Lucia to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
  • A Technical Paper on Making Adaptation Work: An Institutional Analysis Of Climate Change Adaptation In Trinidad And Tobago And Saint Lucia
ARIA Project