Regional environmental negotiators complete training programme

Nearly 40 regional junior environmental negotiators  who were drawn from 12 CARICOM member states, the Dominican Republic and Cuba completed a five-day training programme designed to strengthen their skills in negotiating Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs).

The workshop, which ended on Friday in St Kitts and Nevis, was organized by the CARICOM Secretariat with support from the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), through the Caribbean Hub sub-component of the Capacity Building related to MEAs in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, said a press release from the CARICOM Secretariat at Turkeyen.

The project is funded by the European Union and is co-ordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

There was consensus among the participants that they had been equipped with knowledge and skills to understand better how to use negotiation strategies to influence outcomes that were favourable to their countries.

The workshop was facilitated by Joy Hyvaerinen and  Chad Carpenter, Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD); Christopher Corbin, United Nations Environment Programme – Caribbean Regional Coordinating Unit (UNEP CAR/RCU);  Judith Ephraim, Ministry of Sustainable Development, Energy, Science & Technology, Saint Lucia and Gilroy English from Gilroy English Associates.

Commenting on the conduct of the workshop, FIELD Executive Director, Joy Hyvaerinen noted that the participants were leaving with tools and skills that would help them to understand negotiation texts that could shape their country’s compliance needs. In her opinion, a thorough understanding of the significance of MEAs and how they work would prepare Caribbean countries to participate in and comply with MEAs, which were pivotal to their sustainable development.  Caribbean countries are parties to approximately 100 MEAS, the release noted, and the most important ones addressed in the workshop include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1994), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1993), the Cartagena Convention (1986) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1994). However, over the years the Caribbean Region has been experiencing several challenges in fulfilling their obligations as signatories to MEAs.

Project Coordinator, Dr Therese Yarde, explained that the challenges arose primarily because of inadequate human resources and skill-sets necessary to address increasingly complex scientific and technical issues. The workshop, she said, emphasized these specific MEAs in response to requests from member states to focus on MEAs related to climate change, biodiversity and oceans governance.

She added that the project intended to “promote environmental sustainability in the Caribbean by building member states’ capacity to implement and comply with their obligations under MEAs, thereby resulting in sound and sustainable management of the environment and natural resources.”

This is the second regional negotiations skills training held under the project, the first of which was held in Guyana in 2010.