The 2009 CARIBSAVE Country Partners Symposium is to be held at the Sheraton Nassau Beach Hotel, The Bahamas on 21st and 22nd September 2009. 

The University of Oxford and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) are partners in an initiative crucial to the future of the Caribbean: The CARIBSAVE Partnership.  This partnership seeks to address the impacts and challenges surrounding climate change, the environment, tourism, livelihoods and related sectors throughout the Caribbean region. The project is multi-sectoral, multi-objective and multi-donor in nature and is supported by a large and active network of national, regional and international partners including the ACS, the CTO, UNEP, UNDP, UNWTO, IDB, the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Conservation International (CI), the Rainforest Alliance, nations across the region and representatives of the private and public sectors along with eminent scientists and practitioners from the region and beyond. 

The CARIBSAVE Country Partners Symposium in September will focus on the following key areas:

    * consensus building
    * vulnerability awareness raising
    * identification of national and regional needs, vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities
    * the dissemination of the initial Risk Atlas and Vulnerability Profiling phase of CARIBSAVE
    * the discussion of core priorities and individual nations' impacts
    * linking support networks across ministries, nations, destinations and regional organisations
    * identification of funding for Caribbean nations to address climate change impacts.

The Key Note speaker expected will be the Right Honourable Hubert Ingraham, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, and the Secretary-General Elect of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Mr. Taleb Rifai is expected to be a main speaker at the event along with the Minister of Tourism from Jamaica. The target audience for this symposium includes Ministers and Permanent Secretaries of Tourism from the island and coastal nations throughout the Caribbean Basin. It is anticipated that the main outputs of the Symposium will be pragmatic country action priorities, enhanced understanding of the impacts and challenges of climate change on tourism and the building of consensus on actions and funding for addressing the impacts and challenges of climate change on tourism and related sectors in the nations of the Caribbean Basin.

Funding opportunities for the benefit of individual countries across the Caribbean Basin will be identified, discussed and prioritised in light of the recent CARIBSAVE Donors and Partners Symposium held at the University of Oxford in June/July. The highly successful Donors and Partners Symposium was attended by delegates from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, the Rainforest Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, the Japanese International Development Agency, the United States State Department, the German Development Agency, UNDP, the Association of Caribbean States, the Caribbean Tourism Organization amongst other regional and international partners.  

Recently received seed funds from DFID are being used for a range of activities, including: the establishment of protocols and frameworks for the implementation of work on two pre-pilot destination sites, in the Bahamas and Jamaica. This work on the pre-pilot sites is focused on the links between climate science, the physical impacts of climate change and the implications of climate change at stakeholder, national development and sustainable livelihood level across a range of sectors in destinations. The work will form the basis of a region wide phase of Key Objectives of CARIBSAVE, and the development and implementation of practical strategies to address climate change in the region. In addition, the funds are contributing to a series of consensus building and fund raising activities and events, along with capacity building workshops across the Caribbean region.

Download appropriate Registration forms here

DOWNLOAD the AGENDA BELOW

Click to download the attached file(s):
• CaribSaveagenda_2009.pdf

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