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CROSS CUTTING PROJECTS
Environmental mainstreaming in the British Virgin Islands
The British Virgin Islands, more than 40 islands emerged from submarine volcanoes, are rich in biodiversity. Many of the islands are surrounded by coral reefs, mangroves and lagoons while the terrestrial environment is home to a host of endemic species, some of which are globally threatened, namely the critically endangered Roosevelt’s giant anole Anolis roosevelti and the endangered Virgin Islands tree boa Epicrates monensis.
The British Virgin Islands have been a territory of the United Kingdom since the seventeenth century. In recognition of the biological importance of the islands to the biological resources of the United Kingdom and by extension to the world, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), which advises the UK Government on international biodiversity issues, have jointly financed a project. The main objective of the project is: ‘To work with each OT Government to understand the economic value of its natural environment, the threats posed and options available for managing these threats, and to enable environmental issues to be integrated into strategic decisions.’
In this regard, CANARI has been awarded a contract to facilitate sessions to assist in determining the ways and means whereby existing, both state and civil society, organizations can integrate environmental issues into decision making.
The work will:
- identify gaps and barriers to the implementation of environmental mainstreaming;
- suggest ways and means whereby existing institutions and decision making processes in the British Virgin Islands can be used to integrate environmental issues into decision making;
- identify short, medium and long term actions necessary to promote the concept underlying the project - the fundamental importance and economic value of the natural environment; and
- contribute to establishing a common understanding of what is needed to integrate environmental issues into the planning processes in the British Virgin Islands.
Key to the success of the project is the facilitation of a participatory process which examines the existing legal framework for environmental protection, the state of environmental knowledge and the institutional and societal capacity to act on knowledge and implement environmental mainstreaming.
Join the Facebook discussion on priority issues identified and help us conserve the biodiversity in the British Virgin Islands together.
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