Environmental research

The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute is a regional technical non-profit organisation which has been working in the islands of the Caribbean for more than 20 years. Our mission is to promote equitable participation and effective collaboration in managing natural resources critical to development. Our programmes focus on research, sharing and dissemination of lessons learned, capacity building and fostering regional partnerships. This project seeks to build awareness and formulate action at the community level to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Efforts to do so have been lacking in the region; the project has therefore been designed to address the present problem of community and consequently livelihood vulnerability in the face of present and impending impacts of climate change. The project will target a rural, particularly vulnerable community in Trinidad and Tobago. It will first broaden the community understanding of key climate change issues through effective communication, and facilitate the participatory development of appropriate community-level resilience-building strategies. These will be tested within the selected community and the entire process will be documented and shared with other communities and external agencies facilitating and supporting such vulnerable communities in Trinidad and Tobago. The project will be marked by a research component to identify a vulnerable community in which the project is most needed, a knowledge sharing workshop, the development and implementation of community action plans, and training in participatory video and photography to document and share success stories and lessons learned. Indicators of success will be increased awareness and understanding of the community on climate change and its impacts on livelihoods; application of skills and knowledge to plan and implement resilience-building strategies; and advocacy on key resilience-building needs for policy change and infrastructural development in the selected community. The project fits the Global Strategic Framework and Country Programme Strategy serving as a demonstration project, designed as a pilot project, the results of which are to be documented and shared with similar communities in which resilience-building strategies are needed. It will contribute to the bank of knowledge on this area of global concern and resilience-building strategies. Community contributions will take the form of`sweat equity` since the resilience-building actions will involve the use of a traditional`gayap` approach.

Trinidad and tobago