SOME 41 representatives from 28 Caribbean and Latin American environmental funds and donor organisations are meeting in Kingston.
Today is the final day of their discussions concerning funding and common approaches to environmental programmes in the region. The conference opened on Tuesday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in St. Andrew.
The agencies are members of the Latin American & Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC), a network of national environmental funds from 19 countries, which collectively control in excess of half a billion United States dollars.
They mainly finance environmentally-friendly conservation efforts.
HOST
The Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ) will host the RedLAC delegates from Brazil, Belize, Bangladesh, Peru, Haiti, Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Haiti and Honduras, as well as representatives from the USA and Germany.
Jamaica and Belize will be the only English-speaking Caribbean islands represented at the meeting which will also have participants from the U.S.A., Germany and Bangladesh.
Commander John McFarlane, executive director of the EFJ, said that most of the agencies in RedLAC, like EFJ, administer funds made available through debt swap agreements with the United States of America.
PROTECT AND CONSERVE
"Collectively, over the past ten years, RedLAC has disbursed over $200m to projects designed to protect and conserve the natural environment," Commander McFarlane said.
He explained that the Kingston meeting will see RedLAC executives, "working to develop protocols for programmes with common themes around the region and seeking to develop a strategic plan for the next 2-5 years, identify additional funding sources and strengthen the network by reviewing best practices and sharing strategies for evaluating and monitoring projects."
Commander McFarlane noted that the RedLAC six-country executive meets twice annually in addition to hosting an annual conference. This is the first time that the conference is being held in an English-speaking country.
