CSEDNet Workshop

Environmental Economics Workshop for Civil Society

September 30^th – October 1^st, 2003, Grenada, W.I.

ABAPD sent the Secretary of the Association to the Caribbean Sustainable Development Network (CSEDNet) Workshop on Environmental Economics for Civil Society organizations in the Eastern Caribbean .

The Workshop was hosted by the Caribbean Sustainable Economic Development Network (CSEDNet), which was formed in January 2000, at a Conference organized by the University of the West Indies (UWI) - Sustainable Economic Development Unit (SEDU). This Environmental Economics Workshop was a component of the final phase of activities undertaken by CSEDNet under an United Nations Development Program (UNDP) financed project on “Caribbean Sustainability Assessment.”

The initial phase of this project involved a survey conducted among the twelve (12) CARICOM countries and for which 238 survey interviews were successfully completed from a selected sample of 375 organisations. A major area of enquiry in the survey was the identification of the areas of interest, activities and needs of the organisations as articulated from their own perspectives.

“Training”, in general, was identified as the foremost need of the NGOs/CBOs interviewed. Among the areas identified for training, were those of “social impact assessment” and “cost benefit analysis” together with “environmental impact assessment” and “economic valuation of the environment”. This workshop was therefore in response to the findings of the survey and is targeted at representatives of non-governmental organizations and other groups in civil society, in particular those groups who participated in the survey. The objective of the workshop was to provide training in the critical areas related to this field.

Topics covered included:

Valuation of environmental resources and Cost Benefit Analysis
Environmental impact assessment (EIA)
Social impact assessment (SIA)