A one-day Consultation for stakeholders to review Dominica’s Strategic Programme on Climate Resilience 2012-2017 got underway at the Fort Young Hotel on Tuesday.
The consultation implemented by the Ministry of Health and Environment Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP) is being held in collaboration with the World Bank.
The objectives of the consultation includes; providing stakeholders on the status of implementation of the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR)/DVRP, review and update priorities for Dominica’s Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPRC), review the country/ programme level Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators and identify/Examine ongoing planned projects relevant to the SPCR Priorities.
Speaking at the opening ceremony earlier on Tuesday, Project Coordinator of PPCR/ DVRP Project Coordination Unit, Collin Guiste, said the SPCR was developed in 2012 as part of the process of accessing funding under the Climate Investment Fund by the World Bank.
According to him, this strategic programme also assisted them in developing low carbon climate development strategy as a strategy going forward for Dominica in building resilience on climate change.
“We are here today to do a review of the process and to understand what is required to be done as we go forward,” he said.
Guiste stated that under the DVRP the total package has amounted to US$38 Million and funding is available for, “critical infrastructures, roads, stabilization, bridges, water storage tanks for the West Coast, stump drains island-wide, contingency emergency response component which is one million US dollars; in case a disaster strike this is a basket of funds that is readily available for quick recovery and project management.”
“Under the DVRP what we are doing now is to undertake an assessment of the Hydromet system in Dominica because we have the various departments doing their own individual activity, the Met office is more aviation oriented, they need proper housing, specialized equipment also, proper distribution network has to be set up and transmission of data has to be set up,” he said. “The Hydromet network is expecting to create real time weather reporting, for instance a system that is approaching Barbados or Antigua won’t have their same impact as Dominica because of our terrain.”
Guiste added, “Because of our terrain Dominica has been impacted significantly by localize climate and that is why sometimes you see there are heavy rains in one area and 200 meters, a mile down the road there is no rainfall…this system will enable us to see what is coming and to give a better prediction within an hour or two as compared to the system that exist now we got to wait about more than three hours to understand what is happening.”
He revealed that the draft report has already been received and a consultant will be in Dominica next week to present his findings to the various stakeholders.
Meanwhile; Senior Climate Change Specialist Arati Belle says the PPCR is one of the windows in the climate investment funds, “and we have a results framework where we are monitoring the results from all the projects and programmes that they are supporting around the world.”
Belle stated that various aspects are being monitored and captured in the monitoring framework.
“The results coming from this programme there is a monitoring framework that the PPCR has leveled up with five core indicators,” Belle stated. “This looks at how well main streaming of climate priorities is done in the policy framework of the country, how implementation of capacities there in terms of institutions on climate issues, what are the specific innovative model, instrument and activities that the project is supporting, the quality of those instrument models and activities the number of beneficiaries from them and overall the number of beneficiaries from the programme itself.”
She said also that this is done annually.
Collin Guiste, when you have news, please let us know. You guys have been repeating the same information at different forums for the past two to three years.
We talking about climate change and environment disaster vulnerabilitiy prevention to get easy money from the World Bank and at the same time we blowing poisonous smoke into the air for people to breathe and get sick. A bunch of pretenders and don’t think the World Bank is impressed by that, they must be thinking some jokers from Dominica blowing smoke up their backside too. I really getting mad when I think how people in charge that should know better , treating us like fools and make all of us look like idiots.