CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC -The St. Lucia-based Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission says it will launch a Regional Environmental Monitoring Data Portal (REMDAP) on Tuesday.
The OECS Commission said, “REMDAP will contribute to the preservation of Caribbean ecosystems and natural resources through the improvement of data availability, enabling informed decisions, and strengthening the regional environmental monitoring and assessment process.”
It said this initiative is in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme’s Caribbean Environment Programme (UNEP-CEP) and the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) through the GEF-funded Integrating Water, Land, and Ecosystem Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (GEF IWEco) Project.
In 2021, a feasibility study for establishing a REMDAP was completed under the IWEco project. The OECS Commission said that the study recognized the importance of prioritizing the generation of environmental data for more effective science-based decision-making and the need for a shared web-based geospatial portal for ecological data.
It said that under Component 3.1 of the project, implemented by CARPHA and the OECS Commission, REMDAP was determined to be a priority initiative for the Caribbean region based on national stakeholder consultations.
The portal has been developed and implemented in eight participating countries, including five OECS member states: Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Later this year, REMDAP will be implemented in four other OECS member states: Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands.
The OECS Commission said that this will be supported by the European Union-funded Biodiversity Support Programme in ACP Coastal Environments (BioSPACE) project.
The overall objective of REMDAP is to contribute to the preservation of Caribbean ecosystems and natural resources through improved data availability and to serve as a clearinghouse mechanism to strengthen regional environmental monitoring and assessment.
It is also intended to provide a readily available source of reliable data to decision-makers, academics, and NGOs, among others, and to provide a set of useful metrics, indicators, and variables for monitoring.
It will also include multi-scale tools and indicators to monitor progress towards achieving targets in multilateral environmental agreements and upgrade regional capacity to manage spatial data and information for ecological indicators.
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