Government of Dominica

Dominica hosts International Donors Meeting

Government has embarked on a Climate-Resilient Low-Carbon Development Strategy to facilitate its aim to adopt a green economy while ensuring the survival of its productive sectors.

This initiative is to build resilience in the priority sectors as identified in the Growth and Social Protection Strategy. This Strategy will ensure that Dominica achieves its sustainable development aspirations while meeting critical social development and poverty reduction goals.

In light of this, the Ministry of Finance has collaborated with the National Export Council Secretariat (NECS) and the Environmental Co-ordinating Unit (ECU) to host an International Development Partners / Donors Conference from March 21-23 2012.

One of the main objectives of the conference is to discuss possible areas of collaboration such as climate change, food security, renewable energy, greenhouse gas reduction and disaster risk management programs.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Samuel Carrette says in view of the recent effects of climate change on Dominica, it is necessary that stakeholders and policy- makers use this week’s meeting to highlight reasons why Dominica is in urgent need of such assistance.

“As you know in Dominica, we suffer almost on an annual basis, from the severe effects of climate change…last year and the year before we saw [in] unusual areas, extended drought periods and massive flooding affecting our communities and our people and so therefore we must position the country in a very strategic way to be able to gain access to some of the climate change funding.”

“So we must [join in] the climate-change discourse to be able to benefit from the funding that is available. But also to ensure that we place the country on a path of sustainability and to secure the survival of our people in the long term.”

It is estimated that Dominica would require approximately sixty million dollars in grants and concessions from the international donor community to adequately address its climate change concerns.

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