Port of Spain, March 6, 2014: Dr. Michael Witter, member of the Caribbean Green Economy Action Learning Group, recently attended an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ENVIRONET Expert Workshop on Green Growth, Development Planning and Policy to share Caribbean perspectives and experiences on green economy.  A brief interview with Dr. Witter is available at https://archive.org/details/Michael-Witter-CANARI.

The workshop was held February 20 2014 in Paris and aimed to share experience, identify lessons and promote good practice amongst development partners on how to advance and support country-led, inclusive green growth initiatives.

At the workshop, Dr. Witter, who is a Senior Research Fellow in the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, highlighted the work on green economy being done by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute with the Caribbean Green Economy Action Learning Group .  He noted that the Workshop provided an important opportunity to share knowledge and build partnerships to support work being done in the Caribbean and given the vulnerabilities of the Caribbean to global economic and environmental shocks, cooperation is important to help to address poverty and other development challenges. 

This Workshop focused on in-country green growth initiatives and on how development partners are organising themselves to support these. The Workshop built on the recent OECD book, Putting Green Growth in the Heart of Development, and on a recent guide on national green economy dialogues and diagnostics, Scoping a Green Economy, published the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which features discussion of a number of cases including from the Caribbean.  The guide is available for download at http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/16554IIED.pdf.

The Caribbean Green Economy Action Learning Group is an independent group of experts from across the Caribbean working to identify and promote ways in which “green economy” can advance sustainable development in the Caribbean through shaping visions, perspectives, positions and actions.   Members are from government and inter-governmental agencies, non-governmental organisations, academic institutes, and technical assistance agencies in the Caribbean with expertise in fields ranging from macroeconomics to urban planning, tourism, agriculture, rural development, gender and climate change.  All the members are in positions to implement or influence change, and many are already engaged in work that can provide material for action learning.  The GE ALG is convened by CANARI and more information about their work is available at http://www.canari.org/greeneconomy.asp.