The main aim of the project is the harmonisation of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) principles in development planning with simultaneous efforts to disseminate SLM information while promoting and keeping SLM practices in the forefront of the public consciousness. The project therefore seeks to achieve these goals through adoption of a two-fold strategy which would address land degradation by examining and attempting to modify the regulatory framework to developmental planning. The Government recognises that several departments have conflicting mandates or in some cases there may be duplication of efforts which sends a mixed signal to the public as to what constitutes permissible and optimal use of land resources and what regions of the country are suitable to a given type of activity. Additionally, planning and regulatory efforts are stymied by outdated or inappropriate legislation that present significant impediments to the execution of SLM programmes.
Under the ambit of land management, Trinidad and Tobago is in the process of formulating or revising a number of policies in addition to the review and amendment of relevant legislation. These policy and legislation revisions pertain mainly to the sectors of urban planning, squatter regularisation and forest and protected area management. The Trinidad and Tobago Government formally approved the National Action Programme (NAP) in 2006 and under the GEF 5 cycle Land Degradation Focal Area, Trinidad and Tobago is seeking to align its NAP to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Ten Year Strategy (i.e. 2008 – 2018, the Strategy), conduct national reporting to the Convention for the next two reporting cycles (2011/2012 and 2013/2014) as well as associated enabling activities. Currently, the implementation of the NAP has largely occurred in parallel with this most recent round of policy and legislation formulation/revision, therefore a degree of complementarity is required to effectively marry the needs of sustainable land management (SLM) with the work programmes of the various Divisions and agencies of the Trinidad and Tobago Government.
Trinidad and Tobago developed its NAP in 2006 and this remains largely relevant in the current term, however a few elements of the Strategy require integration to a revised NAP. Aspects of the NAP which require attention centre mainly on the development of performance and impact indicators. In this respect, Trinidad and Tobago's revised NAP would conform with the GEF Land Degradation Focal Area Objectives 3 and 4: "Reduction of pressures on natural resources from competing land uses in the wider landscape" and "Increase capacity to apply adaptive management tools in SLM" with emphasis on the development of guideline tools for assessing ecosystem stability and maintenance of ecosystem services. In this context the outcomes of the NAP also needs to be more closely aligned with the four Strategic Objectives (SO) and the five Operational Objectives (OO) of the Strategy. Consequently the work programmes and focal areas outlined by the current NAP would be amended to directly reflect outcomes expected from the SO and OO.
The majority of Trinidad and Tobago’s land degradation problems arise from adverse land use/practices from built development for residential, industrial or agricultural use being a significant contributing factor. In light of this the Trinidad and Tobago Government (GORTT) has embarked on revising dated policies on urban planning with specific focus on urban planning at the national and municipal levels as well as policy directed to regulating built development on hillsides. Three documents have been drafted to update obsolete policies which are the draft twenty year National Physical Development Plan (NPDP), the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and the Hillside Development Policy (HDP). Related to this, the GORTT is in the process of implementing a squatter regularisation programme directed at ameliorating the chronic problem of agricultural and residential squatting on State Lands through the State lands Regularisation of Tenure Act (1998). On the conservation side, the GORTT have under the GEF 5 biodiversity focal area, engaged the FAO to develop a National Forest and Protected Areas Policy which was approved in 2012. Associated with the Forest and Protected Areas Policy is the National Forests and Protected Areas Bill which is presently in the drafting and review stages, it therefore intended that this bill would fall within the scope of the Gap Analysis. Bridging these policies is the National Environmental Policy (NEP) which establishes the national vision for holistic environmental management, the inclusion and specific reference to SLM principles would be a key part of the mainstreaming of the NAP. It should be noted that most of these activities/projects which have been undertaken within the last two years fall within the purview of land management, but are administered independently of each other. An aligned and revised NAP would seek to redress this by providing SLM guidelines and overarching coordination.
The GEF 5 funding for enabling activities under the Land Degradation Focal Area would be allocated to successive phases of the exercise. The first phase of the proposal would involve the conduct of a gap analysis for national policy and legislation relevant to land management in Trinidad and Tobago. Policy documents and legislation would be reviewed with the aim of arriving at a report of recommendations for the reconciling of conflicts and duplications with respect to projects and programmes as they pertain to the management of State Lands. This aspect of NAP alignment would also include recommendations for the inclusion of SLM principles in all the reviewed policies and legislation, with particular emphasis on the amendment of legislation to provide a legal framework that would offer appropriate deterrents for land uses that run counter to SLM and which would apply equally to both the public and private sector.
Following on from the gap analysis, a similar review of would be tendered that would seek to find opportunities to integrate SLM into existing and planned GORTT projects and programmes, particularly those with a dimension for information dissemination, public awareness and education. The resulting report would also provide a road map for the formulation of a campaign specifically dedicated to SLM awareness in the public consciousness. This campaign would as far as practical make use of government multi-media resources and personnel to produce information packages and awareness materials aimed at different demographic groups.
While Trinidad and Tobago’s NAP in its current form has outlined indicators, these do not exactly align with the impact and performance indicators as delineated by the Strategy, therefore revision of this aspect of the NAP is imperative. Amendment of the NAP in this fashion would enhance the monitoring and reporting process to reflect what is intended by the Strategy and give a clearer picture of implementation of the Convention. Ancillary sections of the NAP in need of revision relate to the aforementioned mainstreaming and public awareness of SLM which would also extend to sharing information on soil management. Closely linked with mainstreaming and public education and awareness is the establishment of a Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) which would serve as a multi-agency repository for land use and management information in Trinidad and Tobago that would house information from a multiple government divisions/agencies and possibly have input from the private sector as appropriate.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Environmental Management Authority (EMA),Town and Country Planning Division (TCPD), Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) as well as its Institute for Marine Affairs (IMA) have each, to some degree, compiled and utilised Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing databases which provide ground truthed data on land use and status. Additionally, the Forestry Division has recently conducted a survey through the use of aerial photography as part of a mapping exercise to reassess forest resources and the extent of damage caused by weather events such as storms and forest fires. The use of geospatial data and tools by these various government agencies is conducted in parallel to each other without significant cross sectoral exchange. A workshop is proposed to clarify the lines of propriety for geospatial data and its availability for use in the public domain. One of the objectives of the work shop would be to examine the feasibility of reconciling digitised and geo-referenced land use and land coverage data in a GIS application which may be used as an integrated and centralised planning tool by various government agencies. Optimally, the results of the workshop may inform on the development of a land management CHM that would host a secure online and interactive GIS that would serve the general public with read only information on forest cover, urban development, land use and the boundaries of areas of interest such as national parks and protected areas. The CHM would have the potential to serve not only as a source of information but also as a guide to developers in the private sector as the informal zonation for different types of land use. The establishment and population of a website for the CHM would be executed by third party web developers, subsequent to which the maintenance and further input to the site would be done by collaboration between technical staff of contributing ministries and the IT department of the Ministry of the Environment.
A consultation would be planned for the range of government divisions/agencies and NGOs/CBOs involved in land management to gain input for the identifying and adoption of suitable performance and impact indicators for the NAP (as per the Strategy). This exercise would mainly engage technical personnel to review a variety of indices as developed by the World Bank or as recommended by the Committee on Science and Technology and the Secretariat of the UNCCD. Participants are expected to be sourced from organisations across Trinidad as well as Tobago; however it is not decided at this stage whether the workshop would be done in both islands or if a single event would be held in Trinidad, this would be determined after meeting with consultants on the logistics of the exercise
With respect to meeting the reporting requirements over the next two cycles, the Project plans to utilise CBOs to collect and collate land management data from the various government agencies and the private sector. Data collection for the Fourth National Report was conducted by a CSO which that is linked with the Partnership Initiative for Sustainable Land Management (PISLM), a sub-regional CBO that promotes SLM projects in the wider Caribbean. Use of CBOs in the reporting process was seen as an avenue for capturing traditional uses and knowledge in land use and the associated changes in such. The Project would therefore seek to continue the practice of utilising CBO or other third party services for the next two reporting cycles and put in place a framework by which reporting would be conducted in accordance with a consistent and appropriate methodology. It would therefore be necessary to produce reporting guidelines for the local context of Trinidad and Tobago. Guidelines could be produced in the form of a manual which instructs on the sources and types of data which need to be collected.
The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will be responsible for executing the Project and in its execution will be guided by the Land Management Coordinating Committee (LMCC), which is a Cabinet-sanctioned Committee that would consist of members of various agencies (including an NGO) that have appreciable land management portfolios and be chaired by the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. The EMA will be appointed an ex officio member of this Committee. Coordination and supervision of the NAP alignment and the reporting process would come from this Cabinet sanctioned Committee. This Committee has already been convened and approved since August 2011 with the substantive purpose of implementation of the NAP and its membership ranges across a number of government ministries and divisions mandated to manage land resources as well as inclusion of CSO representation. One of the main tasks of the Committee is the identification of resources for the implementation of the NAP within the confines of their budgetary allocations for any given year. The Committee has the added responsibility for examining options for an Integrated Financing Strategy for the implementation of the revised NAP over the long term through the establishments of partnerships with the private sector and other innovative means.
It should be noted that while the NAP alignment exercise consists of discrete components, these may be carried out in parallel to each other as far as practicable (as opposed to sequential implementation). For instance, the mainstreaming aspect requires a desktop review of policy and legislation documents which could occur simultaneously with the review of government programmes suitable for the promotion of SLM in the area of public awareness and education. In turn the collection of data for the fifth national report would be on-going for the duration of third and fourth quarters of 2012 (it is anticipated that the submission of the Fifth National Report may not meet the September deadline, but is targeted for submission to the Secretariat before the close of 2012).
The outputs of the entire exercise may be summated into three general categories. The first is capacity and institutional strengthening which would come from mainstreaming of SLM. A report on the review of all legislation and policies for land management would also offer recommendations for the inclusion and the streamlining of SLM. This component also ensures that the NAP remains current with other national development plans. The second output would be the development of a mechanism of the dissemination of information on problems the country faces with regards to land degradation and the SLM approaches that may be used to combat them. Closely allied with this is the establishment of a land information clearing house intended to provide an overview of areas of vulnerability, conservation and usage/vegetation cover. The clearing house would be heavily depending on consolidating existing geospatial data into a centralised online GIS that would be aimed at servicing both government agencies and the private sector. The third tangible output would be the development of reporting guidelines/reporting manual that would incorporate the adopted impact and performance indicators mandated by the Strategy. Use of the guidelines would increase efficiency and afford consistency and continuity to the reporting process, thereby providing a more accurate and timely assessment of the implementation of the Convention. Reporting would also provide feedback for the maintenance of the geospatial database that forms the platform of the land information clearing house.
For all components of the NAP alignment as well as the national reporting, the GORTT is committed to providing co-financing and in-kind contributions. This would be achieved in the form of direct funding and in-kind contributions. For the institutional strengthening/mainstreaming component, the Ministry of the Environment (which is the Implementing Agency – IA) would be in a position to provide premises, transport and administrative staff for the review of policies and legislation along with the subsequent recommendations for the amendment of such. For the second output, information dissemination on SLM, the GORTT would furnish support through the Ministry of Communications (and the Communication departments of other ministries) for the provision of multi-media resources in terms of broadcast air-time and the production of promotional materials. The reporting guidelines/manual would be produced using IA staff and equipment. The third output of the land information clearing house would utilise, technical GIS officers from a contributing ministries and the collection of field data necessary to populate the CHM would be done using equipment, vehicles and man-hours from a number these agencies. With specific reference to Trinidad and Tobago’s NAP it would have to be revised to include the indicators as directed by the Strategy and consequently a range of technical officers from various Ministries and Divisions would have to allocate time for this process in addition which would involve an inter-ministerial consultation. Funding would be utilised for the renting of venues for workshops/consultations, audio visual equipment, consulting services and the requisitioning of broadcast and advertising time on mass media as necessitates.
Under the ambit of land management, Trinidad and Tobago is in the process of formulating or revising a number of policies in addition to the review and amendment of relevant legislation. These policy and legislation revisions pertain mainly to the sectors of urban planning, squatter regularisation and forest and protected area management. The Trinidad and Tobago Government formally approved the National Action Programme (NAP) in 2006 and under the GEF 5 cycle Land Degradation Focal Area, Trinidad and Tobago is seeking to align its NAP to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Ten Year Strategy (i.e. 2008 – 2018, the Strategy), conduct national reporting to the Convention for the next two reporting cycles (2011/2012 and 2013/2014) as well as associated enabling activities. Currently, the implementation of the NAP has largely occurred in parallel with this most recent round of policy and legislation formulation/revision, therefore a degree of complementarity is required to effectively marry the needs of sustainable land management (SLM) with the work programmes of the various Divisions and agencies of the Trinidad and Tobago Government.
Trinidad and Tobago developed its NAP in 2006 and this remains largely relevant in the current term, however a few elements of the Strategy require integration to a revised NAP. Aspects of the NAP which require attention centre mainly on the development of performance and impact indicators. In this respect, Trinidad and Tobago's revised NAP would conform with the GEF Land Degradation Focal Area Objectives 3 and 4: "Reduction of pressures on natural resources from competing land uses in the wider landscape" and "Increase capacity to apply adaptive management tools in SLM" with emphasis on the development of guideline tools for assessing ecosystem stability and maintenance of ecosystem services. In this context the outcomes of the NAP also needs to be more closely aligned with the four Strategic Objectives (SO) and the five Operational Objectives (OO) of the Strategy. Consequently the work programmes and focal areas outlined by the current NAP would be amended to directly reflect outcomes expected from the SO and OO.
The majority of Trinidad and Tobago’s land degradation problems arise from adverse land use/practices from built development for residential, industrial or agricultural use being a significant contributing factor. In light of this the Trinidad and Tobago Government (GORTT) has embarked on revising dated policies on urban planning with specific focus on urban planning at the national and municipal levels as well as policy directed to regulating built development on hillsides. Three documents have been drafted to update obsolete policies which are the draft twenty year National Physical Development Plan (NPDP), the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and the Hillside Development Policy (HDP). Related to this, the GORTT is in the process of implementing a squatter regularisation programme directed at ameliorating the chronic problem of agricultural and residential squatting on State Lands through the State lands Regularisation of Tenure Act (1998). On the conservation side, the GORTT have under the GEF 5 biodiversity focal area, engaged the FAO to develop a National Forest and Protected Areas Policy which was approved in 2012. Associated with the Forest and Protected Areas Policy is the National Forests and Protected Areas Bill which is presently in the drafting and review stages, it therefore intended that this bill would fall within the scope of the Gap Analysis. Bridging these policies is the National Environmental Policy (NEP) which establishes the national vision for holistic environmental management, the inclusion and specific reference to SLM principles would be a key part of the mainstreaming of the NAP. It should be noted that most of these activities/projects which have been undertaken within the last two years fall within the purview of land management, but are administered independently of each other. An aligned and revised NAP would seek to redress this by providing SLM guidelines and overarching coordination.
The GEF 5 funding for enabling activities under the Land Degradation Focal Area would be allocated to successive phases of the exercise. The first phase of the proposal would involve the conduct of a gap analysis for national policy and legislation relevant to land management in Trinidad and Tobago. Policy documents and legislation would be reviewed with the aim of arriving at a report of recommendations for the reconciling of conflicts and duplications with respect to projects and programmes as they pertain to the management of State Lands. This aspect of NAP alignment would also include recommendations for the inclusion of SLM principles in all the reviewed policies and legislation, with particular emphasis on the amendment of legislation to provide a legal framework that would offer appropriate deterrents for land uses that run counter to SLM and which would apply equally to both the public and private sector.
Following on from the gap analysis, a similar review of would be tendered that would seek to find opportunities to integrate SLM into existing and planned GORTT projects and programmes, particularly those with a dimension for information dissemination, public awareness and education. The resulting report would also provide a road map for the formulation of a campaign specifically dedicated to SLM awareness in the public consciousness. This campaign would as far as practical make use of government multi-media resources and personnel to produce information packages and awareness materials aimed at different demographic groups.
While Trinidad and Tobago’s NAP in its current form has outlined indicators, these do not exactly align with the impact and performance indicators as delineated by the Strategy, therefore revision of this aspect of the NAP is imperative. Amendment of the NAP in this fashion would enhance the monitoring and reporting process to reflect what is intended by the Strategy and give a clearer picture of implementation of the Convention. Ancillary sections of the NAP in need of revision relate to the aforementioned mainstreaming and public awareness of SLM which would also extend to sharing information on soil management. Closely linked with mainstreaming and public education and awareness is the establishment of a Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) which would serve as a multi-agency repository for land use and management information in Trinidad and Tobago that would house information from a multiple government divisions/agencies and possibly have input from the private sector as appropriate.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Environmental Management Authority (EMA),Town and Country Planning Division (TCPD), Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) as well as its Institute for Marine Affairs (IMA) have each, to some degree, compiled and utilised Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing databases which provide ground truthed data on land use and status. Additionally, the Forestry Division has recently conducted a survey through the use of aerial photography as part of a mapping exercise to reassess forest resources and the extent of damage caused by weather events such as storms and forest fires. The use of geospatial data and tools by these various government agencies is conducted in parallel to each other without significant cross sectoral exchange. A workshop is proposed to clarify the lines of propriety for geospatial data and its availability for use in the public domain. One of the objectives of the work shop would be to examine the feasibility of reconciling digitised and geo-referenced land use and land coverage data in a GIS application which may be used as an integrated and centralised planning tool by various government agencies. Optimally, the results of the workshop may inform on the development of a land management CHM that would host a secure online and interactive GIS that would serve the general public with read only information on forest cover, urban development, land use and the boundaries of areas of interest such as national parks and protected areas. The CHM would have the potential to serve not only as a source of information but also as a guide to developers in the private sector as the informal zonation for different types of land use. The establishment and population of a website for the CHM would be executed by third party web developers, subsequent to which the maintenance and further input to the site would be done by collaboration between technical staff of contributing ministries and the IT department of the Ministry of the Environment.
A consultation would be planned for the range of government divisions/agencies and NGOs/CBOs involved in land management to gain input for the identifying and adoption of suitable performance and impact indicators for the NAP (as per the Strategy). This exercise would mainly engage technical personnel to review a variety of indices as developed by the World Bank or as recommended by the Committee on Science and Technology and the Secretariat of the UNCCD. Participants are expected to be sourced from organisations across Trinidad as well as Tobago; however it is not decided at this stage whether the workshop would be done in both islands or if a single event would be held in Trinidad, this would be determined after meeting with consultants on the logistics of the exercise
With respect to meeting the reporting requirements over the next two cycles, the Project plans to utilise CBOs to collect and collate land management data from the various government agencies and the private sector. Data collection for the Fourth National Report was conducted by a CSO which that is linked with the Partnership Initiative for Sustainable Land Management (PISLM), a sub-regional CBO that promotes SLM projects in the wider Caribbean. Use of CBOs in the reporting process was seen as an avenue for capturing traditional uses and knowledge in land use and the associated changes in such. The Project would therefore seek to continue the practice of utilising CBO or other third party services for the next two reporting cycles and put in place a framework by which reporting would be conducted in accordance with a consistent and appropriate methodology. It would therefore be necessary to produce reporting guidelines for the local context of Trinidad and Tobago. Guidelines could be produced in the form of a manual which instructs on the sources and types of data which need to be collected.
The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will be responsible for executing the Project and in its execution will be guided by the Land Management Coordinating Committee (LMCC), which is a Cabinet-sanctioned Committee that would consist of members of various agencies (including an NGO) that have appreciable land management portfolios and be chaired by the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. The EMA will be appointed an ex officio member of this Committee. Coordination and supervision of the NAP alignment and the reporting process would come from this Cabinet sanctioned Committee. This Committee has already been convened and approved since August 2011 with the substantive purpose of implementation of the NAP and its membership ranges across a number of government ministries and divisions mandated to manage land resources as well as inclusion of CSO representation. One of the main tasks of the Committee is the identification of resources for the implementation of the NAP within the confines of their budgetary allocations for any given year. The Committee has the added responsibility for examining options for an Integrated Financing Strategy for the implementation of the revised NAP over the long term through the establishments of partnerships with the private sector and other innovative means.
It should be noted that while the NAP alignment exercise consists of discrete components, these may be carried out in parallel to each other as far as practicable (as opposed to sequential implementation). For instance, the mainstreaming aspect requires a desktop review of policy and legislation documents which could occur simultaneously with the review of government programmes suitable for the promotion of SLM in the area of public awareness and education. In turn the collection of data for the fifth national report would be on-going for the duration of third and fourth quarters of 2012 (it is anticipated that the submission of the Fifth National Report may not meet the September deadline, but is targeted for submission to the Secretariat before the close of 2012).
The outputs of the entire exercise may be summated into three general categories. The first is capacity and institutional strengthening which would come from mainstreaming of SLM. A report on the review of all legislation and policies for land management would also offer recommendations for the inclusion and the streamlining of SLM. This component also ensures that the NAP remains current with other national development plans. The second output would be the development of a mechanism of the dissemination of information on problems the country faces with regards to land degradation and the SLM approaches that may be used to combat them. Closely allied with this is the establishment of a land information clearing house intended to provide an overview of areas of vulnerability, conservation and usage/vegetation cover. The clearing house would be heavily depending on consolidating existing geospatial data into a centralised online GIS that would be aimed at servicing both government agencies and the private sector. The third tangible output would be the development of reporting guidelines/reporting manual that would incorporate the adopted impact and performance indicators mandated by the Strategy. Use of the guidelines would increase efficiency and afford consistency and continuity to the reporting process, thereby providing a more accurate and timely assessment of the implementation of the Convention. Reporting would also provide feedback for the maintenance of the geospatial database that forms the platform of the land information clearing house.
For all components of the NAP alignment as well as the national reporting, the GORTT is committed to providing co-financing and in-kind contributions. This would be achieved in the form of direct funding and in-kind contributions. For the institutional strengthening/mainstreaming component, the Ministry of the Environment (which is the Implementing Agency – IA) would be in a position to provide premises, transport and administrative staff for the review of policies and legislation along with the subsequent recommendations for the amendment of such. For the second output, information dissemination on SLM, the GORTT would furnish support through the Ministry of Communications (and the Communication departments of other ministries) for the provision of multi-media resources in terms of broadcast air-time and the production of promotional materials. The reporting guidelines/manual would be produced using IA staff and equipment. The third output of the land information clearing house would utilise, technical GIS officers from a contributing ministries and the collection of field data necessary to populate the CHM would be done using equipment, vehicles and man-hours from a number these agencies. With specific reference to Trinidad and Tobago’s NAP it would have to be revised to include the indicators as directed by the Strategy and consequently a range of technical officers from various Ministries and Divisions would have to allocate time for this process in addition which would involve an inter-ministerial consultation. Funding would be utilised for the renting of venues for workshops/consultations, audio visual equipment, consulting services and the requisitioning of broadcast and advertising time on mass media as necessitates.
Project Details
GEF Project ID
5183
Country
Trinidad and Tobago
Implementing Agencies
GEF Secretariat
Status
Received by GEF Secretariat
Region
Small Islands Developing States
Executing Agencies
The Environmental Management Authority
GEF Period
GEF - 5
Project Type
Enabling Activity
Focal Areas
Funding Source
GEF Trust Fund
Financials
USDCo-financing Total
94,000
GEF Project Grant
150,000
GEF Agency Fees
0
Timeline
Received by GEF
16 Oct 2012