After 13 months with 15 in-country missions, 400+ consultancy days and more than 40 deliverables, this important consultancy project on "Institutional and Organisational Strengthening of WASCO Saint Lucia and Regional Water Utilities" comes to an end.The numerous documents produced can be accessed through the links below, so that they can be of use for other water utilities:Organisational Development1. WASCO Strategy for developing a QMS1. Draft Action Plan QMS2. M&E Report - Final...

With the nearing end of the consultancy project “Institutional and Organisational Strengthening of WASCO and Regional Water Utilities”, an important chapter in the German development cooperation in the Eastern Caribbean comes to a closure.While this current project started in November 2019, the collaboration between WASCO and the CATS programme reaches back several years: a first one-year consultancy project was initiated as part of the first phase of the CATS programme in late 2014,...

Diving in a Coral Forest - click here to watch the video on YouTube!Since early 2019, the CATS Programme collaborates with CLEAR Caribbean on a coral restauration project in Soufriere, Saint Lucia. The project aims at propagating Staghorn Coral and Elkhorn Coral along the coastline in the Soufriere area, reaching from Anse Chastanet Bay to the Pitons.The corals are grown on trees made of PVC pipes and glass fibre bars and are anchored to the ground with ropes. So far, a total of ten trees have b...

Staff from a total of 8 Caribbean water utilities participated in the Regional Training on Measures and Activities for NRW-Reduction in Saint Lucia taking place from September 24th to 27th, 2019. The training, which is part of the consultancy project “Institutional and Organisational Strengthening of WASCO Saint Lucia and Regional Water Utilities”, was conducted by two hydraulic modelling and network management experts of Hamburg Wasser and Consulaqua, Germany.The training was the se...

Resilience of the agricultural sector against the effects of climate change does not only refer to adapted cropping practices or improved land use. It also includes the strengthening and capacity building of small businesses along the value chain which use agricultural raw materials and add value for the end consumer. Only a holistic approach and the strengthening of all stakeholders involved can create a resilient agricultural sector.Following this understanding, the CATS Programme has partnere...

Coral reefs are exceptionally valuable in terms of the ecosystem services they deliver. They provide food, livelihoods and economic opportunity to people in more than 100 countries around the world and protect shorelines from erosion. They are a source of enjoyment for national and international tourists alike. Hosting a quarter of all known marine species, they also play a critical role in the broader coastal ecosystem. (Source)The health of coral reefs is hence of great importance for communit...

A four-day training workshop in Nursery Management and Forest Ecology was successfully completed in Dominica on August 10th, 2019. A total of ten people were trained including seven men and three women from the local communities.Training participantsThe training workshop was geared to support the reforestation of the Soufriere Scotts Head Watershed. The goal was to improve the general ecological health and services of the watershed to maintain productive ecosystems in the adjoining Soufriere Sco...

The Sandy Island Oyster Bed Marine Protected Area (SIOBMPA) Office coordinated a youth summer camp held during the week of August 19th to 23rd 2019. This camp was focussed on raising the awareness of the Carriacou’s youth of the valuable ecosystems on their island and their waste management responsibility while also improving their snorkelling and swimming skills and stimulating writing and creativity.The SIOBMPA is a still generally pristine and very unique ecosystem on the island of Carr...

The establishment of marine protected and marine managed areas, as a strategy for marine ecosystem management, has resulted in the loss of and minimised use of traditional fishing grounds.  An immediate unfortunate consequence of this was reduced income by fishers, and the trickle-down effects of the compromised sustenance of their families and the wider communities.  The introduction of FAD technology to the region in the early 1990s was an attempt to attain equilibrium between enviro...

Beaches and near-coast environments are crucial and vital for individual communities and the economy in Saint Lucia and the wider Caribbean region. Yet, these environments are affected negatively by, among others, human interaction, land-based pollution, coastal degradation and climate change.To raise the awareness about the important role of beaches, what benefits a beach provides, what negatively impacts beaches and how the degradation of beaches along the Caribbean coasts can be prevented, th...