Climate Change Country Profiles for 17 LAC Nations
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford University have generated country-level studies of climate observations and multi-model projections for 52 developing countries, 17 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). For each country there is a report that contains a set of maps and diagrams illustrating […]
Does Payment for Watershed Services Work in LAC?
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008An innovative and increasingly popular policy option in the deforestation and water resources management fields in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is the so-called payment for environment services (PES) approach. But as these IIED reports show, as it has been applied so far to watershed management does not always bring the hoped-for environmental benefits. […]
The High-Level Caribbean Sustainable Energy Seminar
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Temas Observation: This seminar is a follow-up to the meeting held in Guyana last year, where some of the same promises were made. Let’s hope that not another year must pass before something more concrete emerges from this initiative. ________________________ From the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): Plans to unleash the Caribbean region’s renewable energy potential […]
The Basics II, Foundations: Is a Constitutional Provision on the Environment Necessary?
Thursday, June 28th, 2007I had in the backlog queue a “Basics” piece on the importance of setting a solid environmental governance foundation through adoption of properly crafted and targeted laws, but held off publishing it for Temas administrative reasons I will not go into here. In the meantime, however, the Dominican Republic (DR) has come forward with ideas […]
Consumer Protection in LAC III – Consumer Agencies in LAC
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007To make up for missing World Consumer Rights Day (March 15), I promised to give you a five-part overview of consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In Part I, I looked at how consumer agencies and consumer NGOs in the region celebrated the Day. In Part II-A I examined how intergovernmental bodies […]
Combatting Deforestation I: How Bad Is It in LAC?
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007In my “confession and foreword” to the series on deforestation in LAC, I promised to begin with a look at the current state of knowledge about the rate and magnitude of deforestation in in the region. Here is my stab at this topic, building on an entry I originally sketched out last November regarding the […]
GEF Funds Climate Change Adaptation in Small Caribbean States
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006From the World Bank: World Bank and GEF Sign US$2.1 Million Grant to Protect Coastal Areas in the Caribbean The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) signed a US$2.1 million grant agreement to support a pilot adaptation program in three Caribbean Small Island States (Dominica, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines), […]