March 15, 2023

(CCCCC Press Release 2023/002)

(City of Belmopan, Belize) The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) has partnered with the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), the Water Sector Resilience Nexus for Sustainability in Barbados (WSRN S-Barbados), and the European Union Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (EU-GCCA+) to offer a two-part training program on the use of the Caribbean Climate Online Risk and Adaptation Tool (CCORAL) for climate risk management. The program aims to equip the BWA with the knowledge and skills to identify climate risks, manage them effectively, and build climate resilience in their projects and programs.

The training program will be delivered using two modalities: virtual and in-person. The virtual training will take place on March 8-9, 2023, and participants will receive access to the CCORAL e-course to review background information ahead of the workshop. The in-person training will be held on March 14-16, 2023, in Barbados and will involve a practical application of the tool by visiting two case study sites, a detailed walk-through of the project/programme workbook, and a training-of-trainers session on the final day.

Through the CCORAL training program, the CCCCC aims to impart an understanding of the causes and impacts of climate change, the policy context, when to apply CCORAL, how to use the tool and its various features, and how to apply its outputs to provide high-level guidance on decision-making. Thus, the tool will aid in identifying risks, informing the management of those risks, and designing the responses to build climate resilience and adaptive capacity in projects.

The CCORAL tool was developed in 2013 by the CCCCC and since then, has been rolled out across the Caribbean through several partners, including EU-GCCA, UK-DIFID, CDB, and GIZ. In 2017, under the USAID Climate Change Adaptation Project (CCAP), five countries in the Eastern Caribbean received additional training, namely, St. Kitts & Nevis, Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, and Grenada. The tool has already been integrated into the PSIP of St. Kitts and the draft Public Finance Management (PFM) Act of 2017 in Grenada.

The CCORAL training program is being sponsored by the WSRN S- Barbados and the EU-GCCA+ project, which aims to support the Caribbean region in its efforts to inculcate a risk management ethos in decision-making. The program provides a hands-on understanding of how to use the tool in different contexts and circumstances and identifies the drivers and barriers that may be experienced in implementing its guidance.

To learn more about the WSRN S- Barbados project and the EU-GCCA+ project and how it is building climate resilience in the Caribbean, visit www.caribbeanclimate.bz.

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The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre is an inter-governmental Caribbean Community (CARICOM) institution that is mandated by the CARICOM Heads of Government to coordinate the Region’s response to climate change. We maintain the Caribbean’s most extensive repository of information and data on climate change specific to the region, which in part enables us to provide climate change-related policy advice and guidelines to CARICOM Member States.  In this role, the Centre is recognized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Environment Programme, and other international agencies as the focal point for climate change issues in the Caribbean. The Centre is also one of the few institutions recognized as a Centre of Excellence by United Nations Institute for Training and Research. CCCCC is empowering the Caribbean Community to act on climate change.

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