The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank have signed a Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion Agree­ment in the amount of US$996,000.

It will im­ple­ment a Mon­i­tor­ing, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Re­port­ing (MRV) sys­tem for man­grove ecosys­tems that will pro­vide a sci­ence-based da­ta plat­form on the se­ques­tra­tion and re­lease of blue car­bon in par­tic­i­pant coun­try sites of the Unit­ed King­dom Blue Car­bon Fund.

Re­search in­to blue car­bon, the term for car­bon cap­tured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosys­tems – like the man­groves in Trinidad and To­ba­go - is crit­i­cal be­cause of their pos­si­ble con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion.

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine not­ed the im­por­tance of this re­search since “they pro­vide re­silience against ex­treme weath­er events, like a buffer zone be­tween the rag­ing sea and the land and they help to slow and re­duce coastal ero­sion which is ac­cel­er­at­ing due to ris­ing sea lev­els.”

She al­so point­ed out that all par­ties agreed on the stip­u­la­tion that women and vul­ner­a­ble groups are ad­e­quate­ly rep­re­sent­ed in train­ing ac­tiv­i­ties con­nect­ed to the project. This fits well with The UWI’s con­sis­tent fo­cus on gen­der jus­tice and so­cial egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, in­clud­ing for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

Al­so speak­ing at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, IDB coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ca­ri­na Cock­burn spoke on the ben­e­fits of this agree­ment to coun­tries.

“As the glob­al dis­course on car­bon mar­kets in­creas­es the knowl­edge and lessons learnt from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this pro­gramme will help coun­tries not on­ly im­prove their un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of their nat­ur­al as­sets, but al­so sound man­age­ment and util­i­sa­tion of these for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens, na­ture and the cli­mate.”

The UWI, which is very ac­tive in re­search on cli­mate change and re­silience - es­pe­cial­ly in the high­ly vul­ner­a­ble Caribbean – es­tab­lished the Glob­al In­sti­tute for Cli­mate Smart and Re­silient De­vel­op­ment to lead re­search in the area.

The Ad­vi­so­ry Board com­pris­es rep­re­sen­ta­tives of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and pri­vate sec­tor re­search part­ners.