ENVIRONMENTAL AND COSTAL RESOURCES (ENCORE) MANAGEMENT
(Project 9L0767)
At the regional level, the project is designed to improve the capacity of individual states to identify natural resource-management problems and enable them to tackle environmental issues through regional cooperation. This involves regional and national environmental awareness programmes and technical training. Laboratories and other institutions in the region are collaborating to make this possible. Programmes to monitor the environment have traditionally suffered from a shortage of trained staff and equipment. Data collection has often been irregular and sometimes inaccurate. As a result, some programmes were abandoned. Other problems included inadequate environmental legislation and duplication of monitoring through an overlapping of agencies. These problems are now being eliminated. Current monitoring programmes focus on the quality of coastal and drinking water, beaches, coral reefs, near-shore current patterns, and pesticide residues. In addition to the regional component, the ENCORE project is working with local communities at two locations in Dominica and one in St Lucia. The focus there is on community participation to resolve environmental problems and promotion of economic development through sustainable resource-use. Soufrière, a key tourist centre in St. Lucia, has an enormous waste and garbage-disposal problem. Indiscriminate dumping of waste was threatening local fisheries and creating a serious public health hazard. The local government authority could not afford to supply enough garbage bins. So people dumped their waste in gullies, rivers, and other unauthorized sites. The ENCORE team has been working with the local town council to improve garbage-disposal facilities and help raise public awareness about it. In one densely populated area, a recreational park has been set up. In other areas, education workshops have been organized for local teachers. In Dominica, the ENCORE team has succeeded in uniting traditionally warring communities around a concern that is common to them all environmental protection. There is now an intelligent promotion of river tourism in the region, routed through a local jetty boys association. New rules minimize damage and pollution caused by the once-continuous roar and tumble of motor boats plying the waters. An association of tour guides has established new regulations and guidelines, which will help improve their own business as well as the state of the river on which their livelihoods depend. Training programmes have been organized for guides to upgrade their skills and improve the safety of tourists. Other activities in Dominica include beach clean-up and conservation programmes, a solid waste-disposal programme, and training in the use of marine debris to make jewellery, and banana waste to make greeting cards.
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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature