The Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (GEF-IWEco Project) is a five-year multi-focal area regional project that will be financed from (i) country GEF STAR allocations under Land Degradation and Biodiversity portfolios for national interventions and supported by (ii) funding from the GEF International Waters and Sustainable Forest Management portfolios for regional-level actions. A total of ten Caribbean countries will be participating in the project.

Besides the lead project implementing and executing agencies, several partners have been identified within an IWEco Project Partnership during the course of project development. Given the areas of engagement of the various agencies, the project partnership is divided into three main technical groupings based on their contributions to the project; (1) Research, (2) Governance and (3) Public awareness and public education. Two support partnership groupings around resource mobilization and private sector participation take into account of the contributions and advisory support of financial sector agencies and the private sector. Community beneficiaries are partners at the local project levels. The partners arrangement is presented in graph form.

The project has four components; (1) Development and Implementation of Integrated Targeted Innovative, climate-change resilient approaches in sustainable land management (SLM), integrated water resources management (IWRM) and maintenance of ecosystem services; (2) Strengthening of the SLM, IWRM and ecosystems Monitoring, and Indicators framework; (3) Strengthening of the Policy, legislative and institutional reforms and capacity building for SLM, IWRM and ecosystem services management taking into consideration climate change resilience building and (4) Enhancing knowledge exchange, best practices, replication and stakeholder involvement. The project will be implemented through a network of international, regional and national partners in accordance with their comparative advantage. Component 1 is focusing on technology transfer while Component 3 is dedicated to capacity building and Component 4 is on knowledge management, fostering community of practices, knowledge transfer.

The project will be implemented through a network of international, regional and national partners along thematic lines, in accordance with capacity advantage based on institutional mandates of these partners. While UNEP and UNDP will act as GEF Implementing Agencies, UNEP Car/RCU in partnership with the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) will serve as co-Executing Agencies for day to day project coordination. The UNDP component is being implemented through UNOPS (GEF SGP).

Antigua & Barbuda; Cuba; Barbados; Dominican Republic; Grenada; Jamaica; Saint Kitts & Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent & the Grenadines; Trinidad & Tobago with the support of GEF, UNEP , UNDP, CARPHA, CAR/RCU