Sub-regional meeting on environmental policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean

The meeting will bring together government officials, representatives of Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and selected regional experts. They will discuss how to increase the capacity of States to produce and analyze social data on environmental change, and use them in policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean.

The meeting will include three round tables on:

- the social research and data gap analysis, and a proposal for a multi-stakeholder social science platform;
- lessons learnt from interaction between the social sciences and civil society, to be used in policy formulation and planning for the social dimensions of environmental change in the Caribbean;
- a roadmap to create a regional Environmental Change Clearing House/Knowledge Management Hub in the Caribbean.

The final session of the meeting will be devoted to a Ministerial round table, which will draw conclusions from the discussions and map out options for action at national, regional and international level.

Established in 1994, UNESCO's MOST Programme, under the framework of which this sub-regional meeting is organized, seeks to put the social sciences in the service of development by promoting research-oriented formulation of policies which allow to face challenges of the contemporary world, and by creating closer links between researchers, representatives of civil society and policy makers around the world to enable them to work together in respect for each other's role and situation.

At the international level, its two strategic priorities for 2012-2013 are social inclusion and the social dimensions of climate change.