A re­gion­al pol­i­cy frame­work on the en­vi­ron­ment, which CARI­COM Min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for the en­vi­ron­ment have ap­proved was launched on Tues­day in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal and Nat­ur­al Re­sources Pol­i­cy Frame­work was launched at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 118th Spe­cial Meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) that will fo­cus on Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.

In recog­ni­tion of the im­por­tance of nat­ur­al re­sources to the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment, the Pol­i­cy Frame­work es­tab­lish­es the blue­print for co­op­er­a­tion with­in CARI­COM, pro­vid­ing guide­lines for plan­ning the pro­tec­tion, con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able use of the en­vi­ron­ment and nat­ur­al re­sources with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty and its Mem­ber States.

The doc­u­ment cre­ates a ba­sis for ef­fec­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal and nat­ur­al re­sources gov­er­nance in sup­port of the ob­jec­tives of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, and the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the CARI­COM Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

Sir Mol­wyn Joseph, Min­is­ter of Health, Well­ness, En­vi­ron­ment and Civ­il Ser­vice Af­fairs of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, is chair of the Spe­cial COT­ED Meet­ing tak­ing place on Wednes­day.

Ad­vanc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal and nat­ur­al re­sources gov­er­nance is one of the im­por­tant mat­ters that will be dis­cussed dur­ing the busi­ness ses­sion of the meet­ing. Sus­tain­able ocean-based eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment will be a crit­i­cal as­pect of those dis­cus­sions. Min­is­ters will fo­cus on strength­en­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty’s ap­proach to bio­di­ver­si­ty man­age­ment and prepa­ra­tions for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Meet­ings of the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) to be held lat­er in the year.