Enhancing local awareness and advocacy for climate change adaptation in the fisheries of Anguilla and Montserrat

Port of Spain, January 11, 2019 – To enhance awareness and advocacy for climate change adaptation in the fisheries sectors of Anguilla and Montserrat, the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) has engaged fisherfolk, dive and tour operators and coastal and marine resource managers to build their capacity to communicate effectively about climate change. This includes using participatory video as a tool to document their local perspectives on the impacts of climate change and priorities for adaptation.
CANARI facilitated workshops on climate change communications on November 27-29, 2018 in Montserrat and December 5-7, 2018, in Anguilla in partnership with the Fisheries and Ocean Resources Unit – Montserrat and the Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources – Anguilla under the Darwin Plus project, Climate change adaptation in the fisheries of Anguilla and Montserrat. As part of the workshops, stakeholders designed climate change communications plans and identified specific communication objectives, target audiences, key messages and relevant awareness and advocacy products. They also identified and shared best practices on effective products and channels for communication and ways to evaluate success targeted to the fisheries sector.

Fisherfolk, dive and tour operators were further supported to develop participatory videos to document local perspectives on the impacts of climate change, their vulnerabilities and priorities for adaptation in the fisheries sectors of Anguilla and Montserrat. This process involved jointly identifying a topic, drafting a story board and script and collecting video footage at various sites to produce the video. The fisherfolk, dive and tour operators also selected specific groups to target for the video, including key policy makers needed to enable changes in policy and practice in the fisheries sector.

CANARI, the Fisheries and Ocean Resources Unit – Montserrat and the Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources – Anguilla are continuing to work with stakeholders to finalise the participatory videos and to better enable knowledge exchange to adapt and build resilient fisheries and related coastal and marine livelihoods.

About the project: The Darwin Plus: Overseas Territories Environment and Climate Fund project, Climate change adaptation in the fisheries of Anguilla and Montserrat, aims to mainstream climate change adaptation into fisheries governance and management in Anguilla and Montserrat using an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF). The project is being implemented by CANARI, the Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources – Anguilla, the Fisheries and Ocean Resources Unit – Montserrat, and the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) of the University of the West Indies from 2017 – 2020 with total funding of £260,925. See here for more information: http://www.canari.org/climate-change-adaptation-in-the-fisheries-of-anguilla-and-montserrat.

About CANARI: The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is a regional technical non-profit organisation which has been working in the islands of the Caribbean for more than 25 years. Our mission is to promote equitable participation and effective collaboration in managing natural resources critical to development. Our programmes focus on capacity building, policy planning and development, research, sharing and dissemination of lessons learned, and fostering regional partnerships. See here for more information on CANARI: http://www.canari.org/.