World Environment Day release of the Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar toolkit for community enterprises by CANARI

Port of Spain, June 5, 2020 – Unleashing the potential of local community enterprises in the Caribbean will help to ensure thatCOVID-19 economic recovery is fair, environmentally sustainable, low-carbon and resilient. This effort is supported by the release ofThe Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar: A tool for community enterprises by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) in collaboration with the Green Economy Coalition (GEC).

The Local Green-Blue Enterprise (LGE) Radar is a simple but effective tool that can help community micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) assess how they doing and where they can improve in delivering on ‘triple bottom line’ benefits of economic, environmental and social sustainability as well as good governance. CANARI developed, tested and refined the LGE Radar through an action learning process with business support experts and over 47 formal and informal MSMEs or MSME associations across 10 Caribbean countries over the past four years. 

PRESS RELEASE:

World Environment Day release of the Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar toolkit for community enterprises by CANARI

Port of Spain, June 5, 2020 – Unleashing the potential of local community enterprises in the Caribbean will help to ensure that COVID-19 economic recovery is fair, environmentally sustainable, low-carbon and resilient. This effort is supported by the release of The Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar: A tool for community enterprises by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) in collaboration with the
Green Economy Coalition (GEC).

The Local Green-Blue Enterprise (LGE) Radar is a simple but effective tool that can help community micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) assess how they doing and where they can improve in delivering on ‘triple bottom line’ benefits of economic, environmental and social sustainability as well as good governance. CANARI developed, tested and refined the LGE Radar through an action learning process with business support experts and over 47 formal and informal MSMEs or MSME associations across 10 Caribbean countries over the past four years.

“Putting nature and nature-based livelihoods at the centre of the COVID-19 response and recovery is critical and the release of this publication on World Environment Day 2020 is very timely,” according to Nicole Leotaud, CANARI Executive Director. “As we commit to transforming Caribbean economies coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, practical and
easy to use tools, like the LGE Radar, are necessary to empower these MSMEs to understand their role in this economic transformation.”

Since 2010, CANARI has been engaging Caribbean stakeholders
in dialogues to explore ‘green economy’ and ‘blue economy’ in the Caribbean context and the pathways for transformation of our economic development models to ones that are more environmentally sustainable, inclusive and resilient. MSMEs are a key pathway to
drive such an economic transformation since they already deliver many economic, social and environmental co-benefits. Many enterprises heavily depend on natural resources (e.g. ecotourism, agriculture and craft) and have the potential to ensure healthy ecosystems and sustainable use of natural resources. MSMEs can also be powerful providers of solutions to address environmental degradation and climate change. The Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar: A toolkit to support community enterprises was developed by CANARI and provides practical guidance for facilitators working with MSMEs to assess how they are delivering on ‘triple bottom line’ benefits using the simple but effective LGE Radar tool.

This toolkit is intended to be used by small business facilitators, trainers and mentors from government, academia, civil society and international and regional organisations who provide support to community MSMEs. It includes activity sheets, lessons learnt and case studies from previous Radar sessions done by CANARI and our partners. This toolkit is designed for those working with nature-based enterprises in the Caribbean; however, many of the approaches are applicable to MSMES in other countries, particularly developing countries and small island developing states. CANARI will continue to use this toolkit in its work to support MSMEs across the Caribbean and to advocate for more enabling legal, regulatory, fiscal and funding frameworks for MSMEs, especially for green/blue and social enterprises.

This toolkit was developed and piloted with support from two regional projects being implemented by CANARI: #GE4U: Transformation Towards an Inclusive Green Economy in the Caribbean and Powering Innovations in Civil Society and Enterprises for Sustainability in the Caribbean (PISCES), which are both being funded by the European Union.

The toolkit can be downloaded in full here: https://canari.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/CANARI-LGE-Radar-Toolkit.pdf

The associated LGE Radar Workbook can be downloaded here: https://canari.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/LGE-Radar-Workbook.xlsx

About the projects:
The four-year regional project #GE4U: Transformation towards an inclusive green economy in the Caribbean (2016 – 2020) was implemented by CANARI in collaboration with the Green Economy Coalition (http://www.greeneconomycoalition.org), the world’s largest movement for green and fair economies. The project aimed to support the transformation to green, fair and resilient economies. This project was supported by funding and assistance from the European Union (DCI-ENV/2016/372- 847). See https://canari.org/ge4u/

About CANARI: The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is a regional technical non-profit organisation which has been working to promote and facilitate stakeholder participation in the stewardship of natural resources in the Caribbean for over 30 years. See http://www.canari.org/.