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Island-Focused Mission: Environmental Policy and Law

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In early 1987 when the Caribbean Conservation Association and Island Resources Foundation took on the task of preparing Country Environmental Profiles for the Eastern Caribbean , we knew it would be a formidable task. What we did not fully realize was the magnitude of that effort …. Before the Profile Project ended, an unprecedented assemblage of institutions, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and individuals would become involved in a first-of-its-kind effort to examine and assess priority environmental issues in eight Eastern Caribbean countries

[From: Judith A. Towle, ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA FOR THE 1990’s, 1991]

In the early 1970s, Island Resources Foundation prepared the first environmental guidelines designed specifically to meet the development needs of insular areas (Ecological Guidelines for Island development , published by IUCN in 1974). For the first time, the Foundation called global attention to the special development requirements of small island areas.

For more than three decades, the Foundation has assisted island governments in the establishment of national environmental policies, guidelines, legislation, and regulatory procedures that strengthen resource management, physical planning and the development control process. Our work in this sector has included:

A key undertaking by the Foundation has been the preparation and publication of Environmental Profiles for the Eastern Caribbean , a sector-by-sector review of the state of the environment in eight Caribbean countries. Each Profile includes an assessment of the institutional framework supporting conservation and resource management in target islands, as well as recommendations for policy and procedural changes. Although published in the early 1990s, the Profiles remain the most comprehensive environmental overviews prepared to date for each of the eight target countries.

More recently, the Foundation provided legal assistance to the Government of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in preparing a new National Parks Act (2006), a modern piece of legislation reflecting international policy, standards and practice. Its enactment significantly strengthened the policy and legal framework for the BVI parks system, and it could be argued that the law provides the most up-to-date and effective framework for protected area management in the insular Caribbean .