Building Coastal Resilience in Grenada (La Mer) 

In early 2019, Grenada Fund for Conservation Inc. received funding via The Nature Conservancy to engage the public and increase awareness about climate change, coastal resilience, and mangrove restoration. 

 

The project objectives were to:

• reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities in Grenada through

  • ​(1) effective management 

  • (2) public engagement/awareness

  • (3) protection and restoration of key marine areas.

 

Its aim was to:

• create communities that are better informed about how their actions can help improve management of marine and coastal areas,

• reduce the vulnerability of Grenada to the impacts of climate change,

• and demonstrate how different stakeholders can work together to share information and promote protection.
   

Our role involved engaging the public, especially young people, to raise awareness of the effects of climate change and the actions, including mangrove restoration, that we can collectively take to adapt to it. To this end, we delivered a series of presentations to both primary and secondary schools throughout the eastern coast of Grenada. The target groups were young people between the ages of 9 and 13 (between Grade 5 and Form 2), who live on or near the coast. 

 

Between March and May 2019, we visited 18 schools and presented to a total of 1183 young people. Our interactions were lively, as many of the students already knew a bit about climate change and/or mangroves from classroom learning and/or living along the coast. A few of the school presentations were completed jointly with the Grenada Red Cross Society, who presented on disaster risk reduction.

 

Under the La Mer project, we also worked along with TNC to coordinate several activities, such as Reef Week 2019.