Energy & Environment
Our Purpose
Energy and environment are essential for sustainable development. The poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and lack of access to clean affordable energy services. These issues are also global as climate change, loss of biodiversity and ozone layer depletion cannot be addressed by countries acting alone.
Globally, UNDP helps countries strengthen their capacity to address these challenges at global, national and community levels, seeking out and sharing best practices, providing innovative policy advice and linking partners through pilot projects that help poor people build sustainable livelihoods.
Major environmental threats, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and ozone layer depletion, are globally relevant and cannot be addressed by countries acting alone. In recognition of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, developing countries are entitled to technical and financial support from the global community to satisfy their international obligations to protect the environment. This is so because developing countries are not historically responsible for causing environmental global threats and are currently least equipped to combat them, both in terms of financial and technological recourse. International cooperation is therefore needed to support developing countries in the global effort to preserve the environment and achieve sustainable development.
UNDP Barbados and the OECS Environmental Assistance Portfolio (primarily with funding secured from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is designed to protect and regenerate the environment and natural resource asset base for sustainable human development (SHD), and to:
- promote integration of sound environmental management with national policies and programmes
- protect and regenerate the environment and promote access to natural resource assets on which poor people depend
- promote equity and burden sharing in international co-operation to protect and enhance the global and regional environment.
UNDP Barbados and the OECS is committed to advocating for the global environmental relevance of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Eastern Caribbean. We aim at having the SIDS-specific circumstances and challenges in the sub-region known and understood in international and regional fora, focusing particular attention on:
- capacity building needs of SIDS, hindered by the scarcity of research/higher level education institutes at the country level
- limited financial and human resources of SIDS at the government and at the non-governmental and private levels, further diminished by the “brain drain” phenomenon
- relevance of SIDS for endemic and endangered species
- vulnerability of SIDS to climate change, sea level rise and global warming.
Initiatives under the E&E Portfolio:
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