Hon Charles Clifford Minister of Tourism and Environment	Gina Ebanks-Petrie DoE Director

A two-day workshop on Cayman’s efforts to adapt to climate change will be wrapped up today with a training workshop involving both local and regional officials.

The two-day “Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (VCA) Training Workshop,” which ends today, was held at the Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort.

The workshop’s key goal is to ensure that both stakeholders from Cayman’s public and private sector, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are being trained to assess the potential impact of climate change on tourism and other sectors.

The workshop has been organised by the Cayman Islands Department of Environment (DoE), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre.

Minister of Tourism and Environment Hon Charles Clifford said the exercise is a key step in Cayman’s drive to address the effects of climate change. “We are working to get all our sectors ready to deal with the threats that climate change poses to our economy,” he said.

He added, “I am pleased that tourism is one of the first sectors on which we are focusing, because it is an area that depends on our natural attributes for sustainability. Ironically though, it is also at great risk from the effects of climate change.”

Minister Clifford further noted the importance of assessing the risks and capacities of tourism as they relate to adapting to climate change. He said the information will help the industry implement environmental best practices and proper adaptation strategies, and facilitate long-term economic sustainability.

Giving background details, DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie said that this training workshop has been part of a work plan under the DFID-funded ‘Enhancing Capacity for Adapting to Climate Change (ECACC) in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories (UKOT) Project’. This exercise followed the initial project-planning workshop held in November last year.

“That was when all the UKOTs agreed to formulate national climate change adaptation strategies and work plans for how to achieve this. Conducting VCAs for use in adaptation planning will require considerable data collection efforts,” Mrs Ebanks-Petrie said.

“Once the tourism VCA study commences we will be appealing to many businesses and communities to assist in ways which will meaningfully contribute to our national climate change strategy.”

She added: “Since last year’s meeting, the Cayman Islands has made significant progress and has put a multi-sectoral climate change adaptation working group in place to work on the objectives.”

Specifically, the workshop focused on training local government and non-government individuals from across various sectors to complete vulnerability and capacity assessments with the help of the wider public.

Mrs Ebanks-Petrie further explained that the workshop began by providing a detailed introduction into these assessments, including techniques; methods; and their limits and benefits for Cayman’s environments and economies.

The DoE Director said that the assessment model developed for the tourism sector may be applied to other sectors, including agriculture, water or health.