Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has submitted its National Adaptation Plan (NAP) to the UNFCCC. To ensure synergies with the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), as well as priorities under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), the NAP has a 12-year timeframe and is organized in two phases: the readiness phase from 2018-2023 and a second phase from 2024-2030.

The NAP was published on the UNFCCC NAP portal on 17 November 2019.

In December 2013, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines experienced severe flooding and landslides, with associated economic damages and losses estimated to be the equivalent of 15% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The NAP development process was viewed as an opportunity to introduce integrated climate change adaptation into the country’s long-term Climate Change Policy and Implementation Strategy and enable further alignment of adaptation and mitigation in the country’s development planning and budgetary processes.

Around 200 representatives from the public and private sectors, as well as civil society and the media, contributed to a one-year process of stakeholder consultations to identify priority needs to be addressed by the NAP. The stakeholder consultation process identified five priority clusters of gaps and needs: poor coordination mechanisms, including for information sharing and awareness raising; lack of a medium- and long-term planning culture integrating adaptation; low investment and attention to climate and environmental monitoring and evaluation and enforcement; lack of climate change and socioeconomic scenarios and data at the required scale for the archipelago; and poor resilience mechanisms for the most vulnerable.

Building on these priority needs, the NAP outlines 42 specific adaptation actions, organized under ten strategic clusters that correspond to the three core NAP objectives: promoting an enabling environment to facilitate adaptation mainstreaming into national and sectoral policy, planning and programming processes; improve Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ capacity for data and information management and sharing, and access to technology and financing for adaptation; and implement actions to strengthen the resilience of the most vulnerable communities.

Selected adaptation actions are expected to be integrated into adaptation actions for key sectors, in particular the agricultural and water sectors, which were identified by stakeholders as being particularly vulnerable to climate change. Other priority sectors identified in the NAP include forestry, tourism, health and public infrastructure. Some of the specific outputs identified in the NAP include: a research programme on climate change impacts and adaptation actions; a capacity-building and education plan that includes the development of a national curriculum on adaptation and disaster risk reduction; training to support improved application and enforcement of building codes; construction of small resilient hospitals; training in flood risk modeling and modeling of the coastal zones; public communication and outreach materials for families and communities in the “Red Zone”; and development of a booklet, ‘Climate Change Governance is Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,’ for wide distribution among stakeholders.

The NAP further provides for annual actions on the monitoring of adaptation in order to feed into the monitoring, reporting and verification provisions defined under the UNFCCC. It calls for a midterm evaluation of the NAP to be conducted in 2022 to inform the revision of the country’s NDC and the 2023 global stocktake under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ NAP was developed with support from the NAP Global Network and the Japan-Caribbean Climate Change Partnership (J-CCP), which aims to support the country’s transition towards a green, low-emission and climate-resilient development pathway. 

The NAP process under the UNFCCC aims to: address climate-related risks and development priorities in an integrated and coordinated manner; reduce existing vulnerabilities by building adaptive capacity and resilience in all sectors and at all levels of society; and build on progress countries have already made in terms of climate change adaptation policy and action. [Publication: National Adaptation Plan for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines] [UNFCCC NAP Central Portal]