Regional Meeting of the 
Caribbean Land and Water Resources Network

The Caribbean Land and Water Resources Network ( CLAWRENET) will hold its first annual technical meeting from October 2 – 4, 2000, at the Accra Beach Hotel in Bridgetown Barbados. This meeting will be jointly sponsored by FAO, the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), CTA, ISNAR and the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management of Mc Gill University.

The objective of the meeting is to formally establish the Network and to hold the Regional workshop on Land and Water Information Systems in the Caribbean.

The Workshop will build on work initiated with the financial assistance of FAO in 1998, in which a database of Caribbean land, water and plant nutrient was developed. This database contains information from 4 countries – Grenada, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and St. Vincent and will soon be available on the CLAWRENET web page. The Water Resources, Development and Management Service (AGLW) also conducted a survey of the use of water for agriculture and rural development in the Caribbean, as part of FAO’s global database, AQUASTAT. Survey reports are currently available for Barbados, Dominica, St. Kitts/Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Participants of the Workshop are expected to provide a completed template with information on land, water and plant nutrient resources from their respective countries. These data will be included in the FAO Gateway to national information on land, water and plant nutrition. Participants will also discuss future activities of the Network and agree on a strategy for regular updating of the information system.

Some 40 participants are expected to attend. These participants include National Coordinators from the 11 English-speaking Caribbean, as well as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Curacao, French Guyana, Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique. In addition, resource persons from regional and international organizations such as CIAT, the University of the West Indies (UWI), IICA, CIMMYT, ICRAF, ICLRAM, and UNEP, to name a few, will be attending. The keynote address will be presented by Dr. Chandra Madramootoo, Director of the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management of McGill University, Canada.