Evidence-based climate action through artificial intelligence and data innovation for Caribbean SIDS

Evidence-based Climate Action through Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation for Caribbean SIDS, is a project focused on using AI and data to enhance climate action in the Caribbean.

Specifically, it aims to improve the ability of four Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to monitor and analyze maritime transport, trade, fisheries, and their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The project also seeks to strengthen the statistical, data science, and analytical capabilities of these nations.

The project aims to build skills in data science, econometrics, and data wrangling, enabling these SIDS to better utilize data from sources like Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and national fishing vessel registers.

Scope and components

The project focuses on two domains in the management of natural resources that are of key importance for Caribbean SIDS: the protection and restoration of coastal ecosystems and the reduction of GHG emissions from ocean-based economic activities, in particular maritime transport and fishery.

Its goal is to enhance data availability and to strengthen the capacities to leverage these data for evidence-based policy making in the two domains above.

For this, it will yield the following three outcomes:

• Outcome 1: Strengthened technical and institutional capacities to compile SEEA ocean accounts related to coastal ecosystems as part of regular official statistical production.
• Outcome 2: Strengthened technical and institutional capacities to produce and disseminate indicators on maritime transport and trade, and fisheries and their CO2 emission, as part of regular official statistical production, aligned with international trade statistics, utilizing AIS data on the UN Global Platform in combination with existing national sources, bolstered by the establishment of a user-friendly dissemination and visualization application.
• Outcome 3: Enhanced analytical capacity to formulate evidence-based policies for the decarbonization of maritime trade and fisheries and to identify options for conserving, managing, and restoring marine ecosystems by the end of the project, as well as enhanced knowledge of the underlying effects.

Activities

In the implementation, the project employs a regionally differentiated and mutual-learning approach to enable intensive use of available resources in specific countries and sharing of experience to facilitate later adoption of developed methods, tools and processes in others.

The implementation of Outcome 1 will focus on Trinidad and Tobago and the Dominican Republic and of Outcome 2 on Barbados and Belize by delivering national stakeholder workshops and technical assistance missions for agencies of the individual beneficiary countries.

Regional training workshops (delivered virtually) with participation of all project target countries as well as other potential beneficiary countries from the region are also foreseen under both Outcomes, to allow relevant agencies in other countries familiarizing themselves with the developed methodologies and benefiting from the produced tools.

Outcome 3 will be jointly achieved in all four target countries by supporting the preparation of a cross-country road map setting out relevant policy options and organizing national stakeholder workshops to share knowledge, resources, lessons learned and insights generated under the project, as well as to consult and validate the findings of the roadmap, underpinned by a diagnostic study on GHG emissions from maritime transport and fisheries.

Finally, a regional dissemination and lessons-learned workshop will be organized for the four beneficiary countries and other interested countries in the region to raise awareness of the outputs of the projects and share lessons learned, including with the help of materials that facilitate the application of the knowledge, resources, lessons learned and insights from the project in other countries and regions.

Link to the SDGs

The project directly contributes to several SDG targets including 13.2, 14.2, 14.7 and 17.18, as well as to key priorities of the new International Agenda for SIDS (the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS – ABAS), with an emphasis on the following ABAS strategic actions: (b) scale-up climate action and support; (c) scale-up biodiversity action; (d) conserve and sustainably use the ocean and its resources; (g) data collection, analysis and use.

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