By Robert Andre Emmanuel
The co-founder of a Barbudan NGO, Pethrolyna Isaac, said the SIDS conference has been an eye-opening opportunity for her to learn about environmental issues and solutions, in order to raise awareness about them back in Barbuda.
Isaac was among members of the BarbudanGO team who have been on the ground at the conference, speaking to high-level officials, experts and leaders.
“It has been an extremely informative platform to navigate; there are many wonderful speakers who have a wealth of work in various areas,” she told Observer on the side-lines of the events yesterday.
“So for us in BarbudanGO, we are very interested in the health of our oceans, in conservation—we pride ourselves on being an area where nature really thrives, but we’ve come to realise over the years that insufficient focus has been given to areas of conservation, so we have been able to make some great contacts with organisations, individuals who are quite aligned with our mission,” Isaac noted.
BarbudanGO is one of the sister isle’s first grassroots NGOs, formed by Barbudans Asha Frank, Isaac and Brandon Walker after Hurricane Irma in 2018.
“We would have been having conversations with agencies such as Fauna and Flora, Re:Wild and Waitt Institute, who is actually a parent funder of us, and through that journey and working with sister organisations such as EAG, we are now extending our reach to these other agencies.
“Those dialogues have been focused on assisting BarbudanGO in developing a strategic plan for the upcoming three years and strengthening our approach with Action for Habitat,” Isaac added.
Action for Habitat is a community-led conservation project aiming to transform two historical water sources, being misused as illegal dumpsites, into conservation spaces for species like the endemic Barbuda warbler.
“It is very important; going to a lot of the different events at the conference, we’ve been hearing a lot about data capturing and stuff like that and there isn’t enough data being captured on the Barbudan warbler so by creating this conservation site that becomes a habitat for [them], we will be able to start collecting data which creates a course of action for how to protect this bird that is so important to us,” Rashella Webber, project manager for Action for Habitat, explained.
The conference, which featured leaders from across the world, did not just focus solely on environmental issues but, as Isaac noted, talks on finance have been valuable for the Barbudan team.
“The thing about this forum is that it doesn’t only allow you to pay attention to the priorities of your organisation, it gives you a chance to build your timetable.
“So for me, understanding access to global financing is a major concern of mine because of what we went through in 2017. I have not really heard the right conversations about how do we navigate it if it were to happen again. “So, for example, when you have a society that was completely wiped out, I remember the presence of Waitt Institute doing work in Barbuda… and I wonder if Waitt wasn’t there, how would some of our local businesses start to operate, because there is not a financial model that, understanding the Barbuda Council’s beliefs in communal land ownership, can support a community such as ours,” Isaac explain
