St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Nyasha is an environmental specialist with more than 15 years’ experience working in the international climate change arena as both a climate change negotiator for St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and an implementation specialist for climate change initiatives – inter alia, rainwater harvesting systems for emergency shelters, irrigation systems for small farmers in rural areas, water storage for households in the Southern Grenadines, etc. She led the development of SVG’s first National Climate Change Policy and the Strategy and Implementation Plan as well as National Adaptation Plan. She has led the mobilization of funding for SVG’s national reporting and the development of the first Nationally Determined Contributions and its revision. For the last 8 years, Nyasha assumed additional responsibilities within the government’s development projects to ensure their environmental sustainability and compliance with established standards as part of the push to mainstream climate change and other environmental issues into development planning. She was part of the team which developed SVG’s first readiness proposal to the GCF, which was done without a delivery partner. She continues to provide technical support to key line ministries and agencies – Energy, Transport and Works, Agriculture, Forestry, Health, etc. – in their efforts to ensure their sector policies and plans align with national environmental/climate change policies as well as the development of environmental and social instruments which govern implementation of capital projects. She is also leading the establishment of national guidelines for environmental and social review procedures which is intended to bring the assessment process for locally funded projects up to par with those funded by external funds.