Preparation of the first draft of the Subregional Action Plan was coordinated between March and October 2017 by ECLAC, in cooperation with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the Assembly of Ministers and High Authorities on Housing and Urban Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (MINURVI). The need for a Subregional Action Plan for the Caribbean emerged from a mandate of the MINURVI General Assembly in 2016, and ECLAC responded to MINURVI’s mandate by establishing a working group of multisectoral, multidisciplinary Caribbean experts, coordinating a series of discussions and activities to collect input and develop the contents of a first draft of the document.
The Subregional Action Plan builds upon the structure defined by the global Action Framework and the Regional Action Plan for implementation of the New Urban Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean, and proposes the integration of Caribbean-specific elements and prioritizations in order to provide a useful tool for orienting national and subnational sustainable urban development within the subregion. Specifically, the Sub-RAP proposes a Caribbean-specific guiding principle relating to resilience building in the face of climate change and other subregional vulnerabilities, defines a Caribbean-specific objective for each action area and the necessary components required to achieve these goals, and establishes a prioritization of the objectives presented by the Regional Action Plan based on territorial context. In the long-term, the Subregional Action Plan seeks to support the mobilization and direction of national and global resources and attention to specific priorities for sustainable development within the Caribbean.
Public consultation seeks to integrate a wider group of actors and perspectives to ensure that the document effectively identifies and addresses the diversity of Caribbean territories, challenges and opportunities in the context of recent disasters and future development. An updated version of the Subregional Action Plan will be launched during the 9th Session of the World Urban Forum in February 2018.
The first draft of the Subregional Action Plan is available here, and a questionnaire (in Word) is available for download here. Please send your completed questionnaire, along with any additional comments or observations, to katherine.indvik@cepal.org by 31 January 2018.
