As mentioned in the last issue of CEP, the "Symposium on the Closure of the joint USAID/UNEP Caribbean Environment Network- CEN Project" was held on 3 December 1998 in Roseau, Dominica.  The Symposium's aims were to review achievements and to draw lessons from experiences learned from the many activities the project tackled over the last three years.

As the project developed, we were fortunate to count on the expertise of dedicated professionals, and partner organisations, as well as insights from the inter-agency Technical Consultative Committee for the Project. We were delighted to see many of them attend the Symposium which had some 40 participants from the Wider Caribbean region, from different sectors - private, public and academic alike- attesting to the level of commitment the region is achieving for the enhancement of environmentally sound practices in tourism.

While doubtless the impact of the CEN Project is very positive, as it served somewhat as a "consolidator" for environmental collaborative work within tourism industry and set the stage for future work,  it also served to remind us of  the realities of Project implementation and the importance of good team work.

The recommendations emanating from the Symposium concentrated in six areas, mostly intended to guide the Secretariat in its future work  and can be summarised as follows: (1) National focus for activities as means of achieving changes for sustainability of tourism and responding to environmental dimensions at the country level; (2) Education and Awareness of environmental issues and their importance for a sustainable tourism product should be advocated at all levels, creating opportunities to build bridges between tourism and environment into existing training programmes (3) Planning and Integration of the tourism sector into resource management, assisting to empower planning and regulatory authorities towards application of sustainable tourism principles.  It should be noted that understanding stakeholders is fundamental to sustainability, with realistic time frames for action being required to assess needs and for stakeholder to integrate changes; (4) Development of Tools must continue in the process of tourism development and should be encouraged, from the production of manuals, to the documentation of experiences or the quantification of economic benefits of environmental enhancement (5) Tackling New Issues is equally important in maintaining the tourism industry and the environmental community abreast of emerging issues in the Wider Caribbean region, such as the recent question standards and accreditation programmes for tourism attractions and cruise ships or the need to relate development to health aspects; (6) Monitoring and Follow-up is essential and exercises such as surveys are particularly useful in evaluating sustainability and impact, but could also aid in moving the industry towards broader analysis and definitions of environmental destinations within the Wider Caribbean.

Although the CEN Project came officially to an end on 31 December 1998, the activities of the Secretariat supporting the environmental sustainability of tourism within the work of the SPAW subprogramme are far from finished and in fact efforts are being made to facilitate the long-term continuation of the CEN experiences within SPAW. The Secretariat is now going through a short planning phase to be able to address how best to respond to the above recommendations for follow-up to the CEN Project in close collaboration with partner organizations. Such efforts to embrace tourism further into the  programme are particularly timely as CEP prepares itself for the potential entry into force of the SPAW Protocol and UNEP prepares to report to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development which will address Small Island Developing States and Tourism this year.

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