Environment and development in coastal regions and in small islands

Coastal region and small island papers 9

Annex 6.19
The next form of the UNESCO CSI platform

Prepared by Mr Peter Espeut
Revision date: 5^th December 2000

1. Pilot projects now to be called ‘Field experiments’

• It must be clear which ‘wise practices’ are being studied; therefore, hypotheses to be tested must be identified, and the method of testing must be clearly outlined.

• It is preferable to have both a pre-test (socio-economic/biophysical baseline) and a post-test (to determine the effectiveness of process and goal); often a pre-test is impossible, so at least there must be a post-test. Clear evaluation criteria for both goal and process must be identified.

• There must be full documentation of the field experiment, both by internal and external observers, which leads to publications.

• Wise and unwise practices must be distilled from the results of the field experiments, which lead to publications and feed into the WiCoP forum.

• Only those pilot projects which fulfil the criteria should be retained as field experiments.

2. UNESCO Chairs to become UNESCO focal points

• Chairs must be associated with a field experiment.

• Chairs must have a clear research agenda, and also hypotheses and method.

• Chairs must fully document results, which lead to publications.

• Chairs must distil wise practices, which lead to publications and feed into the WiCoP forum.

3. Wise practices forum

• This must be wider and deeper.

• This must be fed wise practices from the pilot projects and the university chairs.

• This must distil the discussions/conclusions for each ‘wise practice’ and publish annually.

• The forum results must feed back to the pilot projects and university chairs for more research and experimentation.

4. Wise practices training workshops

They should be regional/national.

• Facilitators should be UNESCO Chairs and field experiment staff.

• The content would be ‘wise practices’ lessons learn t, the output from 1, 2, 3 above.

• The location will be a field experiment site, used as a laboratory.

• The participants will be recommended by a UNESCO field office or other agency/person.

• The expectation is that this activity will spawn more field experiments/chairs.

• The result will be clusters of field experiments and chairs reinforcing each other.

• A UNESCO Trust Fund should be established for each cluster (or other Trust Fund if more appropriate).

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