Similar to other communities in small island developing states, communities in Tobago and the Caribbean may be susceptible to the impacts of global climate change and sea level rise. The development of appropriate policies to mitigate these impacts needs to incorporate all stakeholders and all relevant knowledge including traditional/ indigenous knowledge. This project will develop a participatory three-dimensional map for capturing traditional and other knowledge to be used to provide an understanding of the likely impacts of Global Climate Change (GCC) on communities in Tobago.. This information can then be used to educate stakeholders and to develop island-wide policies for Tobago. Information and communications technology will be incorporated with participatory three dimensional mapping (P3DM) techniques in engaging community stakeholders to enhance the data capture, planning and decision making processes. P3DM has been successfully used in several projects in Asia, Africa and the South Pacific. See for example: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/drrconference/presentations/JCGaillard.pdf and http://www.iapad.org/. This project will serve as a pilot for similar type exercises in the Caribbean region and will build capacity using a training the trainer approach. This method can then be used not only in Trinidad and Tobago but in other Caribbean small island developing states. The UWI will work in conjunction with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) and CANARI on the proposed project. It should noted that only the UWI component of the project is to be funded by the UNDP grant and the CANARI components will be funded by CTA.

The activities of the proposed project to be done by the UWI are as follows:
(i) Acquisition of Digital Elevation Models and Bathymetric data for the island of Tobago
(ii) Preparation of Base maps for the island of Tobago
(iii) Provide support to CANARI so that they will be able to undertake preparatory work for the participatory 3D mapping of Tobago including (a) stakeholder identification, (b) obtaining prior informed consent on the fact intermediaries that will support the emergence of local spatial knowledge, capture it in the form of maps and store it in a place to be determined and under the control of a body to be identified, (c) community mobilization and (d) drafting of legend preparation.
(iv) Participate and provide technical mapping support for a participatory 3D mapping exercise for the island of Tobago to be hosted and led by CANARI and the local government with technical support provided by CTA.
(v) Support the conversion of the 3D map of Tobago to GIS data sets using personnel of UWI and GIS groups from Tobago thereby develop the GIS capacity GIS groups in Tobago.
(vi) Work with stakeholders of Tobago to determine custodianship and intellectual property rights aspects of the GIS data generated from the digitization of the 3D map.
(vii) Work with local stakeholders to examine various predictive models related to climate change impacts and explore possible resilience buildingresilience building measures that can be taken with respect to these impacts.
(viii) Contribute to raising the awareness on the relevance of local spatial knowledge in the elaboration of climate change adaptation policies. This will be achieved by supporting CANARI and the Tobago House of Assembly to disseminate information to relevant stakeholders.
(ix) Collaborate with CANARI to document Tobago?s experience from a PGIS perspective
(x) In collaboration with CTA and in consultation with CANARI prepare proposal for a regional centre of excellence in participatory spatial information and communications for the Caribbean. The proposal will focus on what the centre will do, how it would work, who will be part of it and what investments would be required.

Several stakeholders including the following will benefit from this project: farmers, tourist and other entrepreneurs, fisher-folk, students, national government agencies, regional and international bodies, academia, NGOs, and other local stakeholders of Tobago. Both the UWI and CANARI will benefit significantly in the long term in building capacity in using Participatory 3D Modelling (P3DM) techniques. In addition, several regional experts will benefit from the training on P3DM that will be provided to them. This training by extension will benefit stakeholder populations of Small Island Developing States especially in the Caribbean.

The expected results include the development of a 3D model for Tobago which can be used to guide planning for climate change resilience building and other land use planning issues for the island. Information from this model can also be used to inform the implementation of resilience building strategies for Tobago under the Community Based Adaptation Programme funded by GEF SGP and AusAID. In addition the project will allow for the development of best practice in the use of participatory GIS and related ICT applications and well documented lessons learnt, adopted in bottom-up planning and advocacy processes by local, national and regional bodies in the Caribbean. In addition, staff from selected local and national organizations are competent in using PGIS and other related ICT applications in relations to climate change resilience building in small island developing states.