The Ministry of Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment will from next year introduce a new Eco-District Award which, apart from the cleaning aspects, will look at the districts’ environmental involvement with its community and other stakeholders.
The award is to build on the past ‘Cleanest District Award’ that was introduced to encourage cleaning contractors to keep the districts clean in the month of September during the Clean Up the World campaign.
District administrators were able to learn about the new award during a half- day workshop that was held on Friday morning at the Seychelles Institute for Teacher Education (Site). While those on Mahé were able to physically attend the session, the administrators on Praslin and La Digue followed the session virtually.
The award will be launched in January 2022 and the judging and announcement of the winner will take place in December 2022.
The aim of the new award is to improve sustainable development at district level and to stimulate innovative, holistic, community-based transitions towards eco-friendly, low-carbon and waste free communities.
It is also to adopt a more holistic and whole district approach to help improve the district, develop a sense of active involvement, belonging and ownership and the creation of support community based organisations to help improve the district environment, among others, all with the involvement of the residents, businesses, public sector and volunteers of all ages.
The criteria for the award includes the level of participation in the community by the different community groups, businesses, and volunteers among others, the level of coordination among the different groups, communication between the groups, on the nature and initiative of conservation projects, community responsibility with regard to monitoring and policing of the physical environment, and networking with regard to how the district gets to work in collaboration with other districts including with NGOs at regional and international level.
Jeanette Larue from the Education and Community Outreach Division in the Ministry of Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment, said that it has been observed that the districts should be the one getting awarded for its environment instead of the contractors, as had been the case in the past, who were doing a paid job.
“By bestowing such an award to a district will get the contractors to work harder to ensure that they get to meet the level of cleanliness in the district they have been assigned to clean,” Ms Larue said.
The Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust (SeyCCAT) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF-SGP) were present to impart knowledge of funds and grants available for investments in ocean projects and for environmental conservation projects. They also learned on how the eco-school works and on projects that they too can implement with the involvement of the community and other stakeholders such as reef restorations, which they had an insight of how it’s done by a representative of the ministry.
The ‘Cleanest District Award’ for cleaning contractors was introduced in 2010 by the Landscape and Waste Management Agency (LWMA) but it went dormant after the 2016 edition.
During the session Ms Larue took the opportunity to launch the DIY and Up Cycling Christmas tree 2021 competition for the schools, homes, private sector and civil society, public sector organisations and the districts. The districts will be judged on the Christmas tree and its surroundings while the rest will be judged on the Christmas tree only. Interested parties are advised to call the ministry on 4670500 for more information.
Source: Seychelles Nation
