The UNDP Country Offices in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados are implementing the Project for Improving National Sargassum Management Capabilities in the Caribbean, which will run from 2022 to 2025.  Sponsored by the Government of Japan, the project will invest USD12.3 million in the region to bolster efforts to collect, remove and dispose of sargassum. Under the project, five participating countries – Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago – will benefit from the provision of equipment, expertise and technical assistance to deal with sargassum seaweed.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Accelerator Lab and the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP) have created the Sargassum Innovation Challenge. Aimed at developing creative and feasible ways of utilizing sargassum, the Innovation Challenge will act as a springboard to launch long-term solutions for the large volumes of sargassum that land on our shores.

Through this challenge, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations will be allowed to develop viable products and services that utilize sargassum seaweed. Solutions must be market-based products or digital applications and contribute to the innovative use, management and responsive to the sargassum problem in Trinidad and Tobago. In the wake of major sargassum events, most notably in 2011, 2015, and 2018, several territories across the region have already begun creating novel ways of using sargassum. 

Challenge information and proposal template: http://bit.ly/sargassumchallenge