The Biodiversity Unit appointed a Project Steering Committee comprising representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Department of Fisheries, the Saint Lucia National Trust, the Department of Forestry, the Folk Research Centre, the Ministry of Commerce, the Registrar of Intellectual Property, the Environmental Health Branch of the Ministry of Health, the Sustainable Development and Environment Division, the Ministry of External Affairs, from December 2012 to guide the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and technology in the production of the 5^th National Report and the Revised Second National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).

The consultant, Agrico Ltd, was contracted to undertake the consultancy by a Direct Award from the Prime Minister’s Office since they had had previous experience with producing national reports on biodiversity and revised strategy and action plan for biodiversity.

A stakeholder analysis and mapping exercise was carried out by the consultant firm with input from the project steering committee and the project coordinator.  Consequently these stakeholders were interviewed as individuals, focus groups or in national consultations to do stock taking exercises on the status and rapid assessment of biodiversity in the country.  Four national consultations in the four cardinal points of the island and two community consultations in Jacmel and Monchy respectively were held to get information from stakeholders to enhance that obtained otherwise.

Various media products were broadcast on television and radio to enable and encourage stakeholders to participate in the relevant meetings.  Ten youth were trained in producing video animations of thirty second duration on biodiversity targeted at other youth and slated for social media and television broadcasting. Ten PSAs were produced as a result.

There were delays in the production of the deliverables due to unforeseen pressing family matters of the consultant including death of a maternal figure.  Consequently the report was not produced in time for the 31^st March 2014, however an advanced report has since been sent to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The Revised National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan was produced during the same time along with the implementation plan, monitoring and evaluation plan, communications strategy and resource mobilization plan for effective implementation of the NBSAP.

An editor was hired to review both documents.  They will be submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for their endorsement and then be published for dissemination to stockholders.  Posters will be produced highlighting main goals, vision and targets of the revised NBSAP for general public consumption.