Leslie

Walling

Managing Director, Environmental Advisory Services Ltd.

Leslie Walling is coastal resources manager and climate change specialist with experience in applied research, vulnerability and impact assessment, natural hazard risk reduction conservation planning, policy formulation, capacity building, and community awareness and outreach.

His experience has been gained in the implementation of natural resource management and climate and natural hazard adaptation initiatives at the local, national, and regional levels throughout the Caribbean.

As part of a larger team of consultants responsible for updating the 2009 Barbados Physical Development Plan, Leslie lead the climate change team responsible for mainstreaming climate change and natural hazard considerations into the updated Barbados Physical Development Plan (2017).

He served as lead-consultant to the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA in the development and testing of a guidance and training tool for mainstreaming climate change adaptation measures into national disaster management plans and programmes).

At the regional level he has held senior management positions with regional GEF and CIDA funded climate change adaptation planning projects (CPACC, MACC, and ACCC). These were instrumental in developing capacities, approaches, and enabling mechanism to support of climate change adaptation planning and resilience building in the Caribbean in the face of climate variability and climate change.

As the Coordinator for Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA’s) CAD $2.1 million Canada Caribbean Disaster Risk Management (CCDRM) Fund Leslie was responsible for developing the first regional, responsive micro-grant mechanism to support community-based disaster risk reduction projects.

As Project Manager for the Caribbean Development Bank’s Community Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (CDRRF) Mr. Walling be responsible developing an enhanced regional response to the need for systematic community-level disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, through the implementation of a US 23.5 million CIDA/DFID-funded small grant mechanism.

Early in his career he was responsible for managing the establishment and operation of Jamaica’s first operational marine protected area, the Montego Bay Marine Park. His master’s thesis “The Economic Value of the Montego Bay Marine Park (MBMP)” sought to provide the information on resource economics necessary to optimize the management and policy decisions of the MBMP.

Leslie co-authored the chapter “Environmental Risk Management in the Caribbean” in the book Public Policy and Administration in the Caribbean (2015), co-authored the Integrated Watershed and Coastal Areas Management (IWCAM) Indicators Mechanism and Capacity Assessment Report for the GEF IWCAM Project (2008), and served as lead-author in the preparation of the UNEP Caribbean Environmental Outlook Report (2005).

Leslie has taught climate change mitigation at the postgraduate level, in the course, ENVT 6133: Climate Change Impacts: Mitigation and Adaptation course offered by the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), in the Faculty of Science and Technology, at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.