The Climate-Resilient Water Sector in Grenada (G-CREWS) Project aims to make the water sector in Grenada more resilient to climate change and to strengthen the efficiency of its management. Taking an Integrated Water Resources Management approach, the project supports the water sector’s comprehensive transformation on multiple levels.

Grenada’s water supply is primarily reliant on surface water and rainwater harvesting in the sister isles of Carriacou and Petite Martinique. With rising average temperatures, more unpredictable rainfall, more frequent heavy rainfall events, bringing high turbidity to the water systems, and saltwater intrusion in groundwater linked to sea-level rise, climate change is exacerbating water scarcity issues. G-CREWS supports the water sector by reducing water demand with a comprehensive engagement of water users and increasing water availability by increasing Nawasa’s storage capacity, implementing water losses reduction strategies and improving the climate-resilience of the water infrastructure.

Under the project, residential and commercial water users’ consumption behaviour change is triggered through appropriate governance, regulation, economic incentives and awareness-campaign.

The project is structured around five components:

1- Climate Resilient Water Governance

Under this component, the project develops the legal and regulatory framework for an improved and integrated management of the water resources.

2- Climate Resilient Water Users

This component focuses on raising the awareness of the general public about treated water scarcity and to enable water-use intensive industries, such as agriculture and tourism, to put in place solutions and strategies to sustain their growth in a water scare environment.

3- Climate Resilient Water Supply

Under this component, the climate-resilience of the water infrastructure of NAWASA is substantially improved: increase of water storage by building four hurricane-proof water storage tanks (up to 500,000-gallon in capacity), laying of 15 km of 8″ and 6″ pipelines to and from two major treatment plants, re-routing of water from a major river to Les Avocats dam which faces water demand-deficit, improving some of the existing dams, building of communal rainwater harvesting systems and improving access to water of the health centres in case of natural disaster.

4- Contributions to Grenada Climate Goals

The project supports NAWASA’s pledge to become a GHG free water utility by 2030 by providing technical and financial support for the installation of renewable energy systems, implements strategies and infrastructure to reduce the water losses in the water systems and provides support to the Government of Grenada in the update of its National Adaptation Plan.

5 – Regional Learning and Replication

The project coordinates the creation of a regional community of practice on climate resilient water management in the Caribbean (RCWARC) regrouping the NDA of countries in the region to share lessons learnt from the G-CREWS project and to replicate the project in other countries. More information about the RCWARC can be found here. A climate finance web-portal is being developed for Grenada to regroup all information necessary for climate projects development in all the priorities areas identified in the National Adaptation Plan and the National Determined Contribution.

For more details about the project’s rationale and activities, check out the Funding Proposal. You can also check out the G-CREWS page of the GCF and IKI5-Climate-Finance-Databases-2024-07-11 websites.