Thank you for visiting the JICA Saint Lucia Office website.
I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed as the Chief Representative of the Saint Lucia Office as of 1 August 2022, succeeding Mr. Hiroyasu Tonokawa.
Saint Lucia is a Caribbean country with an area of approximately 620 km2, about the same as Japan's Awaji Island, and a population of 180,000. The country's name is said to derive from the fact that the day Columbus discovered the country was holiday of St Lucia, famous for the Italian folk song 'Santa Lucia'. It is a country of warm climate and scenic beauty where cheerful and hospitable people live.
The office began in 1995 with the first JOCV deployment to Saint Lucia and now it covers 10 countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana and Suriname in addition to Saint Lucia.
While the Caribbean countries are surrounded by beautiful seas and nature and attract many tourists every year, these countries face a number of problems such as heavy dependence on tourism, frequent climate change-related disasters, deterioration and depletion of natural marine resources, fossil fuel-oriented energy supplies and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Governments and regional organizations such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are working to solve them.
Under these circumstances, JICA has been supporting these countries for many years, mainly in the fields of disaster prevention and environment and fisheries, through technical cooperation projects, development of facilities, acceptance of trainees in Japan and dispatch of JOCV. We will work together to make the best use of the human networks and relationships of trust cultivated through past cooperation, and with the knowledge of the private sector, universities, NGOs and others, we will contribute to development of the Caribbean region through building a resilient society and sustainable economic development.
We will also work towards solving common problems in cooperation with other small island states in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, which share vulnerabilities due to problems specific to island states (small population, remoteness, natural disasters, etc.), such as damage caused by rising sea levels due to global warming.
Finally, we will make every effort to promote friendly relations between Japan and the Caribbean region and other small island states through the dissemination of these initiatives.
MIMURA Ichiro
Chief Representative
JICA Saint Lucia Office
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