 The ongoing third round of national consultations under the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project CROP will continue in St. Lucia on Tuesday, the 3rd and Wednesday, the 4th of November, 2020. CROP is currently being implemented by the OECS Commission on behalf of five of its member states, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Kits and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The project seeks to strengthen ocean governance as well as coastal and marine spatial planning and develop a regional marine spatial planning framework for the wider OECS region. In this round of consultation, policymakers and key stakeholders in the maritime sector will be engaged to review and refine the draft coastal and maritime spatial plans that were devised in the first two rounds of consultations among the five countries. Project Manager Susanna Scott spoke on the importance of the consultative stage in developing the coastal master plans and marine spatial plans for member states. The first and second round of consultations really looked at bringing the information, the needed information together to design these coastal and marine spatial plans. And now that we have these preliminary drafts, they will be taken again into stakeholders to be able to give further input and to refine these products before they end up the project. After that has happened, we will again have a regional validation and meetings to look at what comes out of this third round of consultations to validate that these are the documents that will be carried forward by the countries for endorsement at senior management level etc and policy level etc. The consultations which are being held virtually are being facilitated by Dillon Consulting Limited, the consulting firm spearheading the coastal and marine spatial planning component of the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project. St Kits and Nevis was the first of five countries to hold its third round of national consultations October 27th to the 29th. St Lucia will follow this week, Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines consultations are scheduled for November 17th to 19th and Dominicas is scheduled for November 24th to the 26th.