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“As a boy growing up in Jamaica, going to the north coast always fueled my fascination with the sea, especially those places where rivers flow into the sea and one finds the contrasts of warm and cool, fresh and salty side by side. Returning to the Caribbean after studying and working in Canada for 12 years was perhaps the most exciting and fulfilling event in my career. I would like to leave people with an increased awareness that we in the Caribbean can create our own innovative and indigenous brand of sustainability by having confidence in our own ability and working together. UWI provides an unparalleled platform from which to pursue technical and institutional action research aimed at promoting wise use of our common heritage, the Caribbean Sea, ensuring that all the resources it can provide will be there for future generations.”

Professor Robin Mahon

DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES (CERMES)
FACULTY OF PURE AND APPLIED SCIENCES
CAVE HILL CAMPUS, BARBADOS
Tel: (246) 417-4570 • Email: Robin.Mahon@cavehill.uwi.edu

PROFILE

Professor Robin Mahon obtained his BSc in Marine Biology at UWI Mona then went on to do his MSc and PhD at the University of Guelph in Canada. His first job was with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. He then returned to the Caribbean to work with FAO as a Fishery Resources Officer based in Barbados. Subsequently he worked on developing the CARICOM Fisheries Programme and became the Chief Scientist there. Moving from there into the private sector Professor Mahon served the region as an independent consultant for ten years before joining Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES). His career started as a Quantitative Ecologist, and he has shifted progressively through marine resource assessment, management, policy development and institutional strengthening at national and regional levels, with emphasis on assessment and governance of transboundary resources.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Professor Mahon’s research interests relate to the institutional arrangements for living marine resource governance and how to effect organisational change in complex self-organising systems, especially those where capacity is low as is usually the case in Small Island Developing States. Pursuit of these interests led him to become the Regional Project Coordinator for the UNESCO IOCARIBE Large Marine Ecosystem initiative involving all the countries and regional organizations of the Wider Caribbean. This ambitious project seeks to put in place the institutional arrangements for governance of the shared living marine resources of the region. At a more local level, he is also leader of the project “Sustainable Integrated Development and Biodiversity Conservation in the Grenadine Islands” being implemented by CERMES, Caribbean Conservation Association, Projects Promotion Ltd., and the Carriacou Environmental Committee and funded by the Lighthouse Foundation, Germany. That project focuses on the role of civil society in sustainable development in the Grenadines and the modalities of effecting change in complex systems.