DR Scott McCormick is the new chief of Party for the Coastal Water Quality Improvement Project (CWIP), a bilateral initiative between the Government of Jamaica’s Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) and the United States government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aimed at improving coastal water quality in Jamaica.

He succeeds Jan Auman, who has assumed duties as home office project manager at Associates in Rural Development, Inc (ARD), the US organisation implementing the CWIP project.

Dr McCormick is an environmental engineer with a background in water resources and pollution control activities. He holds a PhD in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Environmental Studies, as well as an MA in Agricultural Economics from the same institution.

He has extensive international and domestic experience in managing and implementing environmental and natural resource management projects, having worked in various parts of the world, including Bulgaria, the People’s Republic of China, South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Ghana, Yemen, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Employed by ARD in 1984, Dr McCormick, has since January 1999 been a member of the team helping to implement community-based environmental initiatives in Jamaica through the CWIP project.

Dr McCormick’s technical expertise in Participatory Rural Appraisal, water resources management, water pollution control, environmental policy analysis and impact assessments will be greatly beneficial to the project which is now completing its third year.