Jonathan Barcant is a civil engineer specialized in soils, water and the environment who founded and leads the green enterprise Vetiver TT Ecological Engineering Solutions Ltd (www.vetivertt.com), which specializes in the design application and use of a unique plant based solution to tackle land and water related challenges, known as the Vetiver System (VS) - learn more here: https://vimeo.com/283084349/893e726b2a.

He is also co-founder and Managing Director of the NGO IAMovement (www.iamovement.org) which has become the leading civil society voice on climate change in Trinidad & Tobago. IAMovement hosted the 2014 & 2015 People's Climate Marches during key UN Summits in New York and Paris, followed by 100+ Climate Talk events to date, and has produced various climate-focused educational videos and documentary films. In this position over the last 6 years has Jonathan has in particular learned a great deal about how to effectively communicate and spark engagement and action around climate change, and where via the NGO he is undertaking development of a regional socially connective climate platform aimed and supporting citizen engagement with the current climate realities, taking into consideration key behavioral science considerations and approaches. The model is being angled from two sides, both a grassroots approach aimed at directly engaging with citizen's day-to-day consumer and lifestyle habits, to facilitate a new normal in the way people move and think around climate change; and secondly through targeted methods to support greater citizen engagement with parliamentary democratic processes in select Caribbean countries (a project which has been shortlisted in March 2020 for support from UNDEF, with Project Document development underway per further advancement in the approval process in July 2020).

While supporting Vetiver TT's operation as a green engineering company, Jonathan has also been supporting the expansion in knowledge and access to Vetiver System (VS) nature based solutions from a development approach regionally to several other Caribbean islands, working through the NGO IAMovement, promoting it as a means of building climate resilience and enhancing sustainable livelihoods opportunities in rural communities. The Vetiver Network West Indies (TVNWI - www.tvnwi.org) was launched in 2019 to support this. Development and expansion of Vetiver System (VS) knowledge in T&T and the Caribbean region has been carried out working in partnership with UNDP, IDB, EU, GEF, KfW-CBF, and others.

This system and unique community dissemination models developed and implemented have resulted in the 2017 ReSource Award from the Swiss Re Foundation, 2018 Regional Commonwealth Youth Award for Excellence in Development, among other local recognition.
Jonathan also sits on the Board of The Vetiver Network International (TVNI), a global non-profit organization which has been working to support access and promotion of Vetiver System (VS) knowledge for 30+ years and which was initiated through World Bank projects in the 1980's; and he also sits on the NextGen Board for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Trinidad & Tobago (2018-2020).

Although he studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada since 2006 and continued to work there after as well as internationally on projects in Northern Canada, Greenland and Panama, Jonathan returned to the Caribbean in 2013 where he continues to be based. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.