The di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process needs a vi­sion­ary de­vel­op­ment per­spec­tive open­ing up op­por­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion which can sub­stan­tial­ly im­prove our na­tion­al qual­i­ty of life.

At a sem­i­nar held by the the UWI-based Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit sem­i­nar ti­tled The Key Ar­eas for Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for T&T, Dr Ter­rance Far­rell, who leads the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board (EDAB), out­lined the "Roadmap To A Di­ver­si­fied Econ­o­my". In do­ing so he set out a process which is the essence of the Vi­sion 2030 Plan. Once the process is fol­lowed, Dr Farell ar­tic­u­lat­ed, a flouris­ing econ­o­my and way of life should emerge by 2030.

How­ev­er, as I have said be­fore, the process is made up of a se­ries of short term ini­tia­tives that to­geth­er could lay the foun­da­tions for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and there­fore trans­for­ma­tion. In the throes of a se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic cri­sis, as in my opin­ion we are, the short term mea­sures must have the ca­pac­i­ty to gen­er­ate hori­zons of hope for the cit­i­zen­ry which is an es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent for achiev­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

It is with this fore­most in my con­cerns and my per­cep­tions for the fu­ture of T&T and for the Caribbean that I con­sid­er it es­sen­tial for me to put in­to the na­tion­al dis­course an­oth­er view re­lat­ed to the east­ern coastal re­gions of Trinidad. This is what I would con­sid­er to be a key area for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, be­cause it is fo­cus­ing on an im­ple­men­ta­tion thrust based on two planned projects as set out in the re­cent bud­get. This re­lates to the planned First Class Road–Va­len­cia to To­co; and a high­way–Waller­field to Man­zanil­la.

It has been said that I de­scribed these two ini­tia­tives as lead­ing to an "eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter". I must place on record that I don't re­call hav­ing made such a com­ment. What I did say, how­ev­er, is that two such high­ways be­ing planned out­side of the con­text of the over­all ex­isit­ing phys­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions and de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tials of the east­ern coastal area of Trinidad may not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to what Dr Row­ley stat­ed–that the fo­cus of de­vel­op­ment must al­ways be to im­prove and en­hance the qual­i­ty of life through­out the coun­try.

It is against that wider back­ground that I con­sid­er it ap­pro­pri­ate for me to ar­tic­u­late an­oth­er view.

Three east­ern re­gions

To do so, I have di­vid­ed the east­ern coastal ar­eas in­to three re­gions, as shown on Map 1:

�2 North East re­gion: This en­com­pass­es all the vil­lages from Matu­ra through Saly­bia, Ram­panal­gas, Cumana, To­co, Sans Souci, Grande Riv­iere and Matelot. This is with­out doubt a spe­cial area that em­braces the west­ern reach­es of the At­lantic Ocean and the south­ern reach­es of the Caribbean Sea. This re­gion is the home of the leatherback tur­tle.

�2 Cen­tral East re­gion: This re­gion strad­dles the ter­ri­to­ry to in­clude Fish­ing Pond, North Man­zanil­la, Man­zanil­la and Nar­i­va. There­fore, it con­tains three in­ter­est­ing but dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal fea­tures: (1) fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al lands stretch­ing from Fish­ing Pond in the north and to Man­zanil­la in the south; (2) the in­ter­est­ing coastal ar­eas, es­pe­cial­ly the mag­ni­fi­cient beach­es of Man­zanil­la and Co­cal; (3) the crown jew­el of this re­gion, the Nar­i­va Swamp, so apt­ly filmed and de­scribed in the Bush Di­ary by Robert Clarke and The Road Less Trav­elled by Pao­lo Ker­na­han.

�2 South East re­gion: Stretch­ing from Nar­i­va to Ma­yaro and Guayagua­yare, com­bin­ing the ex­ist­ing tourism ac­tivites along the beach as well as the his­tor­i­cal ad­vent of the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try.

The two strate­gic ur­ban cen­tres for the three re­gions are the two fron­tier towns–San­gre Grande to the north and Rio Claro to the south. Both these towns, to­geth­er with the de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tials of these re­gions, are cru­cial phys­i­cal re­al­i­ties in any in­fra­struc­tur­al un­der­tak­ing.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, let us start with the North East re­gion. The in­ten­tion of the First Class Road is to pro­vide an ac­cess sep­a­rate from the ex­ist­ing To­co Main Road ex­tend­ing from Va­len­cia to To­co, with the pri­ma­ry pur­pose be­ing an ac­cess for a two-way fer­ry ser­vice be­tween To­co and Scar­bor­ough. From my land sur­vey­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of hav­ing worked in these ar­eas in my ear­ly days, it al­ways struck me in the North Coast vil­lages that I could hear the To­ba­go di­alect. In meet­ing with these voic­es, I dis­cov­ered the To­ba­go names that in­hab­it­ed these ar­eas of Trinidad had ob­vi­ous­ly used the tra­di­tion­al means of sea con­nec­tion be­tween the two is­lands.

It would seem that such a road would in ef­fect by­pass the vil­lages that are ser­viced by the To­co Main Road. It would al­so seem that such a road would have to utilise the ter­rain of the in­land For­est Re­serves. Both of these fac­tors could have an ad­verse im­pact on the qual­i­ty of life in the vil­lages and pos­si­bly the con­tin­ued neg­a­tive im­pact on the in­land en­vi­ron­ment. In ef­fect, it is this in­land en­vi­ron­ment that we des­per­ate­ly need to pre­serve.

Main is­sues

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the is­sues that arise, in my opin­ion, are as fol­lows:

�2 The Fer­ry Port: Along the en­tire north coast of Trinidad, from my ob­ser­va­tions, there are on­ly two coves or bays with an­chor­age suit­able for a fer­ry ser­vice. These are Damien Bay, which is just east of Tyri­co Bay in the over­all Mara­cas Bay cove, and the east­ern end of Las Cuevas Bay.

I say this be­cause any fer­ry port in To­co will, with­out doubt, be a very cost­ly ex­er­cise.

There is in ad­di­tion, on the east­ern coast of the North East re­gion, Ba­lan­dra Bay, which has good an­chor­age. The re­cent storm on the north coast stretch­ing from To­co all the way back to Mara­cas Bay gives an in­di­ca­tion, in this time of cli­mate change, of the dev­as­ta­tion that could be caused from the forces of the Caribbean Sea.

I am of the opin­ion that a fer­ry port is a very use­ful ser­vice, not on­ly for the trip to To­ba­go or back, but al­so if a fer­ry port was es­tab­lised in Las Cuevas as well as in the North East re­gion. This would al­so en­hance the tourism po­ten­tial of the North Coast of Trinidad. The im­por­tant fac­tors are the phys­i­cal re­al­i­ties and the de­vel­op­ment cost.

�2 The To­co Main Road: The To­co Main Road is a scenic dri­ve. It pro­vides won­der­ful views of the vil­lages and of the At­lantic Ocean stretch­ing all the way to Ma­yaro. With­out doubt, what is re­quired is to en­hance the ex­ist­ing road–most of the ex­isit­ng bridges are in de­plorable con­di­tions, the road is not prop­er­ly main­tained, and there­fore the time fac­tor re­lat­ed to trav­el is not ad­e­quate. En­hanc­ing the ex­isit­ing road ex­tend­ing all the way to Matelot would en­sure that the qual­i­ty of life of the vil­lagers is sus­b­tan­tial­ly im­proved. It is al­ways pos­si­ble in such cir­cum­stances that the road through the vil­lages can have some di­ver­sions as ap­pro­pri­ate to en­sure that there is an easy traf­fic flow.

�2 The Vil­lages: Ex­pen­di­tures should be made to im­prove the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of each of the vil­lages. For one thing, be­cause the re­gion has such in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment op­tions, name­ly, tourism, agri­cul­ture and fish­ing. Green mar­kets, sim­i­lar to what has been done in San­ta Cruz, could al­so be es­tab­lished. This would have the ef­fect of cre­at­ing vil­lage com­merce, there­by cre­at­ing gen­uine com­muntiy vi­a­bil­i­ty.

In my next ar­ti­cle, I am go­ing to fur­ther ex­pand on this re­gion to show its sig­nif­i­cance, and the im­por­tance of re­serv­ing the ter­ri­to­ry be­tween the afore­men­tioned vil­lages of this re­gion and the east­ern bor­ders of Blan­chisseuse, Morne La Croix and the north­ern reach­es of Ari­ma and Va­len­cia. This ter­ri­to­ry is a rain­for­est, lend­ing it­self, if care­ful­ly pre­served in its nat­ur­al habi­tat, to a Na­tion­al Park. This will pro­vide east Trinidad with the un­usu­al fea­ture of a Rain­for­est Re­serve and the Nar­i­va Swamp to the south.

TO BE CON­TIN­UED

IVAN LAUGH­LIN