As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We of­fer this me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak, where our sci­en­tists, three of whom were re­cent­ly award­ed the high­est award of the na­tion–the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will present some of their work.

This week, we hear from Dr Aiden Far­rell on the cru­cial top­ic of cli­mate change and its im­pact on T&T’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor while high­light­ing the work of The UWISTA.

Dr Far­rell is a Se­nior Lec­tur­er in Plant Phys­i­ol­o­gy, De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences at The UWISTA. His re­search ex­am­ines the mech­a­nisms plants use to grow and sur­vive in a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

—Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, Prin­ci­pal, UWISTA

Dr Aiden Far­rell

Across the world, cli­mate change is mak­ing life hard­er for farm­ers. In T&T, our farm­ers face warmer tem­per­a­tures and more vari­able sea­son­al pat­terns in rain­fall.

These con­di­tions lead to dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions: Will the wet sea­son be too wet for let­tuce? Will the dry sea­son be too dry for toma­toes?

With weath­er pat­terns chang­ing and old cer­tain­ties be­com­ing new un­cer­tain­ties, how can grow­ers adapt their prac­tices to pro­tect their in­vest­ments? Farm­ers can adopt a few meth­ods, in­clud­ing tools to pro­tect from drought. These in­clude plant­i­ng dif­fer­ent crops, plant­i­ng ear­li­er to avoid the worst of the dry sea­son or ir­ri­gat­ing high-val­ue crops. Of course, there will al­ways be trade-offs that come with such prac­tices. For ex­am­ple, plant­i­ng cas­sa­va rather than toma­toes may avoid los­ing a crop, but there will still be a loss in prof­its. As such, even farm­ers who can adapt their prac­tices will need ad­di­tion­al sup­port.

In The UWI’s De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences, we have been test­ing lo­cal­ly grown veg­etable va­ri­eties to see if they are well suit­ed to warmer, dry­er con­di­tions. Typ­i­cal­ly, we find that most va­ri­eties can sur­vive tem­per­a­tures up to 35oC, al­though there is lit­tle pho­to­syn­thet­ic ac­tiv­i­ty at this heat.

When heat is com­bined with drought, there is a risk that the whole crop is lost due to fail­ures in pol­li­na­tion and loss of fruit. Here, adapt­ing plant­i­ng prac­tices can help mit­i­gate this risk. For ex­am­ple, co­coa grown un­der shade trees has more pro­tec­tion from the warm­ing cli­mate than those grown in mono­cul­ture set­tings. How­ev­er, trees can still die in the dri­est months, and co­coa grow­ers will in­creas­ing­ly need a sup­ply of ir­ri­ga­tion wa­ter to with­stand such events.

As the Caribbean gets warmer and rain­fall pat­terns are seen to vary, gov­ern­ments have ac­cept­ed that we need to pre­pare for cli­mate change (as well as seek­ing to re­duce its mag­ni­tude). Co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er key in­sti­tu­tions is need­ed if we are to take ad­van­tage of large-scale op­tions for cli­mate change adap­ta­tion. These op­tions in­clude crop in­sur­ance, tai­lored cli­mate fore­casts, im­proved wa­ter sup­ply and na­ture-based so­lu­tions. Crop in­sur­ance for droughts or ex­cess rain­fall events acts to spread the risk from an un­pro­duc­tive or un­prof­itable crop. Such a sys­tem could be vi­tal in al­low­ing farm­ers to re­spond to cli­mate change, but it re­quires state sup­port.

If farm­ers are not guid­ed or as­sist­ed, we will face a lose-lose sce­nario, with un­der­used agri­cul­tur­al land re­duc­ing car­bon diox­ide up­take and threat­en­ing our food sup­ply. Across the world, farm­ers are aban­don­ing agri­cul­tur­al land due to cli­mate change. For ex­am­ple, in the Sa­hel Re­gion of Africa, cli­mate mi­grants have been forced to ex­it farm­ing as the weath­er be­comes too harsh or too vari­able to sus­tain farm­ing liveli­hoods.

T&T al­ready has a short­fall in lo­cal food pro­duc­tion, with many younger cit­i­zens choos­ing to seek their for­tune away from agri­cul­ture. With­out sup­port, cli­mate change could be­come the last straw for our al­ready un­der­utilised farms.

Glob­al­ly, there is an in­creas­ing fo­cus on the role of na­ture-based so­lu­tions in pro­tect­ing agri­cul­tur­al land from the worst ef­fects of cli­mate change. There are calls for more agro­forestry, with crops grow­ing along­side trees, as seen in our very own shade-grown co­coa. A well-de­vel­oped tree canopy has been shown to help buffer the se­vere ef­fects of drought and heat, mak­ing crops more re­silient. Sim­i­lar­ly, gov­ern­ments are en­cour­aged to re­tain nat­ur­al ecosys­tems close to farms to pro­tect soil wa­ter, nu­tri­ents and bio­di­ver­si­ty dur­ing cli­mate ex­tremes.

Nat­ur­al ecosys­tems act as reser­voirs of bio­di­ver­si­ty, pro­tect­ing pol­li­na­tors and in­sects that con­trol pests, mak­ing the farm land­scape more re­silient to broad­er cli­mate im­pacts. In this re­gard, T&T is ahead of the pack, with a large por­tion of the coun­try still hav­ing rea­son­able for­est cov­er.

To­ba­go sees some of the worst droughts, but think how much dry­er it would be if the Main Ridge For­est Re­serve was not there to cap­ture and store the mois­ture from the pass­ing clouds.

The UWI is work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) and sev­er­al oth­er stake­hold­ers to main­tain the pro­tect­ed ar­eas net­work in the face of cli­mate change. This is so that peo­ple, bio­di­ver­si­ty and our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor can con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from its pro­tect­ing in­flu­ence.

This nat­ur­al cap­i­tal, com­bined with tar­get­ed crop re­search and im­proved co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers in as­sist­ing farm­ers to adapt, of­fers hope that the sec­tor can be re­silient in a rapid­ly chang­ing world.