Cleaning Up The Mess

 Thinking Globally, 

Acting Locally

The GEF is the largest public funder of projects designed to address global environmental priorities at the national level. Projects funded by the programme fall within five focus areas: biodiversity conservation, protection of international waters, prevention of land degradation, climate change (mitigation and adaption) and reduction of persistent organic pollutants.

The minister dismissed her with the wave of a hand, saying: “That’s just a small part of the Savannah. When we ready we can pave the whole thing. There’s plenty more bush in the country.”

So many things became clear in that single statement. Apart from bush being a rural symbol and paving an urban one (speaking not just of the will but the capability and resources), this demonstrates a well-defined attitude to land, to natural resources, and the prevailing desire to get “out of the bush” to civilisation. And so we see house lots in which the house is built with barely any yard, and if there is a “yard” it is paved.

Our relationship to other living things—be they plants, trees or bush; bachacs or tarantulas, pothounds or pitbulls—remains for the large part, unilateral or utilitarian. Do they serve us? Do we need to avoid them? If they are harmful to us, then kill them. 

We don’t usually perceive nature as something that we need to fit into, in our daily lives. We seldom think about the most important future resources—water, food and energy.

 

This week in Guardian Media environmental space, writer and blogger PAT GANASE tells us about two young scientists, one of whom, a Trinidadian student who are doing important research in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 

If you could live on an island small enough for you to walk around in a couple hours, what would you need to give your life purpose? 

Two young scientists have seized the opportunity to do research on a coral island in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 

They join a growing band of colleagues who are not only interested in the animals and systems that build coral reefs in tropical waters, but who are investigating more deeply to build on previous work and adding their research to increase the body of knowledge about coral systems. Scientists in symbiotic relationships! 

Amanda Ford is a student from England attending the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Anjani Ganase, from Trinidad and Tobago, did her first degree in marine biology at the Florida Institute of Technology, and then chose the University of Amsterdam for a master’s. 

Permaculture was originally an agricultural term (permanent agriculture) created in the 70s to describe a holistic system that would connect many components on an agricultural site, and that after its initial setup, would provide its owners with all their needs and eventually become a sustaining artificial ecosystem much like a natural forest.

This view still applies, but over the last 40 years, permaculture itself has grown and evolved into a practice (permanent culture) that is embraced by urban communities growing food and harvesting water and sunlight in their backyards; rural communities seeking empowerment, self-sufficiency and retention of their cultures; and university communities seeking a change in the status quo.

It is preparing the population to deal positively with the changes that are upon us from an exploding population, resource depletion, an oil and energy addiction, global warming and climate change. In trying to write about what permaculture is, I decided the best way was to talk about the permaculture design course (PDC), the backbone of permaculture, what it covers and how it is applied on our farm.

In the first of this two-part series in our ongoing Cleaning Up The Mess space, Housing and the Environment Minister Dr ROODAL MOONILAL tells us T&T has begun transitioning to a low-carbon society, starting with the application of solar power as renewable energy in police surveillance bays.

The Cabinet of the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago approved the construction of Police Surveillance Bays (PSBs) along the Uriah Butler and Sir Solomon Hochoy highways. Consistent with its Medium Term Policy Framework for the period 2011 to 2014 regarding transitioning to a low-carbon society and promoting green technology, Cabinet also approved the application of solar power for the PSBs.

 This week in Guardian Media environmental series feature writer, editor and blogger Pat Ganase tells us just why growing our own food is not only good for our economics, but for our health.

LIVING LA VIDA

You are what you eat. So said the French doctor Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in his 1826 book. The idea that what we eat influences or has a direct bearing on health, state of mind, even personality is today not merely philosophical. 

 Look at how cheap high calorie food—replete with tasty fats and sugars—is reshaping the profile of a generation. Couch potatoes indeed! How can we be expected to clean up what’s around us when we can’t begin to clean up what goes into our own bodies? 

 A generation ago in Trinidad, children ate what their mothers cooked at home. This usually meant a meal that included locally grown vegetables or green stuff, carbs in the form of rice or roti, green fig, ground provision and, if any, a tiny but flavourful portion of meat or fish. 

This is the second of a two-part series on incentives geared towards reducing greenhouse gases in T&T, collectively written by six students of the University of the West Indies— MATHEW EDWARDS, SALEEM ABDUL AZIZ, MARSILIO MOHAMMED, KEENAN RAMNATH, DARREL LUTCHMAN, AVINDA BHAIROSINGH and FARIA RAMJOHN.

According to the results of a study conducted by a group of Environmental Economics students on which this article is based, the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Trinidad and Tobago was found to not surprisingly be the industrial sector.

Transport is listed as the second highest contributor with domestic and agricultural sources being third.

In terms of industrial activity, market-based incentives such as tradable permits on pollution and taxing are necessary in making a step in the direction of more environmentally sound operations.

Levying taxes on activities such as polluting, could result in a paradigm shift where unfavourable items and activities would hold a charge as opposed to activities regarded as positive for society such as savings being tax free.

This is the first of a two-part series on incentives geared towards reducing greenhouse gases in T&T, jointly written by six students of the University of the West Indies—Mathew Edwards, Saleem Abdul Aziz, Marsilio Mohammed, Keenan Ramnath, Darrel Lutchman, Avinda Bhairosingh and Faria Ramjohn.

“It is often been said that our quest for wealth has time and again generated much of the pollution that plagues our society and contributes to general degradation of our natural environment. “Living in a way that is less damaging to the Earth is not easy, but it is vital, because pollution is pervasive and often life-threatening,” says Dr Azad Mohammed, UWI lecturer and eco-toxicologist. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. This popular quote, originating from Plato, a renowned Greek philosopher, can be applied to the global crisis with which we are confronted today.