As we move in­to an­oth­er new year, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) wish list is as fol­lows:

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment prin­ci­ple 10 of Rio De­c­la­ra­tion be­ing the right of ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and ac­cess to jus­tice in en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment re­view the per­mit fees for air and wa­ter pol­lu­tion to in­clude the cost of clean­ing up the pol­lu­tion

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment halt all new or re­newed quar­ry li­cens­es un­til a) all of the $112 mil­lion out­stand­ing roy­al­ties for the le­gal quar­ries (owed from 2000 to 2010)are paid in full to the Trea­sury; b) A na­tion­al as­sess­ment is un­der­tak­en of the im­pact of quar­ry­ing on our ecosys­tems and wa­ter aquifers; c) En­force­ment of all leg­is­la­tion reg­u­lat­ing quar­ries; d) That our Gov­ern­ment give il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tors 90 days to ob­tain quar­ry li­cences or be shut down and e) That our Gov­ern­ment re­view the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion bond in quar­ry li­cens­es

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment widen the ju­ris­dic­tion of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion of T&T to deal with ALL en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment re­form the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­duce cor­rup­tion and that State agen­cies ap­ply­ing for per­mits must fol­low the process and not be fast tracked or per­mit­ted to com­mit acts of pla­gia­rism and fraud

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment leg­is­late for the pro­tec­tion for whis­tle-blow­ers re­port­ing on en­vi­ron­men­tal crimes and cor­rup­tion with­in en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­cies

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment en­sure full procla­ma­tion of the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of De­vel­op­ment Act

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment em­pow­er the an­nu­al prepa­ra­tion of a State of the En­vi­ron­ment Re­port

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment cre­ate a sys­tem for the col­lec­tion and stor­age of en­vi­ron­men­tal da­ta from state agen­cies, uni­ver­si­ties and the pri­vate sec­tor. This da­ta should be avail­able to the pub­lic

�2 With mount­ing ev­i­dence world­wide, BPtt should stop broad­cast­ing strate­gic and mis­lead­ing ad­ver­tise­ments that seis­mic blasts are "on­ly just a way of tak­ing a pic­ture"

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment cre­ate tax in­cen­tives and sub­sidised loans for the es­tab­lish­ment of waste re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ties/busi­ness­es

�2 That our Gov­ern­ment pass the Bev­er­ages Con­tain­ers Bill (with a 20c re­fund­able fee for each con­tain­er) which will spawn the birth of hun­dreds of con­tain­er re­cy­cling busi­ness­es em­ploy­ing thou­sands of land­fill scav­engers

Fi­nal­ly, we pub­licly of­fer all or any as­sis­tance to the Gov­ern­ment in this shared jour­ney for or­der, for wealth cre­ation and for sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Fish­er­men and Friends

of the Sea