The star­tling sto­ry of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion, which has been slink­ing along for the last 13 years with no short­age of fund­ing, rais­es the prospect an­oth­er state agency de­signed to serve the larg­er in­ter­ests of the coun­try seems to be falling short of its man­date.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion, the le­gal en­ti­ty cre­at­ed to act as both the court of fi­nal ar­bi­tra­tion for the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty as well as the court of ap­peal for the edicts of the EMA, was as­signed $7 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion from the gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2013.

There seems to be lit­tle to jus­ti­fy the con­sid­er­able ex­pense of the com­mis­sion's ex­is­tence, par­tic­u­lar­ly since of the six sit­ting com­mis­sion­ers called for in its work, on­ly four have been avail­able, chair­man San­dra Paul, deputy chair­man In­di­ra Ram­rek­ers­ingh, Dr Eu­gene C Lau­rent and Roger deLa­cy Car­ring­ton.

The terms of all four ex­pired in Jan­u­ary. That shouldn't be a prob­lem for the com­mis­sion, though, since chair­man San­dra Paul has en­joyed a three-year ap­point­ment con­tin­u­ous­ly since 2004. When last the coun­try heard about the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion, af­ter reg­is­trar An­drew Dalip was sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards was re­port­ed then to be seek­ing le­gal ad­vice re­gard­ing the tenure of chair­man San­dra Paul af­ter con­cerns were raised about sev­er­al mat­ters, in­clud­ing the hir­ing of Ms Paul's sis­ter as a cater­er.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion is housed in the EF Tel­ly Paul Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, a struc­ture owned by the chair­man's fa­ther, but it is in the process of be­ing re­lo­cat­ed.The rev­e­la­tions about the com­mis­sion come on the heels of the al­most com­plete lack of util­i­ty at the Na­tion­al Trust, where the first key as­sign­ment of the sit­ting of­fi­cers, a list­ing of pro­tect­ed prop­er­ties, re­mains out­stand­ing.

Of the four cas­es list­ed on the com­mis­sion's Web site, three are mat­ters of or­der re­lat­ing to Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance and is­sues of ju­ris­dic­tion which were set­tled through me­di­a­tion. On­ly one case, a chal­lenge mount­ed by Tal­is­man Pe­tro­le­um Ltd against the EMA over seis­mic test­ing in the Nar­i­va wet­lands, went to full tri­al.

Has the com­mis­sion's low pro­file led to it be­ing over­looked as a re­source for clar­i­fy­ing crit­i­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters or has em­bed­ded dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion and in­sti­tu­tion­al lethar­gy led to a dys­func­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion? The net re­sult ap­pears to be a com­mis­sion em­pow­ered at the lev­el of a High Court that seems to do lit­tle about hot-but­ton en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion can act, for in­stance, on a spe­cif­ic class of com­plaint, the Di­rect Par­ty Ac­tion, which al­lows con­cerned cit­i­zens to by­pass the EMA to raise mat­ters di­rect­ly be­fore the en­vi­ron­men­tal court.Per­haps this is a pub­lic re­la­tions is­sue and the good works of the com­mis­sion are be­ing un­just­ly over­looked, but what ac­counts for the short­falls in ex­ec­u­tive staffing and the in­abil­i­ty of the agency to func­tion at present?

AG Anand Ram­lo­gan said a new board will be ap­point­ed this month. Un­til then, chair­man San­dra Paul might feel moved to of­fer, in the in­ter­ests of ac­count­abil­i­ty, an in­for­ma­tive state­ment on the com­mis­sion's sit­u­a­tion as it now stands.