Melis­sa Doughty

There are con­cerns that groups un­der the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WRP) will soon be closed. In a tele­phone in­ter­view project man­ag­er of the Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Re­for­esta­tion Project (FACRP), Ak­i­lah Jaramo­gi, said she be­lieved NR­WRP groups who have been un­der per­form­ing or pro­duced lit­tle to no re­sults would be shut down.

The NR­WRP was formed in 2004 un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment to re­plant for­mer­ly de­for­est­ed ar­eas. That, for Jaramo­gi, has caused a prob­lem since, "a lot of the groups were po­lit­i­cal­ly formed to ad­dress pover­ty, etc, with­out the in­for­ma­tion about en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion."

For­mer Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Roodal Mooni­lal, un­der whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty the project fell, could not be reached for com­ment to to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion as to the num­ber of groups which would be shut down, New Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, Gan­ga Singh, said he could not an­swer ques­tions about the NR­WRP since the project was not yet hand­ed over to him.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry's Web site, NR­WRP was di­vid­ed in­to four zones – North, South, East and To­ba­go – and al­so in­clud­ed an agro forestry project, hik­ing trail clear­ance and main­te­nance and train­ing and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives. Al­though it is un­clear when last the NR­WRP sec­tion of the min­istry's Web site was up­dat­ed, it states the project "has as its man­date re­for­esta­tion of 33,030 acres of de­nud­ed lands, in­clud­ing 11,000 acres of wa­ter­sheds."

Progress re­ports on the site state, thus far, 6,851.8 acres of for­est have been re­plant­ed. The site al­so said at least 1,190 peo­ple were em­ployed in the pro­gramme, work­ing with 54 sep­a­rate groups. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist John Stollmey­er said al­though he nev­er worked on the project, the state of lo­cal re­for­esta­tion was a "dis­as­ter."

He added: "We need to fig­ure out how to not cut down any more forests and re­ha­bil­i­tate land back in­to forests. There is an ur­gent need in this coun­try for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion but it needs to be di­rect­ed. We need to be plant­i­ng trees that are rel­e­vant to hu­man be­ings."

The NR­WRP plant­ed apa­mate, lo­cal cedar, ma­hogany, ma­hoe and yel­low poui, among oth­er types of trees. Stollmey­er be­lieves the ben­e­fits of re­for­esta­tion are wide-rang­ing. He said: "We need as a coun­try to be look­ing at our bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my. We will con­tin­ue to suf­fer from se­vere flood­ing if we do not ad­dress this is­sue."