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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Food, farming and festivals: Can we green Tobago's orange economy?

by

20 days ago
20250627

In to­day’s world, there are sev­er­al schools of thought and per­haps ide­olo­gies which would im­ply from the face of it, that the en­ter­tain­ment-based in­dus­tries, in­clu­sive of cul­ture, the arts and the event-based eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties, can­not be linked suc­cess­ful­ly to any­thing sus­tain­able in the least bit.

It is with such think­ing that we are des­tined to fail if con­sid­er­a­tion is not giv­en to find­ing an in­no­v­a­tive and struc­tured way to bridge the gap be­tween all that is sus­tain­able and re­gen­er­a­tive, with those ac­tiv­i­ties which are tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as con­sumer-based, ex­trac­tive and not green in the least bit. Since the world is go­ing in the di­rec­tion of what was one decade ago a buzz­word for world lead­ers, tech­nocrats and oth­er fo­rum-based dis­cus­sions, sus­tain­abil­i­ty through the or­ange econ­o­my can­not be ruled out as an ac­cess point to break­ing in­to new mar­kets and get­ting im­mense amounts of buy-in from large scale en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try gi­ants and busi­ness­es.

The ap­proach would be to jus­ti­fy the need for a sup­ply chain of food items for such large events. In To­ba­go’s case, we have seen an uptick in the amount of food or culi­nary-based de­mands in the face of an ex­pand­ing en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, which ties in with tourism prod­ucts and at­trac­tions. The or­der of the day seems to be heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by food, fan­fare and fes­ti­vals. A clas­sic ex­am­ple of this would be the on­go­ing har­vest fes­ti­vals which in­clude even more culi­nary of­fer­ings, as well as year-round ap­pli­ca­tions of food-based rev­el­ry to the an­nu­al cal­en­dar of events on the is­land.

For the eco-mind­ed or the more ‘con­scious’ in their think­ing, they would ar­gue that this is noth­ing short of a noise­mak­ing ex­pe­di­tion and a pre­ten­tious ide­ol­o­gy as it re­lates to tourism, but we can ac­tu­al­ly tap in­to some­thing nev­er be­fore con­sid­ered. If the de­mand for food is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the av­er­age us­es for con­sump­tion, we can make a very strong case for why farm­ers are to be equipped and ready to pro­duce en masse for such oc­ca­sions.

Since we can­not seem to en­cour­age farm­ing to sup­ply the tra­di­tion­al needs and to en­sure that food se­cu­ri­ty where every­day con­sump­tion is con­cerned, per­haps com­pa­nies and en­ter­tain­ment gi­ants can con­sid­er now in­vest­ing in sus­tain­able ac­tiv­i­ties such as farm­ing and re­gen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture to ser­vice their re­spec­tive fes­tiv­i­ties, with the req­ui­site amount of pro­duce to make each event suc­cess­ful. The mar­ket ex­ists, the con­sumer base is there; all that is re­quired is the in­vest­ment.

There are fes­ti­vals around the world that at­tract hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple. Such events pro­duce waste and emis­sions through trav­el­ling to venues, us­ing elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, and oth­er sup­plies on the site. The ques­tion is this; How can we make fes­ti­vals more sus­tain­able with­out us hav­ing to for­go them?

In to­day’s mod­ern world, a sig­nif­i­cant shift to­wards re­duc­ing emis­sions has em­anat­ed from every quar­ter, in­clu­sive of those that hold large events, con­certs, fes­ti­vals and even the­atre. The need to re­duce our car­bon foot­print and cut back on en­er­gy us­age is dis­cussed be­tween a wide cross-sec­tion of in­di­vid­u­als, from cre­atives to par­ty pro­mot­ers. The idea of cut­ting costs for eco­nom­ic pur­pos­es has dri­ven this need to look at ‘green­ing’ of en­ter­tain­ment-based out­puts glob­al­ly.

There is not much avail­able glob­al da­ta on sus­tain­abil­i­ty of fes­ti­vals just yet. How­ev­er, there is ev­i­dence to show a sys­temic im­bal­ance that oc­curs through such con­sumer-based ac­tiv­i­ties. A fes­ti­val can be iden­ti­fied as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in sus­tain­able so­lu­tions. Mu­sic fes­ti­vals ba­si­cal­ly face the same sus­tain­abil­i­ty chal­lenges as the rest of so­ci­ety, on­ly on a small­er scale: en­er­gy sup­ply, the us­age of re­sources, ques­tions of mo­bil­i­ty and a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my.

A fes­ti­val is a so­ci­ety in it­self just as a town un­der stress. How­ev­er, so much more hap­pens at a fes­ti­val which ul­ti­mate­ly can­not be con­trolled. Sim­i­lar­ly, on a so­ci­etal lev­el, there are sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties which are hard to po­lice and get un­der con­trol.

Green­ing the or­ange

econ­o­my ap­pli­ca­tions

The Dutch DGTL Fes­ti­val for elec­tron­ic mu­sic has the goal of be­com­ing the first cir­cu­lar econ­o­my fes­ti­val in the world. The pow­er they use for rough­ly 60,000 fes­ti­val go­ers comes from wind and so­lar en­er­gy. Meat has been re­placed by plant-based al­ter­na­tives and the wa­ter be­ing used in the toi­lets and show­ers gets processed so it can be reused. Waste is sep­a­rat­ed strict­ly and a de­posit sys­tem for beer cups or oth­er bev­er­ages avoids un­nec­es­sary fur­ther waste.

An­oth­er use­ful ap­pli­ca­tion is to use the toi­let fa­cil­i­ties as com­post­ing units, which gen­er­ates an al­ter­na­tive to chem­i­cal trash, oth­er­wise dis­posed of af­ter a ‘big fete’ or fes­ti­val. In Italy, the Ter­raform Fes­ti­val, with more than 5,000 vis­i­tors, built their stages from the wood of trees that were de­stroyed dur­ing a storm in the re­gion, and has a knock-on ef­fect of sup­port­ing lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties in due course.

Lo­cal­ly, most fes­ti­vals are or­gan­ised by the pri­vate sec­tor. As for To­ba­go, there are even state-run and pro­mot­ed events. This re­quires clear rules and reg­u­la­tions, and for pol­i­cy­mak­ers to come up with in­no­v­a­tive ideas to in­cen­tivise such events. To­ba­go, be­ing a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state, and con­sist­ing of many rur­al com­mu­ni­ties with en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive ar­eas, presents a grand op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead the way in sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The Caribbean, as a cul­tur­al­ly ex­pres­sive re­gion, boast­ing of more par­ties, fes­ti­vals and con­certs per capi­ta than any oth­er re­gion glob­al­ly, cre­ates a niche for green­ing of events in uni­son. If each is­land can pro­vide as­sis­tance for pro­mot­ers wish­ing to ‘go green’, we would be­come an au­thor­i­ty on how the or­ange econ­o­my plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

In our quest to be­come more sus­tain­able, we can tar­get re­al-life chal­lenges that dri­ve eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties in the Caribbean, specif­i­cal­ly in T&T, as op­posed to cheap green­wash­ing method­olo­gies all for a pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty. The po­ten­tial is im­mense for this re­gion to be­come a stan­dard bear­er through our cul­ture and all the ac­com­pa­ny­ing fan­fare that is part and par­cel of its con­struct.

Sean Mc­Coon is an en­vi­ron­men­tal en­thu­si­ast and mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Writ­ers’ Guild. For more in­for­ma­tion about the Guild call 1(868)620-5799 or email trinidad­to­b­gowrit­ers­guild@gmail.com


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