Michelle Loubon

St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat says it is im­por­tant for small is­land states like T&T to strike a bal­ance be­tween so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion of its nat­ur­al re­sources. Sankat made this com­ment at The Crop­per Foun­da­tion dis­tin­guished lec­ture se­ries on the en­vi­ron­ment at the En­gi­neer­ing Lec­ture The­atre 1, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, on Wednes­day. Re­searcher Mervyn Clax­ton de­liv­ered the lec­ture on in­dige­nous knowl­edge and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Among those present were Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture, Pro­fes­sor Dy­er Nar­i­nesingh, pres­i­dent of the Crop­per Foun­da­tion Win­ston Rud­der and Prof Nor­van Gir­van, Board of Trustees, The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, his­to­ri­ans Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton and Dr Heather Cateau. Sankat said: "The whole is­sue of bio­di­ver­si­ty and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is crit­i­cal to small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.

"It is even more crit­i­cal as we con­tin­ue to work to­wards strate­gies to im­ple­ment eco­nom­ic growth and com­pet­i­tive­ness, while at the same time, seek­ing to main­tain the del­i­cate bal­ance with achiev­ing sus­tain­able and eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment and fos­ter­ing a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens." Sankat added: "It is im­por­tant for all na­tions to strike a bal­ance be­tween the ef­forts to in­crease the pace of so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and to en­sure con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources. This is a fun­da­men­tal move be­hind the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of Bio­di­ver­si­ty." He al­so stressed in­di­vid­ual economies can­not sin­gle­hand­ed­ly re­solve these prob­lems like cli­mate change and glob­al warm­ing.

Lec­ture, an­thol­o­gy to cel­e­brate Crop­per Foun­da­tion Clax­ton's lec­ture was twinned with the launch of the an­thol­o­gy, Mov­ing Right Along, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion. It al­so was host­ed in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Hous­ing, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion and the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence, Agri­cul­ture, UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. Sankat added: "UWI's St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is tru­ly ho­n­oured to pro­vide a plat­form for is­sues of na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al im­por­tance,demon­strat­ing to the wider com­mu­ni­ty the valu­able con­tri­bu­tion we make as a ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tion in da­tion for aim­ing to in­crease pub­lic aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues.

He said: "Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Crop­per Foun­da­tion for its tenth an­niver­sary in pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment across a range of dis­ci­plines and sec­tors in the Caribbean re­gion. "Its ef­forts to in­crease pub­lic aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of the de­vel­op­men­tal and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues are ex­cel­lent ex­am­ples of how any or­gan­i­sa­tion can con­tribute to the over­all de­vel­op­ment of a coun­try and re­gion," said Sankat. He al­so thanked Prof Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties, and the con­trib­u­tors to the an­thol­o­gy, Mov­ing Right Along. The book was ded­i­cat­ed to the late John Crop­per, hus­band of for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­gela Crop­per.