SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has start­ed the process to make the Ca­roni Swamp an En­vi­ron­men­tal Sen­si­tive Area (ESA).

The EMA post­ed re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) in all dai­ly news­pa­pers this week, invit­ing ten­ders to map the bound­aries of the swamp.

EMA chair­man Nadra Nathai-Gyan told Guardian Me­dia that stake­hold­ers have been call­ing for this des­ig­na­tion for the swamp for some time but the EMA on­ly re­ceived fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment this year.

“That has been in the pipeline for some time… we had re­quests from var­i­ous agen­cies and con­sul­ta­tions, but in or­der to de­clare it, it’s not a sim­ple process. You must know what the bound­aries are, so it took us some time to get the fund­ing,” Nathai-Gyan said.

In the RF­Ps pub­lished, the EMA in­vit­ed ten­ders for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the re-as­sess­ment and de­lin­eation of the bound­aries for a pro­posed ESA, the Ca­roni Swamp.

This means the au­thor­i­ty wants a com­pa­ny that can iden­ti­fy the bound­aries of the swamp be­fore the ESA des­ig­na­tion is grant­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the EMA Act, the au­thor­i­ty may des­ig­nate a site as an ESA if it is the “ac­tu­al or prospec­tive habi­tat of any en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive species (ESS).”

The Ca­roni Swamp is the home of the na­tion­al bird of T&T, the Scar­let Ibis, as well as sev­er­al oth­er ESS.

It is cur­rent­ly a Ra­masar site—which is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised agree­ment that calls on gov­ern­ments to pro­tect wet­lands and en­sure they are utilised prop­er­ly.

Nathai-Gyan said the EMA has been giv­en a $3 mil­lion bud­get to com­plete this des­ig­na­tion and to for­mu­late man­age­ment plans for sev­er­al ESS.

How­ev­er, she said the process to de­clare a site as an ESA can take up to two years, as the EMA will need to hold con­sul­ta­tions af­ter the bound­aries are iden­ti­fied.

“You must con­sult with all the stake­hold­ers to see if they agree, some peo­ple may ob­ject if they have pri­vate in­ter­ests.

“All those kinds of things will hap­pen af­ter this step is con­clud­ed,” she said.

Nathai-Gyan said the des­ig­na­tion will not af­fect eco­tourism on the swamp, as tour op­er­a­tors will be al­lowed to con­tin­ue their trade.

But she said there will be dis­cus­sions about noise pol­lu­tion from the on­board mo­tors of tour boats in the near fu­ture.

The EMA chair­man said the ESA des­ig­na­tion will al­low for greater pro­tec­tion of the swamp and the wildlife that live in it.

“What will hap­pen is that if peo­ple are hunt­ing, il­le­gal­ly tak­ing out oys­ters, if peo­ple are pol­lut­ing, it (the ESA sta­tus) gives more pro­tec­tion un­der the law,” she said.

Once the au­thor­i­ty pre­pares all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, those will be sent to the Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion, Nathai-Gyan said.