Agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment on for­mer Ca­roni lands has been threat­ened by ur­ban sprawl and squat­ting, wa­ter pol­lu­tion, and "slash-and-burn" prac­tices. This week's guest colum­nist in T&T Guardian's on-go­ing mul­ti-me­dia en­vi­ron­men­tal se­ries, Clean­ing up the Mess, is Ste­lios Christopou­los, Charg� d'Af­faires, Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union, who tells us of an EU study which rec­om­mends we change our ways.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is an ex­am­ple of a rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­try. Cor­ner­stones of its growth are its valu­able nat­ur­al and hu­man re­sources. The coun­try has dis­played high growth rates since the turn of this cen­tu­ry and has ro­bust­ly with­stood the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn. But, as wealth spreads across large shares of the pop­u­la­tion, the need for bal­anced de­vel­op­ment is in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly ev­i­dent if we con­sid­er that, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics, 16.7 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives be­low the pover­ty thresh­old of TT$665 a month.

Re­duc­ing the share of pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in pover­ty is one of the key ob­jec­tives of the Unit­ed Na­tions Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals, and the Eu­ro­pean Union has been sup­port­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in this field through spe­cif­ic co-op­er­a­tion pro­grammes. Cli­mate change pos­es a pow­er­ful threat to our en­vi­ron­ment and liv­ing con­di­tions. Its con­se­quences are ex­pect­ed to se­vere­ly af­fect the Caribbean and par­tic­u­lar­ly small is­land states, such as Trinidad and To­ba­go. But hu­man ac­tions are an even stronger fac­tor as their im­pact can be felt in much a short­er time­line. The EU be­lieves this ten­sion be­tween en­vi­ron­ment and de­vel­op­ment must be tack­led im­me­di­ate­ly.

This is why the EU re­quires the sys­tem­at­ic in­te­gra­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change con­sid­er­a­tions in­to all its poli­cies.�The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in Trinidad – where en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion leads to the de­ple­tion of nat­ur­al as­sets' val­ue – pro­vides some ex­am­ples that can help clar­i­fy this point. The EU re­cent­ly fi­nanced a Strate­gic En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment of the for­mer Ca­roni 1975 LTD lands, fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue pub­lic own­er­ship of the sug­ar in­dus­try in 2003.

Fol­low­ing the di­vest­ment, agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment on many of those lands has been threat­ened by ur­ban sprawl and squat­ting, wa­ter pol­lu­tion, and "slash and burn" prac­tices. Oth­er is­sues in­clude in­creased de­mand for poor­ly man­aged wa­ter re­sources, pro­gres­sive re­duc­tion of soil fer­til­i­ty, with in­creased ero­sion and pol­lu­tion, due to non-en­vi­ron­men­tal friend­ly farm­ing prac­tices, loss of car­bon sinks due to the loss of sug­ar­cane pro­duc­tion.�Mit­i­ga­tion ac­tions are ur­gent­ly re­quired to coun­ter­act such neg­a­tive trends at both mi­cro and macro lev­el.

These in­clude the fol­low­ing:

�2 The de­vel­op­ment of a soil re­me­di­a­tion and wa­ter re­ten­tion man­age­ment scheme;

�2 De­vel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme at all lev­els, mit­i­gat­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pacts through farm­ers co­op­er­a­tives; and,

�2 A so­cial mar­ket­ing cam­paign to en­cour­age con­sump­tion of lo­cal pro­duce with lo­cal brand­ing for min­i­mal agro chem­i­cal us­age.�

Oth­er mea­sures can be un­der­tak­en at macro lev­el.

The most ur­gent would be the de­vel­op­ment of an in­te­grat­ed wa­ter re­source man­age­ment plan and the de­sign of a cli­mate change adap­ta­tion strat­e­gy to min­imise im­pacts and im­prove re­spons­es to po­ten­tial threats.�

Oth­er ways can be ex­plored. These in­clude a re­vi­sion of the tax­a­tion sys­tem in or­der to im­ple­ment an en­vi­ron­men­tal fis­cal re­form and a larg­er ap­pli­ca­tion of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly for those in­dus­tries with high en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial im­pact. Both tools aim at en­sur­ing a more bal­anced bur­den shar­ing on Trinida­di­an so­ci­ety and aim to ap­ply "the pol­luter pays" prin­ci­ple.�Bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the EU and T&T is serv­ing this very pur­pose: To as­sist this coun­try in clos­ing the gap be­tween wealth and de­vel­op­ment.�The nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment is part of a na­tion's wealth.

It is in the in­ter­est of every coun­try to use its own nat­ur­al re­sources sus­tain­ably to­day in or­der to al­low fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to en­joy the same lev­el of well-be­ing, thus en­sur­ing in­ter-gen­er­a­tional sol­i­dar­i­ty. The nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment pro­vides eco­log­i­cal ser­vices key to sus­tain a coun­try's de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tial. Coastal pro­tec­tion by man­groves and coral reefs to pre­ven­tion of soil ero­sion through for­est cov­er is of im­me­di­ate con­cern.

To learn more about the study, please vis­it the EU Del­e­ga­tion Web site: http://ec.eu­ropa.eu/del­e­ga­tions/trinidad/more_in­fo/eu_co­op­er­a­tion_news/in­dex_en.htm

There have been up to five con­firmed deaths and more than 600 con­firmed cas­es of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dengue fever in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This Sun­day on CNC3 in our con­tin­u­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal mul­ti-me­dia se­ries, Clean­ing up the Mess, Ira Math­ur talks to Dr Av­ery Hinds, med­ical epi­demi­ol­o­gist, Na­tion­al Sur­veil­lance Unit, Min­istry of Health, and Dr Dave Chadee, se­nior lec­tur­er, Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture, UWI, on the link be­tween the en­vi­ron­ment and dengue, whether T&T is on the brink of an epi­dem­ic and how cit­i­zens can pick up ear­ly signs of dengue to avoid ill­ness and death.

Send in your ex­pe­ri­ences with dengue to cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt

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