GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Plan­ning Min­istry is tak­ing ac­tion to re­duce the threats to and pro­mote sus­tain­able use of man­grove forests.

A state­ment from the min­istry man­grove cov­er­age has been de­clin­ing in Trinidad, adding that de­clines over the sev­en year pe­ri­od were record­ed in Ca­roni Swamp pri­mar­i­ly due to ero­sion on the sea­ward side.

There have al­so been large ar­eas of man­grove die-off north of Blue Riv­er; Godineau Swamp as man­groves were cleared to fa­cil­i­tate a high­way, the min­istry added.

This has al­so been the case at Cue­sa Riv­er in Ch­aguara­mas, Guaracara Riv­er, Mara­bel­la and North Clax­ton Bay due to de­vel­op­ment.

“In Wa­ter­loo, man­grove loss has re­sult­ed be­cause of se­vere coastal ero­sion. In To­ba­go, no­table de­cline was ob­served in Buc­coo Bay, while mi­nor de­clines were record­ed in Lit­tle Rock­ly Bay, Louis D’or, Min­is­ter’s Bay and Pe­tit Trou La­goon,” the min­istry said.

“While these may seem like small de­clines, the im­pacts of man­grove loss are sig­nif­i­cant. With an es­ti­mat­ed 80 per cent of all so­cio-eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties and 70 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion lo­cat­ed near the coast, man­grove pro­tec­tion is vi­tal for the safe­ty and liveli­hoods of our com­mu­ni­ties,” the min­istry added.

It not­ed that through the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA), and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), work­shops and a demon­stra­tion project is be­ing un­der­tak­en with farm­ers to show them al­ter­na­tives to us­ing fer­tilis­ers and pes­ti­cides.

This is with the ob­jec­tive of re­duc­ing pol­lu­tion from agri­cul­tur­al run-off in the south­ern side of the Ca­roni Swamp. Farm­ers of­ten use these agro­chem­i­cals, and run-off con­tain­ing these pol­lu­tants neg­a­tive­ly im­pact man­grove forests.

The Min­istry not­ed that through the Im­prov­ing Forestry and Pro­tect­ed Ar­eas Man­age­ment in T&T (IF­PAMTT) project, man­age­ment plans have been de­vel­oped for six pi­lot pro­tect­ed ar­eas in­clud­ing north-east To­ba­go ma­rine area, Main Ridge For­est Re­serve, Matu­ra For­est and coastal zone, Trin­i­ty Hills Wildlife Sanc­tu­ary, and two wet­lands con­tain­ing man­grove forests - the Nar­i­va Swamp and coastal zone and Ca­roni Swamp.

“This project has re­sult­ed in the al­lo­ca­tion of more re­sources to ef­fec­tive­ly en­force pro­tec­tion of these ar­eas.

“The IF­PAMTT project re­cent­ly saw the con­clu­sion of a so­cio-eco­nom­ic sur­vey on the sta­tus of forests and pro­tect­ed ar­eas in T&T, which in­clud­ed the man­grove forests at Ca­roni Swamp and Nar­i­va swamp,” the Min­istry said.

It added that this sur­vey fo­cused on the six pi­lot pro­tect­ed ar­eas, not­ing that close to TT$18 mil­lion can be de­rived from ef­fec­tive and sus­tain­able man­age­ment of these re­sources from just those ar­eas.

The min­istry said this coun­try has not been im­mune to man­grove loss, not­ing that glob­al­ly, over 50 per cent of man­grove cov­er has been lost in the last 50 years. Much of the man­grove forests in T&T have been im­pact­ed by hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties, and are now pro­ject­ed to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by sea-lev­el rise es­pe­cial­ly where they are starved of sed­i­ment and/or con­strained on the land­ward side by built de­vel­op­ment – a process known as coastal squeeze.

The Min­istry said it al­so recog­nised the ca­pac­i­ty of man­groves to off­set car­bon emis­sions by cap­tur­ing and stor­ing car­bon diox­ide and through the IMA, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UWI, is un­der­tak­ing work to mea­sure car­bon se­ques­tra­tion of our man­grove forests and to put a mon­e­tary val­ue for this ser­vice.

This work is aligned to T&T’s Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy Vi­sion 2030 which through Theme V - Plac­ing the En­vi­ron­ment at the Cen­tre of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment, makes en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and con­ser­va­tion an es­sen­tial pil­lar of our de­vel­op­men­tal tra­jec­to­ry.