Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Nel­son Is­land and Fort San An­dres will be among the first Her­itage sites to ben­e­fit from re­search con­duct­ed through the Re­silient Her­itage Trinidad and To­ba­go project.

The rev­e­la­tion came from Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the “Keep­ing Her­itage Above Wa­ter” (KHAW) con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, in Port-of-Spain.

This is the first time the KHAW con­fer­ence is be­ing held out­side of the USA and the con­fer­ence is a com­po­nent of im­por­tant re­search con­duct­ed for the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da and part­ner agen­cies, in­to risks and mit­i­ga­tions for the im­pact of cli­mate change and sea lev­el rise on coastal her­itage sites and by ex­ten­sion the sur­round­ing stake­hold­ers in their vicin­i­ty.

Beck­les-Robin­son said these sites were pri­ori­tised due to their risk of be­ing among the first im­pact­ed by cli­mate change and sea lev­el rise.

“These sites are his­tor­i­cal­ly, so­cial­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly im­por­tant,” she said.

“Re­silient Her­itage Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so in­volves en­gage­ment with stake­hold­ers, da­ta shar­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer and the in­for­ma­tion be­ing gath­ered through­out the course of the project would ul­ti­mate­ly feed in­to the cre­ation of con­ser­va­tion and adap­ta­tion man­age­ment plans with pri­ori­tised rec­om­men­da­tions for the preser­va­tion and on­go­ing main­te­nance of the named Her­itage sites.”

She added that the project will serve as a mod­el that can be repli­cat­ed to “in­crease cli­mate re­silience for many oth­er Her­itage sites across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean re­gion.”

She said the two-year project was launched in April 2022 and is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort made pos­si­ble through a grant of US $190,960 from the US Am­bas­sador’s Fund for Cul­tur­al Preser­va­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da His­toric Preser­va­tion Pro­gramme and the Kreg Group part­ners.

Al­so speak­ing at the event, US Am­bas­sador to T&T Can­dace Bond said com­bat­ing cli­mate change is a shared goal of both coun­tries.

“We are very proud to be your part­ners in this ef­fort,” she said.

Am­bas­sador Bond not­ed that the ef­fects of cli­mate change and the ris­ing sea lev­el are wit­nessed an­nu­al­ly in T&T.

“One can see the dam­age from per­sis­tent and dam­age from dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing which oc­curs al­most every time there is a tor­ren­tial rain­fall, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing high tides,” she said.

“We need to change the way we think about the in­fra­struc­tur­al de­sign of our cities, ports, agri­cul­ture, hous­ing and pub­lic build­ings and we need to con­sid­er cli­mate change on food se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”