RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, says gov­ern­ment plans to deal with the threat of sar­gas­sum sea­weed in Trinidad and To­ba­go through the es­tab­lish­ment of a task force.

Dr. Ra­han­na Ju­man, Deputy Di­rec­tor of Re­search of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) chairs the Task Force. The oth­er mem­bers are Mar­cia Tin­to of the EMA; Ri­car­do Mieux, Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries; Renelle Bernard Brown, Min­istry of Works and Trans­port; Cur­mi­ra Gul­ston, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; Lin­ford Beck­les, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA); Suzan Lakhan-Bap­tiste, Na­ture Seek­ers; Ryan Mo­hammed, Aquat­ic Ecol­o­gist; and Bar­ry Lovelace, Coun­cil of Pres­i­dents of the En­vi­ron­ment.

Since 2011, coast­lines along many is­lands of the Caribbean have been af­fect­ed by un­prece­dent­ed, mas­sive, episod­ic in­flux­es of float­ing sar­gas­sum sea­weed. This has had sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pacts, par­tic­u­lar­ly on coastal com­mu­ni­ties and liveli­hoods, pub­lic health, tourism and fish­eries.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme (UN­EP), this new source of sar­gas­sum is like­ly linked to broad­er un­der­ly­ing is­sues like cli­mate change and ocean eu­troph­i­ca­tion, which are like­ly to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant sar­gas­sum blooms in­to the fu­ture.

Min­is­ter Beck­les said that in or­der to deal with this prob­lem, Cab­i­net agreed to mea­sures that ex­plore the de­vel­op­ment of sus­tain­able man­age­ment re­spons­es and long-term adap­ta­tion ini­tia­tives. One such ini­tia­tive is the re­gion­al Japan­ese grant fund­ed project, “Im­prov­ing Na­tion­al Sar­gas­sum Man­age­ment Ca­pac­i­ties in the Caribbean”. This is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in Bar­ba­dos, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and To­ba­go.  Of the re­gion­al en­ve­lope of US$12 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for the project, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been award­ed US$1.99 mil­lion.

Min­is­ter Beck­les urged mem­bers of the Task Force to find mea­sures to en­cour­age mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion among key stake­hold­ers at all lev­els and through­out the process, from ear­ly warn­ing to pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Na­tion­al Sar­gas­sum Task Force will pro­vide over­sight over the de­vel­op­ment of a re­search and mon­i­tor­ing agen­da that can fa­cil­i­tate im­prove­ment in man­ag­ing the im­pacts of fu­ture oc­cur­rences of this nat­ur­al dis­as­ter while in­form­ing the han­dling, dis­pos­al, stor­age, and de­vel­op­ment of safe Sar­gas­sum prod­ucts that can al­so pro­vide eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to Trinidad and To­ba­go.