Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

A day af­ter an­nounc­ing that there will be a leg­isla­tive re­view of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act (2000), Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, has as­sured that it is not meant to cir­cum­vent the clear­ance process for in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

The Act says, “Any de­vel­op­ment that is be­ing un­der­tak­en must take in­to ac­count sound en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices.”

Among the slides he pre­sent­ed on Thurs­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Swarats­ingh out­lined a leg­isla­tive re­view of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act that is com­ing to re­duce du­pli­ca­tion in en­vi­ron­men­tal and plan­ning ap­provals.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh said, “There’s no in­ten­tion to by­pass any­thing. It’s just about mak­ing sure that we op­er­ate it ef­fi­cient­ly. There is no in­ten­tion or im­pli­ca­tion to short­change or cir­cum­vent the process. The on­ly thing is that if we say it’s go­ing to take 30 days, let it take 30 days. If it’s go­ing to take 40 days, let it take 40 days. It can’t be that every 30 days you’re re­new­ing your fun­da­men­tals, and it goes on for three years.”

There have been com­plaints about the time­li­ness of the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) ap­proval process. Pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and co­or­di­nat­ed man­age­ment are re­quire­ments for the process, with stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions as well as co­or­di­na­tion with the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) and Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Oth­er statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties are al­so re­quired to give their per­spec­tives, in­clud­ing the Forestry Di­vi­sion, the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, and the Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

As part of her re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on Thurs­day, “In the com­ing years, you will see cranes pierc­ing the sky­lines of Port-of-Spain. In San Fer­nan­do, you will see dredges carve new hori­zons along the coast. You will see bull­doz­ers ready to go up to Tamana, Gold­en Grove, and along the San Fer­nan­do to Ma­yaro to Ga­le­o­ta High­way.”

When asked whether the en­vi­ron­ment will be giv­en ad­e­quate con­sid­er­a­tion in the de­vel­op­ment process for such un­der­tak­ings, Swarats­ingh re­spond­ed, “All of these con­cepts are con­tem­plat­ed to be not just from a de­vel­op­ment per­spec­tive, but an in­vest­ment per­spec­tive, to take Trinidad and To­ba­go for­ward. It’s al­so con­tem­plat­ed to have green spaces and green ini­tia­tives in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to all of these things.

“So that’s part of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tions, and in every­thing we do, we try to re­spect the fo­cus on cli­mate change and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cies, green spaces, and so on. We try our best to be re­spect­ful of all of those things in the midst of all de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.”

One in­dus­try ex­pert, who is a prac­ti­tion­er fa­mil­iar with the CEC ap­pli­ca­tion process, said the leg­isla­tive re­view of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act is over­due. Speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the ex­pert said, “The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act and its sub­sidiary leg­is­la­tion, the CEC Rules, are long over­due for a re­view and sub­se­quent amend­ments to be made. When the act was first in­tro­duced, some two decades ago, the de­vel­op­men­tal land­scape of the coun­try was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent to what is be­ing pro­posed in the fu­ture plans.”

Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions and re­views have been un­der­tak­en sev­er­al times over the last two decades, and amend­ments have been draft­ed and sub­mit­ted to the line min­istry on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. The ex­pert added, “My on­ly con­cern would be that in a rush to­ward this ex­pan­sive de­vel­op­ment, prop­er pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion needs to take place. Any at­tempt to com­press or even by­pass the need for En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ments (EIAs), would al­so be a note for con­cern. The very process of the EIAs is to en­sure that the de­vel­op­ment that is be­ing pro­posed does not do any sub­stan­tial harm to the en­vi­ron­ment (flo­ra and fau­na) and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties (so­cial).”

The ex­pert fur­ther added that the sanc­ti­ty of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion “re­mains clear and in­tact” to al­low for the pub­lic to ap­peal any de­ci­sions of the EMA and ef­fect the pol­luter pays prin­ci­ple, where nec­es­sary. “Po­lit­i­cal over­ride of tech­ni­cal de­ci­sions that are based in law and sci­ence can­not be ac­cept­ed,” they stat­ed.