Joel Julien

T&T na­tion­al Jonathan Bar­cant is among 20 peo­ple to be short-list­ed for the 2018 Com­mon­wealth Youth Awards.

And in a week when T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced a land­slide on the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant and coastal ero­sion in Ce­dros and Guayagua­yare, Bar­cant's project seems more than nec­es­sary in this coun­try.

Bar­cant's se­lec­tion as a fi­nal­ist in the Com­mon­wealth Youth Awards is as a re­sult of his fo­cus on Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 13, Cli­mate Ac­tion.

Bar­cant is the founder of ‘Ve­tiv­er Ed­u­ca­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Project’, a cost-ef­fec­tive bio-en­gi­neer­ing scheme to build cli­mate change re­silience. The scheme de­liv­ers a pen­e­trat­ing root sys­tem to sta­bilise land, pre­vent­ing ero­sion and slow­ing down wa­ter run-off," the Com­mon­wealth's web­site states.

Bar­cant and his team plant­ed some 25,000 Ve­tiv­er plants in 15 com­mu­ni­ties in Paramin last year. Paramin, which is lo­cat­ed in the North­ern Range of Trinidad, ex­pe­ri­ences land­slides every rainy sea­son. The ve­tiv­er grass was in­tro­duced in­to the area to help against that.

Ve­tiv­er grass is a sim­ple, cost-ef­fec­tive tool to help deal with soil ero­sion and land­slides. The plant's roots can grow up to ten feet with­in the first year.

"It re­al­ly holds the soil. When you plant the Ve­tiv­er grass in the cor­rect rows and for­ma­tions on a con­tour you get over­all sta­bil­i­sa­tion which can be used any­where from land­slides, to peo­ple pro­tect­ing their roads, hous­es and in­fra­struc­ture," Bar­cant ex­plained.

"It can al­so slow down runoff and pro­mote ground wa­ter recharge and pre­vent flood­ing in low­er val­leys."

Bar­cant said this project was hailed be­cause it helps in adapt­ing to the re­al­i­ties of the chang­ing cli­mate.

Ve­tiv­er has been utilised across the world in over 100 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Chi­na and the Con­go.

Bar­cant is hop­ing that it will be adopt­ed across this coun­try and al­so fur­ther up the is­lands.

"We have ex­treme weath­er, we have crazy storms. Hur­ri­cane Maria in Do­mini­ca got over 9,900 land­slides, just to show when you get these buck­ets of rain and wind how much the earth moves," Bar­cant said.

'The roots bind the soil to­geth­er'

Ve­tiv­er grass, known by its sci­en­tif­ic name Chryso­pogon zizan­ioides, is a peren­ni­al bunch­grass of the Poaceae fam­i­ly and is na­tive to In­dia. The grass it­self grows up to five feet high. But the re­al beau­ty of the plant is its roots. The roots grow deep in­to the earth and bind the soil to­geth­er.

Bar­cant, a civ­il en­gi­neer, found­ed Ve­tiv­er TT in 2014 af­ter re­turn­ing to this coun­try af­ter sev­en years over­seas where he worked in a coal mine in Cana­da.

Bar­cant said he saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties the Ve­tiv­er plant has to help this coun­try and the re­gion as a whole to deal with some of our is­sues as a re­sult of cli­mate change.

Be­cause of his work in the com­mu­ni­ty im­ple­ment­ing the Ve­tiv­er grass, Bar­cant was named as one of the five peo­ple se­lect­ed in the Caribbean re­gion as fi­nal­ists for this year's Com­mon­wealth Youth Awards.

They were short-list­ed from more than 400 ap­pli­ca­tions around the world.

The awards recog­nise out­stand­ing young peo­ple aged 15 to 29 whose in­no­v­a­tive projects and pro­grammes have had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on their com­mu­ni­ties.

This year’s fo­cus is on cel­e­brat­ing young peo­ple’s con­tri­bu­tion to­wards a fair­er, more sus­tain­able, more se­cure, and more pros­per­ous fu­ture for the Com­mon­wealth: the four sub-themes of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) tak­ing place in Lon­don in April.

In ad­di­tion to a grant of GBP £1,000 to con­tin­ue their de­vel­op­ment work, fi­nal­ists will each be award­ed a tro­phy and cer­tifi­cate. The Re­gion­al Young Per­sons of the Year will re­ceive £3,000, and the Com­mon­wealth Young Per­son of the Year will pick up £5,000.

The fi­nal­ists this year have ini­tia­tives and projects that aim to build a more se­cure, pros­per­ous, fair­er, and a sus­tain­able fu­ture for all in the grass roots lev­els and ex­em­pli­fy the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion of young peo­ple from across the Com­mon­wealth in achiev­ing the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals and re­al­is­ing the CHOGM2018 as­pi­ra­tion “To­wards a Com­mon Fu­ture.”