Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary and Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al Schools were crown cham­pi­ons of the Eu­ro­pean Union’s an­nu­al Tree Plant­i­ng 5x1 Kilo­me­tre re­lay run in Tuck­er Val­ley, Ch­aguara­mas on Tues­day (Feb­ru­ary 27). Diego Mar­tin North took the girls’ ti­tle get­ting the bet­ter of Bish­op Anstey and St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain.

The Diego Mar­tin North stu­dents were the first across the line in the boys’ event ahead of Maple Leaf. How­ev­er, Maple Leaf was de­clared the win­ner as four boys ran on the Diego team in­stead of five, ac­cord­ing to the rules. Wood­brook Sec­ondary and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege were the oth­er teams in the boys’ di­vi­sion.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the re­lay.

The re­lay event came af­ter the tree plant­i­ng ac­tiv­i­ties where Beck­les and Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) Am­bas­sador to T&T Pe­ter Cavendish plant­ed trees as part of the EU’s ini­tia­tive to in­crease aware­ness about linked cli­mate and na­ture crises and the need for pos­i­tive ac­tion.

Am­bas­sador Cavendish, in his ad­dress, shared that he was hap­py to have teenagers in­volved in the sig­nif­i­cant event.

“We are fac­ing a very grim fu­ture. Maybe your lives will be okay but your chil­dren may have a ter­ri­ble fu­ture ahead of them. We should re­mem­ber that 70 per cent of the peo­ple on this plan­et are very vul­ner­a­ble in how they live. That is why bio­di­ver­si­ty is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. I am very pleased that we have so many young peo­ple and schools here so when you go back to your schools you will con­tin­ue to pass and re­in­force the mes­sage.”

Beck­les, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, high­light­ed the vi­tal role trees play in hu­man ex­is­tence.

“I re­al­ly hope that you recog­nise when we think about trees, we think about deal­ing with ero­sion, cli­mate change and the air we breathe. To­day, when we think about trees, just think about the im­por­tance of wa­ter sup­ply, the air that we breathe and just sus­tain­abil­i­ty of agri­cul­ture.”

Beck­les added that he is con­fi­dent the ex­er­cise will ‘build the aware­ness in you about the sig­nif­i­cance of trees so when you see peo­ple do slash and burn, you un­der­stand the con­se­quences of it to our so­ci­ety be­cause it can im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on the air that we breathe and our wa­ter sup­ply.

Re­sults

Girls: 1 Diego Mar­tin North 27:48; 2 Bish­op Anstey 36:09; 3 St Joseph's Con­vent-POS 36:40

Boys: 1 Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al 20:22; 2 Wood­brook Sec­ondary 23:32; 3rd St An­tho­ny's Col­lege 24:17; Dq Diego Mar­tin North

Mixed: Diplo­mat­ic team 31:05