Green Spaces are Important

Bajans have always made use of green spaces but never knew that’s what they were. For the longest time we have sat under evergreen trees and cooled out under mile trees. Not once thinking to call them green spaces. But now in the face of changing climatic conditions, sea level rise and global warming Small Island States like Barbados are being forced to confront the problems presented in short order. The problems may not have been ours in the making but they will be ours in the solving.

From our inception as a country back in the 17th century Barbados has always been an outpost for the satisfaction and pleasure of others. European settlers removed trees to convert what would have been natural rain forest to pasture land for growing sugar cane on plantations. These fields and hills would have been covered with trees and plants that were removed regardless of value. Fast forward 500 years and here we are resolving issues that are tough, but not impossible to fix. So where do we begin to resolve this issue and help ourselves in the interim? How do we create more green spaces for our personal and environmental benefits?

The current BLP administration embarked on an initiative to plant more than one million trees as part of the ‘we planting’ Paris Climate Accord in 2018. And that is all it is, a start. Strategic planting to benefit all should be implemented.

The focus has mainly been on beaches to accommodate the tourism industry. But if we don’t curate the land it may all be washed into the ocean. Seemingly disparate problems can both be solved with trees. That’s right, we have the solutions at hand already with two species of trees, mahogany and mangroves. Mahogany was here before the colonists arrived to exploit the abundance of the trees for timber. Now that we know the important niche the trees once held and continue to hold in the ecosystem we can use them as anchor plants for proposed greenspaces. Mahogany takes fifteen to twenty five years to be fully mature given adequate water and nutrition. Mangroves because of its halophytic qualities and their ability to grow along coastal areas would be great to plant in the intertidal zones. They then become anchor plants to hold the beaches in place and be a stalwart against the expected rising sea levels. As an added bonus these trees sequester and store carbon, the propellant of global warming itself. A program that starts with school yards. Greening up those spaces by planting shade trees, giving the surrounding communities access to the space to be used when school is not in session. Studies have shown that green spaces for children reduce stress, blood pressure, depression and obesity while improving their concentration.

As part of the government’s revamping and redesign of the educational system moving forward, green space at each primary school should be incorporated as part of a holistic approach beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. Greening up every public space with trees of any sort can filter noise pollution from traffic as well as pollutants from traffic exhaust. Working with arborists to determine the best for aesthetic and safety purposes a tree policy should go hand in hand with water conservation systems in new house construction. The shade provided has the ability to decrease temperature by as many as ten degrees from surrounding unshaded areas thereby decreasing the amount of energy needed to cool adjacent buildings.

David Jones, Environmental Activist

Can you imagine that by 2050, it is estimated that there will be more pieces of plastic present in the world ’s oceans, than actual fish?

Seems unbelievable? Take a look at the photograph above. It shows part of a 5-mile long garbage patch located off the coast of Honduras in the Caribbean Sea, and is similar to another patch located in the Pacific Ocean.

In light of these occurrences, and the environmental and health risks posed by plastic pollution, representatives from around the world including Barbados, attended the Second Session of the