Bottom Of The Heap

Bottom of the heap Sunday, May 22nd 2005

Forest cleared for an aluminium smelter at Union Estate/ Photo Mark Meredith

Trinidad and Tobago ranks as the country with the worst percentage of negative, man-made land impacts and threats to biodiversity out of 146 nations in a 2005 environmental global study.

The Sunday Express story "Fantasy Island" (May 1) highlighted a US-produced 1995 Environmental Sustainability Report on Trinidad and Tobago. It warned that our population had already "overshot its ability to feed itself", had exceeded its carrying capacity, and that "many Trinidadians would die of hunger" when our fossil fuels run out.

Today, MARK MEREDITH reports on a 2005 global study that confirms the worst about our future.

TOMORROW, the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will be commemorating ten years as this country's environmental protector with a five-day conference and exhibition at the Centre of Excellence in Macoya. The EMA's tenth birthday actually falls on World Environment Day, June 5.

The worldwide theme of this year's observance is "Green Cities - Plan for the Planet".

If ever a country needed a grand plan put into action now, it's us. A damning worldwide environmental study

by Yale and Columbia universities reveals Trinidad and Tobago is embarked on a collision with calamity.

The 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) was released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, an event attended by world political and business leaders. The ESI details 146 countries' ability to manage and sustain their environment over the next few decades. Trinidad and Tobago ranks 139th, a drop from 121st place in the 2002 ESI. In other words, our chances of "halting major environmental deterioration" through better environmental stewardship are the eighth worst in the world.

Apart from another industrialised and overcrowded island, Taiwan, only countries with deserts, wars, revolutions, extreme poverty and dictators do worse than Trinidad and Tobago-like Sudan, Haiti, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan and North Korea.

When it comes to land management, or the percentage of land suffering negative, man-made impacts (including inland waters)-a vital indicator given our geographic size and population density (18th highest)Trinidad and Tobago has the worst ranking in the world for. Worse, even, than our desperate cousins in deforested Haiti.

We are tops in something, though-the percentage of our rich, natural endowment of biodiversity under threat.

T&T, at number 1, has the largest number of threatened species of birds, mammals, amphibians and "ecoregions" of any nation in the ESI. The depths to which we have sunk are revealed in the 21 indicator rankings of the ESI (see table).

In the physical areas of land, water quantity and quality, air pollution reduction, and reducing stresses on water and ecosystems, we are shown to be deep in trouble at the bottom.

Even more distressing are our scores relating to our capacity to deal with these issues in the future.

To our lasting shame, T&T's signature on international obligations towards environmental stewardship, such as the Kyoto Protocol and The UN Convention on Biological Diversity, is revealed to be basically worthless.

Our Global Stewardship is the third worst in the world, while our Greenhouse Gas Emissions (per capita) are also the third worst.

Holding the top spot for threats to Biodiversity reveals a failure to honour our international obligations to conservation and an uncanny ability to look the gift horse of eco-tourism in the mouth.

Of 146 countries, the top five are Finland, Norway, Uruguay, Sweden, and Iceland-"all countries that have substantial natural resource endowments and low population density".

"Each has managed the challenges of development with some success," says the report.

The lowest-ranking countries are North Korea, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Sudan-(T&T is next). "These countries face numerous issues, both natural and man-made, and have not managed their policy choices well," according to the report.

They all suffer "serious environmental stresses, poor policy responses, and (with the exception of Taiwan) limited institutional capacity".

The worst scores are mostly the result of "poverty and weak governance", the report states, explaining that "poor environmental planning and limited investment in environmental protection and infrastructure translate into markedly lower results".

The worst scores are mostly the result of "poverty and weak governance", the report states, explaining that "poor environmental planning and limited investment in environmental protection and infrastructure translate into markedly lower results".

The ESI notes that wealth "does not exclusively determine environmental performance", and Trinidad and Tobago is given as an example. This country is described as a "medium income country" (US$8,675 GDP pp) which falls way below the ESI scores of Brazil (11th) and Argentina (9th) in the same income group.

Likewise, the capacity to deal with environmental problems is high for the US (45th) and UK (65th), but the environmental stresses and impacts of such large, developed societies are also much greater-carbon dioxide emissions, for example -thus bringing down their scores. They fall well behind in their peer group and the ESI leader Finland, which scores well across all indicators.

Uruguay (3rd) does so well not only because they are blessed with bounteous natural endowments and low population density, but because their scores across the 21 indicators are consistent-nothing outstanding, and nothing disastrous.

When the first ESI was produced in 2002, it created considerable attention in many countries, especially among some who found themselves ranking badly.

The Mexicans, horrified at their low position, held a Cabinet-level review which later led to environmental policy reforms under President Vincente Fox, based on sustainability metrics. Likewise, in Belgium, policy shortcomings began to be addressed, while, in the Philippines, the ESI has become the benchmark for evaluating environmental policies.

The ESI is supposed to be used as a tool, enabling nations to make comparisons of successes and failures gained from the experience of 146 countries; adopting policies to fit, then carrying them out. There is much to learn from it.

Will we, though?

The prognosis, on the ESI evidence and on the ground, is no.

Ten years after the EMA emerged as our gallant Green Knight, riding out alone to battle the army of polluters and destroyers on his trusty steed, the Environmental Management Act, we discover someone broke his lance, stole his sword and armour, and doped his horse.

The ESI confirms reality: that in both islands of Trinidad and Tobago the environment of land, sea and air is under siege as never before; that the environment ranks bottom of Cabinet priorities; that we have demoted the Environment Ministry to a sub-division of Public Utilities while engaging in a development free-for-all.

Protective legislation-battle weapons honed by the EMA some years ago-such as the Air Pollution Rules, Water Pollution Rules, and the Beverage and Plastics Container Bill (dealing with plastic bottle deposits and recycling)-remain as distant as Finland's spot on the ESI. The Honorary Game Warden Programme for volunteers is reported to have been suspended since September, leaving one government game warden to protect all Tobago, and 19 for all of Trinidad during the closed hunting season.

While protection is withheld, so too is the $300 to $400 million Green Fund levy for environmental remediation by NGOs and community groups. Instead, hundreds of millions of dollars are being lavished on CEPEP, which seems unable to unblock drains and watercourses of plastic debris and waste.

Meanwhile, agricultural lands in Caroni will be paved, as Government, in the form of the National Energy Corporation, spends millions frantically facilitating industrial estates on agricultural and forest lands rich in biodiversity, studiously ignoring all existing land-use plans.

Despite two versions of the Environmental Management Act, the establishment of the EMA, the Environmental Commission- which has only seen one case, Talisman, in five years-and CEC Rules, T&T's natural resources continue to be obliterated at a wholly unsustainable rate; a rate which will see us lose all our forests in a generation.

Tomorrow in Macoya, EMA chairman Dr John Agard is listed as presenting, yet again, T&T's home-produced Environmental Vulnerability Index. Go and listen, it will help you understand further why we are bottom of the heap, staring into the abyss.

Mark Meredith is the editor of SAMAAN magazine.