Nat­ur­al and man-made dis­as­ters have bat­tered the nor­mal­ly well-or­gan­ised, prop­er­ly-or­dered so­ci­ety of Japan over the past two weeks. Sit­u­at­ed atop ac­tive and mov­ing tec­ton­ic plates, Japan's mas­sive 9.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake and the tsuna­mi which came in its wake claimed tens of thou­sands of lives which could be at­trib­uted to "acts of God".

The con­se­quent melt­down of Fukushi­ma nu­clear re­ac­tors, con­sid­ered worse than Three Mile Is­land in the Unit­ed States, but not as bad as Cher­nobyl in the Ukraine, has al­ready be­gun to seep in­to the food chain, with ra­di­a­tion con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing milk and spinach and ra­dioac­tive io­dine be­ing found in tap wa­ter in Tokyo. The re­sults could be cat­a­stroph­ic be­yond Japan's bor­ders-if the wind blows west in the di­rec­tion of Ko­rea, Chi­na, Rus­sia, threat­en­ing food sup­plies in those coun­tries. The lat­ter, how­ev­er, though trig­gered by nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, is the re­sult of de­lib­er­ate (though per­haps un­con­scious) eco­nom­ic en­er­gy pol­i­cy de­ci­sions made by hu­mans.

When con­sid­er­ing a pol­i­cy of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment on the ba­sis of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor in the di­rec­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, there are many fac­tors to be con­sid­ered. The first is that the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my is hy­dro­car­bon-based and that our petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries, fu­eled by oil and nat­ur­al gas, cur­rent­ly ex­ist in di­rect con­flict with the ob­jec­tive of clean­er, green­er and re­new­able en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.

'The Green Econ­o­my' is the theme of the sec­ond episode of "Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence in Our Eco­nom­ic Space." Our guests, Dr An­gela Crop­per, Se­nior Ad­vis­er to the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist and Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Wendy Lee Yuen, help pro­vide the in­ter­na­tion­al con­text to con­sid­er na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies in na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Clear­ly, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy with re­spect to per capi­ta car­bon emis­sions must be rec­on­ciled with mul­ti­lat­er­al com­mit­ments on lim­its of CO2 emis­sions un­der­tak­en by this coun­try in its rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals in the year 2000 to be achieved by 2015.Spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens Bank, with sup­port by Guardian Me­dia and Bea­con In­sur­ance, "Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence in Our Eco­nom­ic Space" aims to fos­ter re­flec­tive, crit­i­cal think­ing on the part of the pop­u­la­tion and ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain the phi­los­o­phy and ra­tio­nale for its poli­cies.

This is in keep­ing with the PP's man­i­festo com­mit­ments to a green­er, clean­er econ­o­my in "Man­ag­ing Our En­er­gy As­sets" where it states: "Pro­vide in­cen­tives for re­search and de­vel­op­ment on al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy sources with a view to the es­tab­lish­ment of an al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy in­dus­try..." and "we will al­so proac­tive­ly seek in­vest­ment and part­ner­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties in third and fourth gen­er­a­tion re­new­able en­er­gy al­ter­na­tives. This will link our en­er­gy pol­i­cy, re­search and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives and pro­vide new, high-val­ue jobs for our peo­ple, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­tribut­ing to our na­tion's en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty."

These pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives are even more poignant than they were ten months ago, when they were ar­tic­u­lat­ed be­fore the PP was swept in­to pow­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the threat of en­vi­ron­men­tal cat­a­clysm fac­ing Japan as a re­sult of its nu­clear en­er­gy pol­i­cy. Apart from pro­vid­ing a plat­form for pol­i­cy mak­ers and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists to en­gage in pub­lic de­bate de­signed to in­form and en­light­en the pop­u­la­tion, it is our in­tent in "Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence..." to al­so pro­vide a fo­rum for or­di­nary peo­ple, in our 'com­mon sen$e' seg­ment, to ar­tic­u­late their con­cerns and sug­ges­tions and high­light their nascent ef­forts at en­ter­prise and en­tre­pre­neur­ship, deal­ing with re­cy­cling and oth­er­wise pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for gen­er­a­tions to come.

The sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our econ­o­my, of our so­ci­ety de­pends up­on the pru­dence of the choic­es we make, not on­ly as gov­ern­ment en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, but that we as or­di­nary cit­i­zens make re­gard­ing wa­ter and land us­age, prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed min­ing and height­ened aware­ness of our aquifers as the source of clean, potable wa­ter, the need to avoid pol­lu­tion and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the air through faulty ex­haust sys­tems on our cars and trucks, fac­to­ries and busi­ness­es.These are mea­sures that can be pur­sued by Gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens with­out com­pro­mis­ing eco­nom­ic growth or the health and well-be­ing of our so­ci­ety.