To­day, our guest colum­nist on Clean­ing Up The Mess is Gary Aboud, of the Non Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, who is pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for or­gan­is­ing the First Na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment which will be held to­mor­row, at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of theWest In­dies.

News­pa­per head­lines over the last year re­veal a small glimpse in­to an en­vi­ron­ment that is cry­ing out for ac­tion. In­dus­tri­al waste wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­nates the Ca­roni Swamp; sewage is most­ly un­treat­ed; oil spills con­tin­ue unchecked; there is lit­tle or no con­ser­va­tion of wildlife even though the en­tire coun­try is dev­as­tat­ed by for­est fires an­nu­al­ly. The British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) has re­cent­ly high­light­ed that the twin-is­land re­pub­lic ranked among the top ten worst na­tions on the emis­sions per capi­ta in­di­ca­tor.

There is good news in light of the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion which Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an gave in Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 8 in which he promised to­lay en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion on is­sues like air pol­lu­tion and haz­ardous waste, but is this enough? Cer­tain­ly"bal­anc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions with eco­nom­ic ones" is chal­leng­ing, but we have no choice.

Ap­pro­pri­ate pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to pre­vent se­ri­ous and ir­re­versible dam­age to the en­vi­ron­ment must be para­mount in all ex­ist­ing and new de­vel­op­ment projects. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in its man­i­festo high­light­ed a num­ber of strate­gies in its Plan for 120 Days of Im­me­di­ate Ac­tion.

These in­clud­ed:

• Es­tab­lish­ment of a Civ­il So­ci­ety Board to strength­en the voice and in­flu­ence of NGOs and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions.

•In­tro­duc­tion of the Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Land Bill (PDLB) to gov­ern land use plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment so that de­vel­op­ment can take place in a co­her­ent and sus­tain­able man­ner. For­mu­late a work plan to en­sure that drainage and flood­ing prob­lems are solved once and for all.

• De­vel­op and im­ple­ment an in­te­grat­ed coastal zone man­age­ment strat­e­gy.

• Es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Parks and Recre­ation Au­thor­i­ty, for the pur­pose of con­serv­ing, pro­tect­ing and main­tain­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive ar­eas.

• Es­tab­lish­ment of an in­cen­tive scheme that would sup­port in­di­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies, and in par­tic­u­lar heavy in­dus­try and build­ings which en­gage in en­er­gy-sav­ing mea­sures.

The de­struc­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment waits for no one. To date these strate­gies have yet to be im­ple­ment­ed and we are deeply con­cerned. Every day, cit­i­zens' lives are im­pact­ed by the con­tin­ued fail­ure to ad­dress press­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. There is an ur­gent need for all stake­hold­ers-the cit­i­zen­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go- to come to­geth­er to dis­cuss, de­bate and re­flect on a way for­ward, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly, and po­lit­i­cal­ly to sup­port ef­fec­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The First Na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment will be held to­mor­row, at the Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and a Coali­tion of Non Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions, the Con­fer­ence in­tends to bring to­geth­er gov­ern­ment, busi­ness in­ter­ests, acad­e­mia, stu­dents and non­govern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions to dis­cuss is­sues of im­por­tance con­cern­ing the en­vi­ron­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The con­fer­ence, a first of its kind in Trinidad and To­ba­go will fo­cus on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues re­gard­ing quar­ry­ing, flood­ing, wa­ter pol­lu­tion, air pol­lu­tion, waste man­age­ment, bio­di­ver­si­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, the pri­vate sec­tor, tech­ni­cal ex­perts and cit­i­zen ac­tivists will sit side by side to share the lat­est sta­tis­tics, per­spec­tives and ex­pe­ri­ences and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to put for­ward ideas and so­lu­tions to sup­port ef­fec­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment.

One of the key out­comes of the con­fer­ence is the prepa­ra­tion of a re­port which will be­come one of the lead­ing re­sources on en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go and serve to as­sist all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the gov­ern­ment of the day on a way for­ward to sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

If you re­quire any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the con­fer­ence or reg­is­tra­tion de­tails you can vis­it us at our web site at http://www.en­vi­ron­men­tal­con­fer­encett2011.com/ or email sec­re­tari­at@en­vi­ron­men­tal­con­fer­encett2011.com.

The cur­rent flood­ing in Aus­tralia has been called the worst nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in that na­tion with dozens miss­ing and 25 record­ed deaths and ris­ing toll. It's even worse in Brazil where the death toll is over 600 which res­cue work­ers say could dou­ble once they ac­cess re­mote ar­eas. Join Ira Math­ur this Sun­day on Clean­ing up the Mess, on CNC3 at 10.30 am and 6 pm for a re­run of an in­ter­view with the cur­rent High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK, Garvin Nicholas on how our au­thor­i­ties re­act­ed in the af­ter­math of heavy flood­ing. Send in your pho­tos and com­ments to cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt

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