Hu­man­i­ty's fate is tight­ly linked with bi­o­log­i­cal di­ver­si­ty.Bio­di­ver­si­ty is es­sen­tial for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and hu­man well-be­ing. Many are not aware of the many ben­e­fits of bio­di­ver­si­ty and it is for this rea­son the Unit­ed Na­tions has des­ig­nat­ed May 22 each year as In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Bi­o­log­i­cal Di­ver­si­ty, to in­crease un­der­stand­ing and aware­ness of bio­di­ver­si­ty is­sues.

This year's theme, Bio­di­ver­si­ty for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, re­flects the im­por­tance of ef­forts made at all lev­els to es­tab­lish a set of Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals as part of the Unit­ed Na­tions Post-2015 De­vel­op­ment Agen­da for the pe­ri­od of 2015-2030, and the rel­e­vance of bio­di­ver­si­ty for the achieve­ment of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Bio­di­ver­si­ty con­tributes to our eco­nom­ic and so­cial needs in many ways, such as:

�2 Bio­di­ver­si­ty is a vi­tal as­set in glob­al and lo­cal economies

�2 Food pro­duc­tion de­pends on bio­di­ver­si­ty and the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by ecosys­tems

�2 Clean and se­cure sup­plies of wa­ter al­so de­pend on bio­di­ver­si­ty

�2 Bio­di­ver­si­ty and ecosys­tem func­tion­ing pro­vide goods and ser­vices es­sen­tial for hu­man health–in­clud­ing nu­tri­ents, clean air and wa­ter and reg­u­la­tion of pests and vec­tor-based dis­eases

�2 Bio­di­ver­si­ty is the ba­sis for sus­tain­able liveli­hoods

�2 Tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge as­so­ci­at­ed with bio­di­ver­si­ty is al­so im­por­tant and has val­ue not on­ly to those who de­pend on it in their dai­ly lives but to mod­ern in­dus­try and agri­cul­ture as well

�2 Bio­di­ver­si­ty is the cor­ner­stone of the work, be­lief sys­tems and ba­sic sur­vival of many women

�2 Bio­di­ver­si­ty plays a ma­jor role in mit­i­gat­ing cli­mate change by con­tribut­ing to long-term se­ques­tra­tion of car­bon in a num­ber of bio­mes (re­gions of the world with sim­i­lar cli­mate (weath­er, tem­per­a­ture) an­i­mals and plants)

�2 Even the built en­vi­ron­ments of our cities are linked to and af­fect­ed by bio­di­ver­si­ty

In T&T the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in pro­tect­ing bi­o­log­i­cal species and ar­eas through leg­is­la­tion, name­ly the En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species Rules, 2001, and the En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Ar­eas Rules, 2001.

The EMA has des­ig­nat­ed ten species as en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-sen­si­tive: the ocelot, the pawi, the man­a­tee, the white-tailed sabrew­ing hum­ming­bird, the gold­en tree frog, and five species of sea tur­tles–the log­ger­head, the green, the leatherback, the hawks­bill and the olive ri­d­ley. Three ar­eas are des­ig­nat­ed as en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive: the Nar­i­va Swamp Man­aged Re­source Pro­tect­ed Area, the Aripo Sa­van­nas Strict Na­ture Re­serve and the Matu­ra Na­tion­al Park.

Specif­i­cal­ly with­in the Nar­i­va Swamp the EMA's Na­tion­al Restora­tion, Car­bon Se­ques­tra­tion, Wildlife and Liveli­hoods Project aims to de­vel­op a sus­tain­able man­age­ment plan for this en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive area.

Some of the ma­jor de­liv­er­ables of this project are: a na­tion­al wildlife sur­vey, a wildlife cen­tre, and a species re­search and da­ta-cap­ture pro­gramme. Oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude train­ing the com­mu­ni­ties with­in the project area to: re­plant ar­eas of the swamp, un­der­go fire sup­pres­sion train­ing, and con­duct pub­lic out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

An­oth­er com­po­nent of the project is car­bon se­ques­tra­tion which refers to the process of cap­tur­ing car­bon diox­ide (CO2) from the at­mos­phere. Once cap­tured, the CO2 gas (or the car­bon por­tion of the CO2) is put in­to long-term stor­age.

Car­bon se­ques­tra­tion is im­por­tant as it could po­ten­tial­ly re­duce the lev­els of car­bon in the at­mos­phere and green­house gas emis­sions. The project looks at in­creas­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of the mea­sure­ment of the quan­tum of car­bon se­questered, de­vel­op­ing spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty to car­bon con­tent re­la­tion­ships and species spe­cif­ic car­bon frac­tion ra­tios for a num­ber of tar­get­ed wet­land tree species. This project serves as a mod­el for oth­er ar­eas to de­vel­op sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties with­in these pro­tect­ed ar­eas and to help cre­ate sus­tain­able liveli­hoods for those that live there.

As men­tioned, the project al­so in­cludes a na­tion­al wildlife sur­vey. For far too long hunters, both reg­is­tered and un­reg­is­tered, have been al­lowed free reign il­le­gal­ly hunt­ing out­side the hunt­ing sea­son (Oc­to­ber 1, to Feb­ru­ary). They have been se­vere­ly de­plet­ing the for­est wildlife with­out giv­ing am­ple time for healthy growth of the var­i­ous pop­u­la­tions.

The gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T in­tro­duced a hunt­ing ban for two years to help re­plen­ish the pop­u­la­tions. Dur­ing this time, the EMA has in­tro­duced this na­tion­al sur­vey to track the num­bers of wildlife in ex­is­tence and to mon­i­tor their pop­u­la­tion pat­terns. This is the first study of its kind in T&T and in­volves doc­u­ment­ing sight­ings for the fol­low­ing five game mam­mals: lappe, deer, quenk, tat­too and agouti. This three-year ini­tia­tive was de­signed to con­duct sci­en­tif­ic re­search on the den­si­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion of these an­i­mals and by ex­ten­sion the wider wildlife pop­u­la­tion of T&T.

Thus far, wildlife sur­veys were com­plet­ed in Blan­chisseuse, Nar­i­va, Rochard Dou­glas For­est Re­serve, South­ern Wa­ter­shed Game Sanc­tu­ary, Trin­i­ty Hills Game Sanc­tu­ary, Vic­to­ria-Ma­yaro For­est Re­serve, Cen­tral Range and Matu­ra Na­ture Re­serve.

Main­tain­ing the ob­jec­tive of the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the com­mu­ni­ties di­rect­ly im­pact­ed, sev­er­al CBOs were en­gaged, trained and em­ployed in the project. Con­sul­ta­tions were held in Ma­yaro, Va­len­cia, Siparia, Table­land, San Fer­nan­do and Ker­na­han, and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 peo­ple were trained in da­ta col­lec­tion and sur­vey meth­ods.

Forests, wet­lands and man­groves al­so play a crit­i­cal role in re­duc­ing the im­pacts of ex­treme events such as droughts, floods and tsunamis.Bio­di­ver­si­ty for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is a crit­i­cal as­pect for our en­vi­ron­ment with­in this small-is­land de­vel­op­ing state, and we need to be more aware of our wildlife and their habi­tat, of what mea­sures are in place to pro­tect them, and en­sure more is done to pro­tect these species.

For more in­fo, vis­it www.ema.co.tt