Yvonne Ba­boolal

Prince Be­deau, 76, sits in his porch in Sea View 3 in Cap-de-Ville, Point Fortin, look­ing out at the serene Gulf of Paria.To his left, a short dis­tance away in the sea, a pel­i­can stands on what looks like a small rock. To his right is the At­lantic Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (AL­NG) plant. But for Be­deau, who has been liv­ing in the area for 40 years, the scene does not bring peace of mind but wor­ry. The rock the pel­i­can is stand­ing on was once the area's post of­fice, which was "tak­en" by the sea. Hous­es, oth­er build­ings and a road al­so lie sub­merged un­der wa­ter around the post of­fice. A mass of rub­ble from the lat­est ero­sion lie on the strip of beach in front his house, which is mov­ing, threat­en­ing­ly, clos­er and clos­er to his prop­er­ty. Once, about a quar­ter of a mile from the gulf, his house is now al­most at the edge of the sea. "I've lost about a quar­ter of a lot of my own land al­ready," he said.

Be­deau who worked hard to re­place his wood­en house with a fair­ly large con­crete struc­ture is wor­ried that his home is next to go. "I fear­ful my house could go," he said. For years Be­deau has been watch­ing the sea eat up more and more of the coast­line on the South West penin­su­la, from Point Ligoure right down to Ica­cos at the tip of the Ser­pent's Mouth. Over the last three years, the sea has got­ten more vi­cious, he ob­served. Be­deau be­lieves the prob­lem be­gan some 15 years ago when acres of sea were re­claimed by AL­NG to con­struct their plant. Lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists con­tend, how­ev­er, that there is a rapid ero­sion of coast­lines in is­land states all over the world. They say it is an en­vi­ron­men­tal cri­sis and there is lit­tle that hu­man ef­fort can do to stop it. Be­deau, who got the Works Min­istry to do some work on the beach near­ly two decades ago, feels that a re­vis­it to the site can help. "We want the beach to be re­paired. But no­body tak­ing us on. Nu­mer­ous re­ports to the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion has fall­en on deaf ears. "We told our MP, Paula Gopee-Scoon about it many times."

Res­i­dents: We're get­ting no re­sponse

"They put we in the back seat," Hay­den Crichlow said in front his wood­en house close to the beach on Chinkit Street Ex­ten­sion. "I build back my house three times (mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from the sea.) It have no more space. "Af­ter there, I turn va­grant." Crichlow said the sea be­gan to take the land at the front of his house and then "it pick up speed. I look­ing to move a fourth time. I build­ing a ten by ten in the back right now." Low­er down the road, a huge pile of con­crete steps from a build­ing de­mol­ished by the sea lie on the beach in front Cal­lis­tra Ram­dass' house. On two re­cent oc­ca­sions the sea came right up to the back steps of her flat, con­crete house she shares with her hus­band and four chil­dren.

But Ram­dass said she was not fear­ful. A mem­ber of the Je­sus Sal­va­tion Heal­ing Min­istry church, she said, "I leave every­thing in the hands of the Lord." Her hus­band, Teabro­han Ram­dass, how­ev­er, sought help from for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning and Gopee-Scoon, she said. "But we have got­ten no re­sponse so far," Ram­dass said.

Cal­lis­tra Ram­dass stands on the erod­ed beach be­hind her house on Chinkit Street, Cap-de-Ville.

MP: It's hap­pen­ing all over the world

Gopee-Scoon said she was ful­ly aware of the prob­lem but said it was hap­pen­ing in is­land states all over the world. "It's an en­vi­ron­men­tal cri­sis due to glob­al warm­ing." She said cer­tain parts of the coast, like Cap-de-Ville, where the AL­NG plant is lo­cat­ed, would be more sus­cep­ti­ble to ero­sion. "I viewed the sit­u­a­tion and we were able to se­cure re­lo­ca­tion for three familes whose homes were in di­rect dan­ger. "The Min­istry of Works al­so vis­it­ed the area to see what could be done and they were look­ing at putting an em­bank­ment of boul­ders." Gopee-Scoon said she will pur­sue the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment and hopes the Gov­ern­ment will pick it up.

Nyahu­ma Obi­ka, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Point Fortin can­di­date in the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a "very dan­ger­ous and fright­en­ing thing." He said, "In Fan­ny Vil­lage, res­i­dents have packed tyres along the shore­line but with the as­sis­tance of the au­thor­i­ties, the prob­lem could be al­le­vi­at­ed." Obi­ka said he high­light­ed the mat­ter dur­ing his re­cent elec­tion came.

Dr John Agard, for­mer chair­man of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, at an ear­li­er work­shop, said sea lev­els were ris­ing faster on the south-west coast than on the north coast, which sug­gest­ed that the land was sink­ing. Agard said apart from much ero­sion, the south-west had a large pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try and the ex­trac­tion of oil and gas from un­der­ground will cause some sub­si­dence. Bhawan Singh from the de­part­ment of Ge­og­ra­phy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tre­al, in a study on cli­mate-dri­ven changes, in­clud­ing coastal ero­sion in T&T and the Caribbean said, "A cli­mate change de­riv­ing from the at­mos­pher­ic build up of green­house gas­es (GHG) is sup­posed to be­come ev­i­dent by the mid­dle of the next cen­tu­ry. "This GHG-in­duced cli­mate change would sup­pos­ed­ly lead to a glob­al warm­ing of about 2 to 4�C and a rise in mean sea lev­el of about 60 cm to­wards the end of the next cen­tu­ry." He said the re­sults of his study show se­vere coastal ero­sion, ap­proach­ing two to four me­tres per year for cer­tain beach­es. He said this may be in­ter­pret­ed as ear­ly sig­nals of a GHG-in­duced cli­mate change.