High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad says there should be stiffer penal­ties for those who dam­age the en­vi­ron­ment through il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, lit­ter­ing and oil spills.

De­liv­er­ing a ser­mon at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church on Sun­day, Seep­er­sad called on cit­i­zens to plant more trees, use more LED light bulbs and re­cy­cle as much as they can.

He lament­ed the death of the corals at the Buc­coo Reef, and not­ed that T&T was fast los­ing oth­er nat­ur­al trea­sures be­cause of ex­ploita­tion.

“When we look at the world around us it is un­de­ni­able that our plan­et is in cri­sis. There is a glob­al food short­age. Sea lev­els have risen...the days are get­ting hot­ter. When the floods come it is as­ton­ish­ing to see the amount of garbage that is strewn in­to our na­tions’ wa­ter­cours­es,” Seep­er­sad said.

As a small is­land state, he said, cit­i­zens must be con­cerned about the en­vi­ron­ment and urged all cit­i­zens to act as stew­ards of the en­vi­ron­ment.

“We can­not sit by and al­low our en­vi­ron­ment to be sub­ject­ed to wan­ton de­struc­tion for short term re­wards. When il­le­gal quar­ry­ing takes place nat­ur­al habi­tats are de­stroyed and this neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts the wildlife, wa­ter­cours­es and the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” Seep­er­sad said.

He not­ed that ex­ist­ing laws were not ef­fec­tive­ly as­sist­ing in the pro­tec­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment.

“There is a need for a suit­able leg­isla­tive frame­work to fos­ter sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, the use of our coun­try’s re­sources and the con­ser­va­tion of wildlife.

“A quick glance at our present laws re­veals a shock­ing truth that the penal­ties for en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age and de­struc­tion are min­i­mal and hard­ly op­er­ate as a de­ter­rent,” he said.

He not­ed that coral reefs should be pro­tect­ed.

“As we fo­cus up­on eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­ty and the de­vel­op­ment of tourism, coral reefs can be a huge at­trac­tion but they are ex­treme­ly del­i­cate and pro­vide a home to a wide va­ri­ety of ma­rine life. Coral takes hun­dreds of years to grow one me­tre and we must pro­tect them and en­sure that ac­cess is reg­u­lat­ed. What was al­lowed to hap­pen to the Buc­coo Reef should nev­er hap­pen to any oth­er reef,” he added.

Seep­er­sad said if some­one dam­aged a reef with a boat an­chor, the penal­ty of $1,000 was hard­ly a de­ter­rent. Such min­i­mal penal­ties amount­ed to a slap in the face of sus­tain­able use and pro­tec­tion of our re­sources.

He added, “If a cit­i­zen is caught lit­ter­ing, de­pend­ing on whether the per­pe­tra­tor is an in­di­vid­ual or body cor­po­rate, un­der sec­tion 3 (6) of the Lit­ter Act, the fine can range be­tween $4,000 to $8,000.” Seep­er­sad al­so said the dev­as­tat­ing floods of Oc­to­ber 2018 oc­curred large­ly be­cause of in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing in wa­ter­cours­es.

“Oil spills from boats kill ma­rine life, pol­lute beach­es and af­fect the liveli­hood of fish­er­men who have to sup­port their fam­i­lies. Un­der the Oil pol­lu­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Act, the penal­ty for the dis­charge of oil in­to our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters is $10,000. This sum is in­signif­i­cant when one con­sid­ers the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with the clean up an oil spill,” he said.

Seep­er­sad ex­plained that in 2011, cit­i­zens were pro­hib­it­ed from killing or re­mov­ing tur­tles and eggs but un­der the Fish­eries Act, the penal­ty for such a breach was mere­ly $2,000.

Say­ing cit­i­zens must recog­nise the en­vi­ron­men­tal cri­sis and take steps im­me­di­ate­ly to sal­vage what was left, Seep­er­sad made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions.

“We could pledge to dis­con­tin­ue the use of sin­gle-use plas­tics like plas­tic spoons, forks, plates and cups. We need to wean off plas­tic bags util­is­ing reusable bags. We can save the trees by min­imis­ing our use of pa­per,” he not­ed.

Seep­er­sad al­so said the youth could be mo­bilised to ac­tive­ly clean their sur­round­ings by hav­ing co-or­di­nat­ed vis­its to our beach­es and rivers.

“As a na­tion, we must hold each oth­er ac­count­able when we pol­lute our en­vi­ron­ment and we need to ac­tive­ly en­force our ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal laws. We should al­so con­sid­er the im­ple­men­ta­tion of more strin­gent penal­ties. We should ac­tive­ly em­brace the use of so­lar en­er­gy. So­lar pan­els could be fixed to the roofs of our homes so that some ap­pli­ances or wa­ter heaters can be pow­ered,” he not­ed.

Seep­er­sad fur­ther said the use of long-last­ing bulbs like LED bulbs could as­sist in re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions while elec­tric cars could al­so have a last­ing im­pact on sav­ing the plan­et.