Hours af­ter the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) de­clared the new­ly-iden­ti­fied coro­n­avirus vari­ant, Omi­cron, as a vari­ant of con­cern, T&T has an­nounced re­stric­tions to en­try for trav­ellers from sev­en African coun­tries.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s topog­ra­phy is an ex­treme­ly bio­di­verse ex­panse of flo­ra and fau­na that are world renowned for their unique char­ac­ter­is­tics. We live in what a met­ro­pol­i­tan city dweller might con­sid­er a ‘par­adise’, how­ev­er it is un­der threat. As the world con­vened for COP26 of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) to dis­cuss the ef­fects of cli­mate change and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly un­sus­tain­able prac­tices on the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, one can on­ly take a look around our own coun­try to un­der­stand the ef­fects that pol­lu­tion and emis­sions have on our en­vi­ron­ment. What ini­tia­tives have we, as a coun­try, signed on to in or­der to pro­tect our wildlife and en­vi­ron­ment and what risk does pol­lu­tion pose to our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment?