Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Vet­er­an Caribbean jour­nal­ists will tell you that while cli­mate change is be­com­ing a house­hold word now, they’ve been cov­er­ing and talk­ing about the is­sue since the 1980s. This grad­ual change in the en­vi­ron­ment is what drew a young Ka­t­ri­na Khan-Roberts to pur­sue a life de­fend­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

Grow­ing up in the 1990s, car­toons such as Ing­golok and the Plan­et Pakaskas (Nguyamyam) along with Cap­tain Plan­et ap­pealed to her ap­petite to learn more about the en­vi­ron­ment.

She re­called, “I think it’s a com­bi­na­tion of my ac­tu­al ob­ser­va­tion as well as the me­dia be­ing very en­vi­ro-cen­tric so that’s where it ac­tu­al­ly took root.”

Khan-Roberts dreamed about how she would save the North Pole, un­til one day, she be­gan dis­cern­ing how she could save her own coun­try from the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

There was a beach in Ma­yaro that was full of shells, but slow­ly, the shells start­ed dis­ap­pear­ing. Khan-Roberts won­dered why. She start­ed look­ing in­to the rea­sons and be­gan un­der­stand­ing the acid­i­fi­ca­tion of the ocean and why cer­tain fish could not sur­vive the acid in the wa­ter.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that she went on to study for a de­gree in En­vi­ron­men­tal and Nat­ur­al Re­source Man­age­ment with Mi­nors in Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gy and Zo­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Khan-Roberts be­came fa­mous in her mer­maid suit, rep­re­sent­ing a char­ac­ter she called Mer­t­ri­na. She has been fea­tured in sev­er­al pub­li­ca­tions for her work por­tray­ing a mer­maid. As re­cent­ly as the Bo­cas Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val, she put on her mer­maid suit.

She ex­plained her love for mer­maids and how she tries to use the myth­i­cal, sea-dwelling crea­ture to speak up for the ocean while al­so rais­ing aware­ness.

“At a young age, I fell in love with mer­maids and I thought mer­maids were a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the ocean. As I grew old­er, I be­gan to un­der­stand ocean sci­ence and the ac­tu­al im­pact the ocean has on our world was so crit­i­cal to hu­man sur­vival that I think I want­ed to be­come a mer­maid in the way that I could speak on be­half of the oceans,” she said.

Khan-Roberts start­ed her work in en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­ca­cy in 2008 at age 19 and dived deep in­to ad­vanc­ing her knowl­edge of the ocean and ocean is­sues.

When asked her thoughts on the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Be­yond Na­tion­al Ju­ris­dic­tion agree­ment, al­so known as the High Seas Treaty or Glob­al Ocean Treaty, she said: “The ocean is con­nect­ed. The on­ly bound­ary the ocean will see is the land.

“It is hu­mans who set these bound­aries of coun­tries and ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zones but a king­fish who is out in the ocean doesn’t know where he is or which coun­try he is in. He is just a pelag­ic an­i­mal that moves with the cur­rent and flow and away from tox­i­c­i­ty.”

Khan-Roberts start­ed spread­ing that knowl­edge, help­ing and in­spir­ing youth en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists across T&T and the Caribbean. She al­so worked as an ed­u­ca­tion co­or­di­na­tor at the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion of T&T do­ing re­search, cre­at­ing con­tent and im­ple­ment­ing strate­gic ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes.

As part of her youth en­vi­ron­ment work, Khan-Roberts used art to tell the sto­ries of cli­mate change.

“I think that art is a good way to con­nect hu­man emo­tion to a top­ic, so if your art is some­thing you can speak through to reach an­oth­er hu­man and let them un­der­stand it in a deep­er way through your per­spec­tive, I think it’s an in­ter­est­ing way for hu­mans to com­mu­ni­cate with­out words.”

Khan-Roberts has pub­lished ten books and the lat­est is set to hit book­shelves next month. Four of them are based on ocean lit­er­a­cy of­fer­ing chil­dren knowl­edge about the ocean and how to pro­tect it through her mer­maid char­ac­ter, Mer­t­ri­na.

Her ac­tivism al­so takes the form of edu­tain­ment, us­ing ed­u­ca­tion and en­ter­tain­ment aimed at chil­dren who need more than just the the­o­ry to learn.

Some of her books are based on po­et­ry which she wrote and even­tu­al­ly com­piled. The top­ics have been in­spired by the Caribbean and the ocean syn­the­sis­ing what she un­der­stood from an aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground and bring­ing it from a dif­fer­ent point of view.

Her lat­est work is, Ana­pari­ma: The Truth and a Tale, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Warao in­dige­nous peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do. It tells the sto­ry of the young man, Haburi, who built the first ca­noe.

When asked about her hopes for the next five years in the re­gion, Khan-Roberts said: “The first thing would be change in leg­is­la­tion - a fo­cus­ing and broad­en­ing of our leg­is­la­tion to en­com­pass sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. I would add adap­ta­tion and na­ture-based build­ing and so­lu­tions and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion from fos­sil fu­el-based elec­tric­i­ty. Let us gen­er­ate from oth­er re­sources.”

She al­so wants the re­gion to lever­age its ca­pac­i­ty as small is­land peo­ple.

Khan-Roberts will con­tin­ue the work she start­ed as a child, con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing her tac­tics to ed­u­cate about cli­mate change in a chang­ing world.