Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has said that the Min­istry of Works is play­ing its part in de­vel­op­ing the blue econ­o­my.

He de­fined the “blue econ­o­my” as ty­ing the ma­rine re­sources to the econ­o­my of the coun­try.

“We take the blue econ­o­my very se­ri­ous­ly as 15 to 20 years down the road if we do not deal with the coastal ar­eas and flood­ing, we will have a ma­jor prob­lem in the coun­try,” he said speak­ing at the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean De­vel­op­men­tal Bank (CAF) Con­fer­ence on Mon­day at the Hilton Trinidad Ho­tel, St Ann’s.

He out­lined the spe­cif­ic projects that the Min­istry of Works is un­der­tak­ing in this area.

“In the Vi­sion 2030 doc­u­ment, goal three and goal five, the Min­istry of Works had sig­nif­i­cant in­put. Goal three deals with cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and Goal five with, max­imis­ing our nat­ur­al re­sources. These two ar­eas fall smack in­to the en­vi­ron­ment. Com­ing in­to the min­istry and sit­ting with the staff, we recog­nise that the ma­jor chal­lenge fac­ing this coun­try in terms of the in­fra­struc­ture has been cli­mate change, and what is hap­pen­ing with the weath­er pat­tern is flood­ing and coastal ero­sion. We iden­ti­fied those two ar­eas as the two most crit­i­cal ar­eas fac­ing the coun­try. This min­istry deals with the in­fra­struc­ture. Yes, we deal with the high­ways and walkovers and we have sev­er­al projects. When we saw what was hap­pen­ing with coastal ero­sion around T&T, we recog­nise that some­thing had to be done about that.”

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy over whether glob­al warm­ing is a re­al threat or not, Sinanan said that the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion is that it is a re­al threat.

“In terms of the flood­ing prob­lems, what we saw in the last cou­ple of years was in­ten­si­fied flood­ing and it con­tin­ues. Some peo­ple feel it is not glob­al warm­ing. But we feel there is a dras­tic change in weath­er pat­terns. What we have seen in T&T as a small is­land is that in ar­eas where flood­ing nev­er oc­curred, now we have sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing hap­pen­ing. That wa­ter has to get down to the ocean and it is help­ing with the de­struc­tion of the coastal ar­eas.

“To com­bat this, we de­signed a coastal pro­gramme, and took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion a study of the en­tire coast. Where we have to tie that in with we can pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment and coast­lines but at the same time we have to use the ben­e­fit of that to as­sist the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance al­ways com­plains to me that the Min­istry of Works utilis­es all the mon­ey in the bud­get and what we set out to do is look at two ar­eas. How these ar­eas could con­tribute to the econ­o­my and when CAF lends us mon­ey, we can utilise it and bring ben­e­fits to the econ­o­my.”

He added that the Min­istry of Works has de­signed pro­grams that not on­ly pro­tect the coast­lines but al­so would bring in tourists.

“One of these projects is a sim­ple project on the east coast where we start­ed off with a revet­ment wall. We were able to con­vert that revet­ment wall with just a ten per­cent in­crease in the cost of the bud­get to a board­walk. As we speak that has mor­phed in­to a tourist project be­cause on that coast we have a lot of nat­ur­al re­sources ar­eas that if the in­fra­struc­ture was not there, we would not recognse, you could at­tract tourists in an area like that. So it is more than mere in­fra­struc­ture projects but we­ber we could grow the tourism in­dus­try. As we speak, we have 11 such projects around the is­land try­ing to cre­ate a new econ­o­my for the coast­line com­mu­ni­ties. You are ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing a new set of busi­ness­peo­ple in those ar­eas.”

He added that they are al­so try­ing to use the ma­rine sec­tor to de­vel­op the econ­o­my.

“A ma­jor nat­ur­al re­source we have is wa­ter. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in T&T, we nev­er max­imised and took full ad­van­tage of our lo­ca­tion and the fact that we are per­fect­ly placed away from the hur­ri­cane belt. We had a lot of peo­ple com­ing in and pack­ing the drill­ships out in the ocean and we were not col­lect­ing any­thing for that. What we de­cid­ed to do as a Gov­ern­ment is to re-arrange the en­tire mar­itime sec­tor. We have now de­vel­oped a whole in­dus­try out there. It is or­gan­ised and en­sur­ing that the en­vi­ron­ment is pro­tect­ed. We have col­lect­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of rev­enue in this area.”

He al­so said that they will soon turn the sod for the con­struc­tion of a new fish­ing port in Moru­ga.

“We will cre­ate an at­mos­phere where the busi­ness will flour­ish. When tourists come in­to the is­land, they can go in­to these re­mote ar­eas and ex­pe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent cul­ture. We are try­ing to tie de­vel­op­ment with tourism.

“The Ga­le­o­ta Port is go­ing in­to Phase Two. That means that the en­tire east­ern seaboard will be de­vel­oped us­ing ma­rine re­sources. We al­so have an­oth­er ma­jor part in To­co which will en­hance 50 per cent of the land­mass in this coun­try. If we put in a pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal there, we will cut the time be­tween T&T, by about 30 per cent. Yet, there are so many peo­ple, no em­ploy­ment and yet beau­ti­ful tourist fa­cil­i­ties,” he said.

TO­BA­GO

Kelvin Charles, chief sec­re­tary, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) said To­ba­go has struc­tur­al prob­lems at this time as six out of every ten em­ploy­ees on the is­land work for the THA and two out of the oth­er four per­sons are em­ployed in­di­rect­ly by en­ti­ties that are or­gan­ised to pro­vide ser­vices to the THA.

To try to change this, he said the THA sees that they need­ed to re­vi­talise the tourism sec­tor.

“We are hear­ing about the blue econ­o­my but we have al­ways en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties crit­i­cal to the blue econ­o­my. Giv­en the fact that the blue econ­o­my by de­f­i­n­i­tion speaks to how we ex­ploit the re­sources of the ocean.”

He spoke about some of their projects.

“We can speak about the reefs that we have. There is the Buc­coo Reef and Ny­lon Pool and we have al­ways used those as sell­ing points. Now we are go­ing fur­ther and we have oth­er reefs in Spey­side and Char­lot­teville. We are em­pha­sis­ing our dive in­dus­try as part of util­is­ing all our as­sets to fa­cil­i­tate an in­crease in our tourism ar­rivals.”

He added that the THA is hav­ing ex­plorato­ry talks with po­ten­tial in­vestors with re­spect to a ded­i­cat­ed cruise ship port in To­ba­go as part of at at­tempt to de­vel­op the blue econ­o­my.

“The Min­istry of Fi­nance is cur­rent­ly work­ing on pro­pos­als for the con­struc­tion of a mariner in south­west­ern To­ba­go to im­prove that av­enue of our de­vel­op­ment.”

They have al­so tak­en the de­ci­sion where they will en­gage a Caribbean com­pa­ny to do an as­sess­ment of their fish­ing in­dus­try.

He al­so said that be­ing sus­tain­able is an im­por­tant as­pect of the blue econ­o­my.

“We have es­tab­lished a coastal zone man­age­ment unit de­signed to treat with pol­i­cy is­sues to a man­age To­ba­go’s ero­sion sit­u­a­tion. To­ba­go is very vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change and ris­ing sea lev­els. We have been im­pact­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Pi­geon Point has been se­vere­ly im­pact­ed.”

He said the THA is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing CAF through the Min­istry of Fi­nance in their coastal de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy as ini­tial es­ti­mates put re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Pi­geon Point at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50 mil­lion.

“Fi­nanc­ing is a chal­lenge and we would be ap­pre­cia­tive of ad­di­tion­al fund­ing in­clud­ing from the pri­vate sec­tor,” he said.