A new agree­ment signed be­tween the IAMove­ment and Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NQ) last Fri­day, April 19, has paved the way for an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of the part­ner­ship’s land restora­tion and re­for­esta­tion work at de­grad­ed, quar­ried land in San­gre Grande.

And they are hop­ing that oth­er quar­ry op­er­a­tors fol­low their ex­am­ple and move to re­ha­bil­i­tate the acreage they mine.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by IAMove­ment, both par­ties have been col­lab­o­rat­ing since 2018, be­gin­ning with the IWE­co (In­te­grat­ing Wa­ter, Land and Ecosys­tems Man­age­ment) Project, which was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the EMA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the GEF Small Grants Pro­gramme. IAMove­ment was an ex­e­cut­ing agency of this project lo­cal­ly on the ground, along­side the Trust for Sus­tain­able Liveli­hoods.

The agree­ment signed on Fri­day fol­lows up on this col­lab­o­ra­tive work.

IAMovement Managing Director and NQCL CEO Sign Landmark Agreement. From left to right – IAMovement Chairman and Technical Director, Jonathan Barcant; IAMovement Managing Director, Kevan Kalapnath-Maharaj; and NQCL Chief Executive Officer (Ag.), Gerard Mathura. [Image courtesy IAMovement]

“The part­ner­ship be­tween Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NQ) and IAMove­ment will see the en­ti­ties con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tion to re­store and main­tain a min­i­mum of 32 acres of pre­vi­ous­ly de­grad­ed land at the Na­tion­al Quar­ries Sand and Grav­el Quar­ry in Tu­rure, San­gre Grande,” the re­lease notes.

“This 32-acre plot con­sti­tutes a seg­ment of NQ­CL's ex­ten­sive 199.03 acres of re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed land or land des­ig­nat­ed for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the signed agree­ment, ad­di­tion­al parcels of land with­in this scope can be des­ig­nat­ed for IAMove­ment's restora­tion and re­for­esta­tion ef­forts,” IAMove­ment says.

Un­der the Trinidad and To­ba­go Min­er­als Act of 2000, lo­cal min­ing op­er­a­tions are re­quired to re­store quar­ried ar­eas to a state that is eco­log­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar to their pre-min­ing con­di­tion, or to a con­di­tion that is com­pat­i­ble with sur­round­ing land us­es and ecosys­tems.

It added: “Re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing de­grad­ed quar­ry sites helps to pro­mote bio­di­ver­si­ty, pro­tect wa­ter re­sources, and cre­ate land­scapes that are eco­log­i­cal­ly thriv­ing and com­pat­i­ble with sur­round­ing land us­es. Ef­fec­tive quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion re­quires col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween in­dus­try, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, en­vi­ron­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions, and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties to en­sure that restora­tion ef­forts are suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able.”

A community member prepares to plant tree saplings at the degraded quarry site. [Image courtesy IAMovement]

IAMove­ment re­ports that since the end of the IWE­co-TT project in June 2022, it has con­tin­ued to main­tain the sites on the NQ­CL com­pound un­der the guid­ance of the NQ En­vi­ron­men­tal De­part­ment, “even ramp­ing up re­for­esta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties and prepar­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate larg­er por­tions of land and have them pro­tect­ed from fu­ture ex­ca­va­tions.”

“Through a par­tic­u­lar new mod­el called Close The Loop Caribbean, IAMove­ment and NQ are poised to scale up re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties by de­ploy­ing the most ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive meth­ods learned dur­ing the ini­tial stages of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ef­forts, and cre­at­ing en­try-ways for oth­er key part­ners to get di­rect­ly in­volved in con­tribut­ing to the restora­tion and re-green­ing of Trinidad & To­ba­go’s land­scape,” the NGO points out.

Ac­cord­ing to IAMove­ment, Close the Loop Caribbean is a con­sor­tium of en­ti­ties work­ing to­geth­er to sup­port restora­tive and re­gen­er­a­tive process­es and ac­tiv­i­ties.  It is sup­port­ed, in part by the IDB’s Bluetech for Waste Chal­lenge, as well as the CARIRI-led Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion (STFOI) Fa­cil­i­ty sup­port­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union, IDB Lab and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

IAMove­ment ex­plains:

“Un­der the now signed agree­ment and work­ing along­side CTL part­ners, IAMove­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­vide tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and field ex­e­cu­tions to re­store NQ’s pre­vi­ous­ly mined sites in the quar­ry, as well as pro­vide plan­ning and lo­gis­ti­cal in­puts when prepar­ing ex­ca­vat­ed sites for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.”

NQCL-commissioned excavator conducting earthworks to allow access to a degraded site for rehabilitation. [Image courtesy IAMovement]

The NGO says a key ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the Close the Loop mod­el al­so fo­cus­es on the cap­tur­ing of or­gan­ic waste in large quan­ti­ties and chan­nelling these to­wards com­post­ing for the gen­er­a­tion of nu­tri­ent rich soil, some of which is re­turned to the quar­ry for land re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties. This builds on a past best-prac­tice land re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ty which IAMove­ment pi­o­neered at Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and learned to be very ef­fec­tive, which was the chan­nelling of or­gan­ic waste to re­gen­er­ate top­soil on bar­ren lands Al­to­geth­er, the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly as com­ple­ment­ed with or­gan­ic com­post­ing, is en­vi­sioned to aid with car­bon se­ques­tra­tion. Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so has tar­gets of re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions by 103 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 equiv­a­lent (Mt­CO2e) un­der the Paris Cli­mate Ac­cord, a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of which is tied to in­dus­try.

“With this sign­ing, the ease of mar­ry­ing quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions and quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion is ev­i­dent,” IAMove­ment ob­serves.

“The ex­trac­tive in­dus­try re­mains tied to the larg­er oil and gas sec­tor, and these re­main the cor­ner­stone of the na­tion­al econ­o­my. Quar­ry­ing con­tin­ues to pro­vide lo­cal­ly sourced ag­gre­gates for con­struc­tion, which al­though known to have neg­a­tive ef­fects on ecosys­tems and the en­vi­ron­ment, is now be­ing shown to al­so have clear path­ways to­wards off­sets and re­gen­er­a­tion as part of a closed-loop process.”

“The world, the re­gion and our own coun­try are be­com­ing more aware of the need to think about the down­stream ef­fects of our ac­tions, and de­sign sys­tems and process­es which are restora­tive, and leave things in con­di­tions which are equal or bet­ter than how they are found,” the NGO said.

It added: “IAMove­ment and the CTL con­sor­tium along with Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed hope that this agree­ment en­cour­ages oth­er quar­ry op­er­a­tors to fol­low sim­i­lar steps - and pro­mote re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion as part of their quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.”