Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s (Labid­co) car­bon se­ques­tra­tion project will not on­ly help lim­it cli­mate change but cre­ate small cot­tage in­dus­tries.

Speak­ing at the launch of the project’s first phase on Sat­ur­day, en­ti­tled Plant for a Pur­pose, Labid­co chair­man Dr Joseph Khan said 181 fruit trees, in­clud­ing cashew, gua­va, man­go, co­conut and tamarind, will be plant­ed on 4,000 square me­tres of land.

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny had des­ig­nat­ed three hectares of land on the es­tate deemed un­suit­able for in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty for the project.

Not­ing that the ini­tia­tive does not on­ly con­tribute to the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic goal of be­com­ing a green and smart port, Khan said, “It al­so demon­strates our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and is a step­ping stone to­wards our larg­er vi­sion of cre­at­ing a more sus­tain­able and re­silient en­vi­ron­ment and by ex­ten­sion Trinidad and To­ba­go. By launch­ing this project on the es­tate to­day, we are demon­strat­ing that sus­tain­abil­i­ty and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment can co-ex­ist har­mo­nious­ly.”

He added that the com­pa­ny hopes to set an ex­am­ple by cre­at­ing a blue­print for oth­er in­dus­tries.

La Brea MP Stephen Mc Clashie, who took part in the tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise, said the ini­tia­tive would cre­ate a dif­fer­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“When these trees come to fruition, we can look at cot­tage in­dus­tries and a whole add-on event. Not to men­tion we have a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty groups here who are as­sist­ing in the plant­i­ng, and by do­ing this, we are al­so mov­ing it on to the youths to get more in­volved in the green ini­tia­tive,” Mc Clashie said.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing a na­tion­al agen­da of car­bon se­ques­tra­tion.

In his open­ing re­marks, Labid­co act­ing man­ag­er Ter­rence Boodoos­ingh said trees are na­ture’s su­per­hero. He en­cour­aged every one present to adopt a tree and con­sid­er it an in­vest­ment in their fu­ture.

“For what we sow now has the po­ten­tial in a few short years, three to five years ac­tu­al­ly, to pro­duce four tonnes of oxy­gen. This will al­low ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 per­sons to breathe for an en­tire day,” Boodoos­ingh told the gath­er­ing.

Among the at­ten­dees were em­ploy­ees, res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ty groups.