Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the Green Fund con­tain­ing $12.9 bil­lion, as con­firmed by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on the Pub­lic Ac­counts for 2025, en­vi­ron­men­tal non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and com­mu­ni­ty groups con­tin­ue to re­port is­sues with ac­cess­ing fund­ing.

Some have even in­di­cat­ed that they face clo­sure in the com­ing weeks if fund­ing is not grant­ed.

Over the last decade, less than one per cent of the Green Fund’s to­tal val­ue was dis­bursed, ac­cord­ing to Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) doc­u­ments.

The doc­u­ments re­vealed that be­tween 2016 and 2026, $95.18 mil­lion was dis­trib­uted for 20 projects.

The largest al­lo­ca­tion went to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s Re­cy­clable Sol­id Waste Col­lec­tion Project, which re­ceived $24.2 mil­lion be­tween 2023 and 2025.

The sec­ond-largest al­lo­ca­tion went to WASA’s Ex­pan­sion of the Adopt a Riv­er project, which re­ceived around $18.4 mil­lion be­tween 2019 and 2025.

The Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust, a sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion or­gan­i­sa­tion, re­ceived $10 mil­lion for the Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Con­ser­va­tion Project be­tween 2017 and 2019.

Na­ture Seek­ers, a sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal NGO based in Matu­ra, re­ceived $10.5 mil­lion for two sep­a­rate projects.

Tur­tle con­ser­va­tion over­whelmed

This nest­ing sea­son has seen a stark in­crease in the num­ber of en­dan­gered sea tur­tles com­ing ashore, and with it, long-stand­ing chal­lenges have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed, ac­cord­ing to con­ser­va­tion groups.

With­out state in­ter­ven­tion, the groups said, sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion faces an un­cer­tain fu­ture.

Re­cent­ly, con­ser­va­tion­ists have shared footage on so­cial me­dia of the bod­ies of sea tur­tles washed ashore.

T&T has more than 65 beach­es across 13 com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and 12 com­mu­ni­ties in To­ba­go that have been iden­ti­fied as nest­ing grounds.

Every year, be­tween ear­ly March and late Au­gust, as many as 8,000 nest­ing leatherback sea tur­tles come ashore in T&T.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that an­nu­al­ly, around 35,000 tourists from as many as 100 dif­fer­ent coun­tries par­tic­i­pate in tur­tle tours across both is­lands.

Da­ta sug­gest­ed that T&T ac­counts for at least 80 per cent of all leatherbacks nest­ing in the Caribbean Sea.

As a sig­na­to­ry to sev­er­al glob­al con­ven­tions, treaties and laws, T&T is ob­lig­at­ed to con­serve and pro­tect sea tur­tle pop­u­la­tions.

The strug­gle

With a deep love for the sea since child­hood, Jezerene Bovell took up na­ture con­ser­va­tion af­ter be­ing moved to do some­thing for her coun­try and Black Rock com­mu­ni­ty.

But the fu­ture of her or­gan­i­sa­tion, Save Our Sea Tur­tles (SOS), ap­pears un­cer­tain.

“We don’t have any re­sources. We re­cent­ly ac­tu­al­ly had a meet­ing to try to find out about fund­ing be­cause fund­ing is nec­es­sary; re­gard­less, even if we try to raise our own funds to get mon­ey, it is hard, es­pe­cial­ly in this To­ba­go en­vi­ron­ment.

“Every­thing is falling on us, and I mean, if we stay away, well, you know, it is chaos that is go­ing to hap­pen,” she lament­ed.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion on­ly has sev­en vol­un­teer pa­trollers re­spon­si­ble for three beach­es: Tur­tle Beach, Grafton and Back Bay.

They as­sign two pa­trollers per beach at night.

“They say we’re do­ing a good job, but the peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty, even if they have the pas­sion to come out and help, you know, care about the tur­tles or what­ev­er, have no in­cen­tive for them to stay... be­cause peo­ple are miss­ing their night rest, and where­as it might not be a job, it is a com­mu­ni­ty-based thing. You still need to give peo­ple some­thing,” she said.

Like Trinidad, To­ba­go has seen a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in nest­ing tur­tles this sea­son, re­sult­ing in an in­creased work­load.

“In the ear­ly months of March and April, it tends to be about, I want to say, around 10 tur­tles. We passed 15, even 20 tur­tles.

“This whole East­er week­end gone here, the amount of peo­ple that showed up on this beach is un­be­liev­able. And then we can’t do any­thing about it be­cause with no pa­trollers on the ground or just two of us to col­lect da­ta from tur­tles, we don’t have the au­thor­i­ty to tell peo­ple to come off the beach and all of that stuff,” she said.

Bovell felt the lack of struc­ture in To­ba­go was lead­ing to a waste of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

She said tourists of­ten ex­press be­wil­der­ment that they can go on To­ba­go’s beach­es for free at night and ob­serve the nest­ing tur­tles.

Un­like Trinidad, which has pro­tect­ed beach­es like Grande Riv­iere and Matu­ra dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son, To­ba­go does not.

Poach­ing a prob­lem

Anush­ka Rams­den, a game war­den with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s De­part­ment of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and Forestry, con­firmed that poach­ing re­mains a prob­lem.

“To­ba­go has a cul­ture… To­ba­go has a Har­vest Fes­ti­val. So, it’s like on a week­ly ba­sis, each vil­lage cel­e­brates their har­vest. Peo­ple cook. Peo­ple drink. Peo­ple vis­it. They go from house to house. And be­cause of that, peo­ple like to eat wild meat. They like tur­tles or igua­nas, whether the sea­son is open or closed.

“And when you take poach­ers be­fore the court of law, the fine is $100,000, and the mag­is­trate will give them a rep­ri­mand and dis­charge, but you on­ly pay like two hun­dred dol­lars,” Rams­den lament­ed.

With on­ly six of­fi­cers, the de­part­ment is al­so short-staffed, mean­ing it is the com­mu­ni­ty groups that must try to pick up the slack.

In Las Cuevas, in Trinidad, Ar­lene Williams of the Las Cuevas Eco-Friend­ly As­so­ci­a­tion faces sim­i­lar chal­lenges.

Her or­gan­i­sa­tion last re­ceived fund­ing in 2018.

“We have ze­ro re­sources, be­cause there are just two peo­ple here in Las Cuevas and we just vol­un­teer, and we have been vol­un­teer­ing for the last nine years. We are cer­ti­fied tour guides. We con­duct tur­tle watch­ing tours, where we can ac­tu­al­ly pur­chase the rel­e­vant equip­ment to do tag­ging and mi­crochip­ping and that sort of stuff. Last month, we had close to 300 tur­tles nest­ing here so far, which is very strange. Nor­mal­ly, for the month of March, we would nor­mal­ly see around 12 tur­tles.

“We just want what was promised to us so that we could do what is best for Trinidad. The rea­son why we’re still go­ing out there is be­cause Trinidad has the high­est den­si­ty of leatherback tur­tles in the world. And we’re try­ing to up­hold that stan­dard be­cause if we are not there to col­lect the da­ta, there’s no da­ta to sup­port that record. And if we are the small­est na­tion and the tur­tles com­ing in­to us, if we don’t have that amount, then even­tu­al­ly the tur­tles will go ex­tinct.

“Some nights ago, we had over 200 peo­ple on Las Cuevas Beach who were not there with our or­gan­i­sa­tion. They were there on their own, shin­ing lights, hav­ing bon­fires, and par­ty­ing,” she said.

The Green Fund is fund­ed by a levy on for-prof­it com­pa­nies of 0.3 per cent.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh was con­tact­ed about the con­cerns raised by groups but is yet to re­spond.

Where fund­ing went

• Fu­ture Fish­ers’ Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing of Fish­ers Ini­tia­tive for Sus­tain­able Har­vest, Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search, $8.3 mil­lion

• IAMove­ment’s Ed­u­ca­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Pro­gramme for Cli­mate Change Adap­ta­tion, $5 mil­lion

• The Banks Vil­lage En­vi­ron­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Wet­lands Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gram, $3.7 mil­lion

• CARIRI’s De­vel­op­ment of an Eco-friend­ly and Cost-ef­fec­tive In­ter­ven­tion us­ing In­dige­nous Bac­te­ria Ca­pa­ble of Biode­grad­ing Organophos­phate-based Pes­ti­cides, $2.5 mil­lion

• The Cashew Gar­dens Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil’s Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cy­cling Pro­gramme, $2.4 mil­lion

Basel CRC-Caribbean’s De­vel­op­ment of a Waste Oil Man­age­ment Sys­tem, $1.9 mil­lion

• UWI’s The Pro­vi­sion of Base­line Bi­o­log­i­cal Da­ta for the Man­age­ment of the Aripo Sa­van­nas, $1.4 mil­lion

• The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs’ Con­trol and Man­age­ment of the In­va­sive Li­on­fish, $1.4 mil­lion

• The En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville Out­reach’s Link­ing To­ba­go Reef Health to Liveli­hoods: Un­der­wa­ter Tur­tle Mon­i­tor­ing Re­lat­ed Eco-Tourism De­vel­op­ment Project, $970,579

• The Na­pari­ma Dis­trict Scout Coun­cil’s De­sign for Green­ing the Build­ing for the Na­pari­ma Dis­trict Scout Head­quar­ters project, $959,144

• The ES­I­MA­JE Foun­da­tion’s Rus­sel Lat­apy Sec­ondary School En­closed Shade House with Aqua­phon­ics and Hy­dro­phon­ics Sys­tems, $553,254

• The Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean’s Re­new­able En­er­gy and En­vi­ron­ment De­vel­op­ment Project, $529,000

• The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s An­thro­pogenic Hy­dro­car­bon Pol­lu­tion Im­pact of Coastal Ar­eas Along the West Coast of Trinidad, $224,267

• The Green­light Net­work’s Plas­ti­keep Re­cy­cling Project Phase 3, $97,900