EMA, Justice Ministry discuss EM Act changes

Chair­man Doolar Ram­lal of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors and man­age­ment met with Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj of the Min­istry of Jus­tice, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries, a Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and mem­bers of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­mis­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ECTT) to dis­cuss amend­ments to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act Chap 35:05.

Di­rec­tors Dr Re­bec­ca Gookool-Bosland and Avinash Pha­goo were among EMA of­fi­cials at the meet­ing.

Dis­cus­sions fo­cused on col­lab­o­ra­tion and ad­vanc­ing changes to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act, with en­vi­ron­men­tal jus­tice iden­ti­fied as a guid­ing prin­ci­ple. Par­tic­i­pants re­viewed the Act and sub­sidiary leg­is­la­tion and iden­ti­fied ar­eas for re­vi­sion to sup­port en­vi­ron­men­tal gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mat­ters raised in­clud­ed noise man­age­ment, ac­cess to en­vi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, me­di­a­tion, the role of the EMA in court pro­ceed­ings, as­sess­ment method­olo­gies and co­or­di­na­tion among agen­cies in­volved in reg­u­la­tion and en­force­ment, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions.

The par­ties al­so ad­dressed pro­ce­dur­al clar­i­ty and in­sti­tu­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the EMA and the ECTT.

Pro­posed amend­ments are in­tend­ed to strength­en the Act, clar­i­fy in­sti­tu­tion­al roles and sup­port en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion mech­a­nisms, in­clud­ing re­spons­es to cli­mate-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

A pro­gramme of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed as part of the re­form process. Stake­hold­ers, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives and com­mu­ni­ty groups are to pro­vide in­put on up­dates to the leg­isla­tive frame­work.

The EMA, un­der the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, stat­ed it will con­tin­ue to work with the Min­istry of Jus­tice and the ECTT on mat­ters re­lat­ed to en­vi­ron­men­tal gov­er­nance and de­vel­op­ment.