UNDP Representative sounds alarm over T&T’s growing waste problem

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Trinidad and To­ba­go gen­er­ates more waste per per­son than any oth­er coun­try in the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to Ugo Blan­co, Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) Mul­ti-Coun­try Of­fice.

Blan­co made the dis­clo­sure while ad­dress­ing a tree-plant­i­ng ex­er­cise host­ed by the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) at the NCIC Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day to mark World En­vi­ron­ment Day.

Speak­ing to stu­dents, diplo­mats and en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­cates, Blan­co said the coun­try’s grow­ing con­sump­tion habits were con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to its waste prob­lem.

“The av­er­age per­son in the Caribbean pro­duces about 1.3 kilo­grammes of waste per day, but in Trinidad and To­ba­go the fig­ure is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.6 kilo­grammes per day. There is a lot to be done in that re­gard,” he said.

Blan­co not­ed that sus­tain­abil­i­ty was not sole­ly about in­fra­struc­ture, eco­nom­ics or tech­nol­o­gy, but about hu­man­i­ty’s re­la­tion­ship with the nat­ur­al world.

He said tra­di­tion­al cul­tures, in­clud­ing In­di­an cul­ture, have long recog­nised the in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of peo­ple and na­ture, a prin­ci­ple mod­ern so­ci­eties are now re­dis­cov­er­ing.

He urged cit­i­zens to adopt more re­spon­si­ble con­sump­tion habits, sug­gest­ing that peo­ple care­ful­ly con­sid­er whether they tru­ly need an item be­fore pur­chas­ing it and avoid ac­cu­mu­lat­ing un­nec­es­sary pos­ses­sions.

“If every­one in the world con­sumed at the lev­els seen in some so­ci­eties to­day, there would not be enough re­sources on the plan­et to sus­tain that lifestyle,” he warned.

Blan­co al­so praised the par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple in the event, say­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship could no longer be viewed as an is­sue for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions alone.

“The youth is not just the fu­ture; the youth is the present. We are in your hands,” he said.

The UNDP rep­re­sen­ta­tive ac­knowl­edged that cli­mate change, bio­di­ver­si­ty loss and en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion were among the great­est chal­lenges fac­ing the world and said every in­di­vid­ual had a role to play in pro­tect­ing the plan­et.

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is at the core of UNDP’s man­date glob­al­ly. Hu­man­i­ty and the plan­et must come to­geth­er if we are to cre­ate a sus­tain­able fu­ture,” he said.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing was Diomedes Her­a­clio Car­les Cleghorn, Am­bas­sador of the Re­pub­lic of Pana­ma, who high­light­ed his coun­try’s en­vi­ron­men­tal achieve­ments.

Cleghorn said Pana­ma is one of on­ly three car­bon-neg­a­tive coun­tries in the world, along­side Suri­name and Bhutan.

“More than half of Pana­ma’s ter­ri­to­ry re­mains cov­ered by forests, which ab­sorb more car­bon diox­ide than the coun­try emits,” Cleghorn said.

“This demon­strates that eco­nom­ic progress and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion can suc­cess­ful­ly go hand in hand.”

The am­bas­sador said cli­mate change, bio­di­ver­si­ty loss, pol­lu­tion and the de­ple­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources were no longer dis­tant threats but re­al­i­ties af­fect­ing economies, pub­lic health and food se­cu­ri­ty through­out the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

He point­ed to en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en by the Pana­ma Canal, in­clud­ing ef­forts to im­prove fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy, re­duce ves­sel emis­sions and elec­tri­fy parts of its ve­hi­cle fleet, as ex­am­ples of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in prac­tice.

Cleghorn stressed that last­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal change be­gins with­in com­mu­ni­ties and can­not be achieved by gov­ern­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions alone.

“En­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness must be­gin at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el,” he said.

“Last­ing change oc­curs when in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, schools, busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions em­brace sus­tain­able prac­tices in their dai­ly lives.”

He de­scribed the NCIC’s tree-plant­i­ng ini­tia­tive as a prac­ti­cal ex­am­ple of en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tion, not­ing that trees help ab­sorb car­bon diox­ide, im­prove air qual­i­ty, strength­en cli­mate re­silience and pre­serve bio­di­ver­si­ty.

The event formed part of the NCIC’s ob­ser­vance of World En­vi­ron­ment Day and con­clud­ed with par­tic­i­pants plant­i­ng trees around the Na­gar com­pound as a sym­bol of their com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.