Planning ministry opens survey on biodiversity

The Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment is seek­ing cit­i­zens’ feed­back on what they val­ue in na­ture, changes or is­sues in the en­vi­ron­ment they ob­served, ideas on how we can bet­ter care for our en­vi­ron­ment and ways dif­fer­ent sec­tors like gov­ern­ment, schools and busi­ness­es can help pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bio­di­ver­si­ty re­sources.

This is be­ing con­duct­ed via a na­tion­al sur­vey to guide how the coun­try man­ages and pro­tects its bio­di­ver­si­ty. The Plan­ning min­istry is the na­tion­al fo­cal point for bio­di­ver­si­ty in T&T and en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment is one of its key man­dates.

Ac­cord­ing to Plan­ning and Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh, “Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da for eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion is de­pen­dent on prop­er bio­di­ver­si­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment from all sec­tors in so­ci­ety. Through the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA), the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre for the Caribbean, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion and oth­er lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, the Min­istry is poised to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our nat­ur­al re­sources. The en­vi­ron­ment and cli­mate change are among our pri­ma­ry man­dates and we are se­ri­ous about this.”

The third it­er­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Strat­e­gy and Ac­tion Plan will pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work for ad­dress­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty loss while pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. This up­dat­ed strat­e­gy is de­signed to:

● Main­stream bio­di­ver­si­ty in­to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan­ning and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es;

● Guide the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­al­is­tic, mea­sur­able short-term ac­tions with­in a long-term vi­sion for bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion and ecosys­tem re­silience;

● Adopt a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach, en­sur­ing in­clu­sive en­gage­ment of di­verse stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ties, civ­il so­ci­ety, pri­vate sec­tor, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies across both is­lands;

● Tack­le the key dri­vers of bio­di­ver­si­ty loss in ways that are aligned with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, ca­pac­i­ties, and de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.