By Anne Hilton Sunday, August 2 2009

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Young mahogany trees, coconut palms and, in distance at right, sea almonds growing in the park, taking shape beside the Bank Village Mangrove south of...

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Although we’ve only featured five of the 54 Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) in Trinidad and, as yet, none of the three in Tobago, I’m convinced that Government never spent money more wisely on, nor invested as prudently than in the National Reafforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme (NRWRP).

What better way to spend taxpayers’ dollars (or oil and gas company’s taxes) than on preserving precious fresh water resources, preventing flooding and erosion, providing employment of national importance while alleviating poverty, restoring habitat for wildlife to attract the ecotourist dollar, improve fish stocks and create and maintain parks for local people?

To my way of thinking, the NRWRP is a much, much better investment than huge office blocks that, due to the demand for aggregate (sand and gravel for construction) have — and continue to — create deserts of quarries in the Northern Basin — and gridlock in downtown Port-of-Spain.

Only last week we saw that Bank Village and Romando Rampersad’s mangrove plantations are reclaiming land lost to the sea when, some time in the past, the mangrove was destroyed; that already oysters are growing on the young mangrove, crabs and young fish are beginning to feed — a whole community of marine life that can provide employment as well as a rich protein resource to the local, if not national diet is being created from the mud. Last month we learned that wildlife is returning to the hills of Fondes Amandes where, thanks to the new tree growth, the streams are flowing in the dry as well as the wet season.

Bank villagers don’t work for nothing. Neither do the Carenage Community Bloc, nor Wharf Trace, nor Protectors of the Environment nor the Fondes Amandes Reafforestation Community (although the last two groups started up as voluntary community groups — and first in the field of re-afforestation and watershed protection).

While some communities were inspired (like Carenage) to begin work under the aegis of the Tropical Re-Leaf Foundation, when Eden Shand and his family emigrated (my thanks to two readers who called to tell me he’d gone for good — or bad), it was the NRWRP that took up the slack to enable the community to continue planting trees on the bare hilltops of Carenage bordering Chaguaramas National Park.

I wonder how many Newsday readers can have even a vague idea of the scope of the NRWRP? As we’ve seen, a few community groups were already in existence, but most had to start from scratch or a small nucleus of a few villagers who cared for the environment. It was the prospect of employment, regular employment that attracted mainly young people to form community groups to rehabilitate the environment of their native land.

This being Trinidad (and Tobago) there were some who scoffed at the mere idea of paying people to plant trees. I quote now from a piece I wrote at the launch of the NRWRP: “Love of money being the root of all evil, it was no surprise for rumours of corruption in the National Re-afforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme to be circulating well before the official launch on January 25, ‘05. The words ‘unemployment relief’ linked to the programme raised suspicions in cynical minds of another Special Works, DEWD, URP and various other unemployment relief programmes that hit the headlines with tales of ‘ghost’ employees, sexual harassment of water ladies, foremen on the police ‘Most Wanted’ list and similar depressing tales of sleaze and shady goings-on.

I don’t imagine that every one of those taking part in the Re-afforestation Programme is without sin, is utterly and completely incorruptible, no organisation known to man is, ever has been, or ever will be – that is the human condition. Yet, as we have seen, this country is in dire need of a National Re-afforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme. Private citizens, from grassroots to the executive suite, have shown the way, but their resources are limited. A national effort is the only possible way to recoup our environmental losses.” And so the work of re-afforestation and watershed rehabilitation began … a year or more before the official launch in January 2005. Although many in rural areas already had some experience of planting cash crops, most (as we’ve noted before) needed training in techniques for planting on steep slopes, on handling seedling trees, cutting fire traces, beating out bush fires, constructing check dams, recognising plants and seeds.

While I agree, the community groups I’ve visited weren’t taken unaware, that they knew Newsday was coming to see their work, yet readers have seen the evidence, the physical evidence of their work in the past five years in the photographs in Sunday Newsday. We saw, we took photographs but didn’t publish pictures of the pay sheets, invoices, the careful accounts kept and submitted to the NRWRP office in Arima.

Nor have we made mention of poverty alleviation for those who had no other means of support, or the courses on handling money, budgeting, and training offered to those taking part in the programme. Some time before this series ends I hope to feature success stories of young (and not so young) women and men in the NRWR Programme who have taken advantage of the courses to better themselves and their families.

Planting trees is the main thrust of NRWRP but rehabilitating the environment goes beyond that to creating a clean, serene, environment — so far as humanly possible. So today we focus on two parks, one in the making by Bank Village next to the Temple in the Sea and the cremation site, the other the truly Herculean task completed and maintained by Lisas Gardens Welfare Council in Carli Bay.

I’m told the parkland you see in the photographs of Carli Bay on these pages was a wasteland, a garbage dump before Lisas Gardens Community rolled up their sleeves, donned boots, industrial gloves wielded shovels to clean up the mess then planted bougainvillea, African tulip trees, sea almonds — and a line of trees I couldn’t identify along the beach berm. This park is a pleasure to behold (even though some using it seem to regard it as their life’s work to destroy picnic places and benches).

No wonder Lisas Gardens Welfare Community Council has won awards for creating and, note this, maintaining this idyllic spot on the Gulf coast. There is but one fly in the ointment of calm at Carli Bay, beyond the thick screen of shrubs and trees one can see in the background flows the Couva River. When I investigated that river way back in 1995 it was already dead. I didn’t think it could get any worse, Foolishly, I hoped a three-part series on the death of the Couva River would get some response, some attempts to clean up the river.

Fourteen years later, and despite the EMA’s Water Pollution Rules, the pollution is even worse. The river reeks of chemical pollution. To stand for any length of time on the river bank is to invite — one dreads to think what. I’m told (and, when I checked with Emeritus Professor Julian Kenny, he agreed) if you dip a cutlass in that water it will come out shining with clean bright metal.

I fear that to clean up the Couva River is beyond any community group, however dedicated. Only government enforcing the Water Pollution Rules — with an eye to the nation’s health — could do that.

Meanwhile we salute the community groups working tirelessly to protect and preserve the environment — and not forgetting the essential support services provided by the NRWR staff in Arima.

Next week we visit the United Baptists’ tree nursery in Mausica/Maloney.