Our Environment and a Sustainable Future
Professor Elizabeth Thomas - Hope
Chair of Environmental Managment, UWI Mona
Print this articleThe Earth as home to humankind provides us with an environment that is sometimes reliably benign, constant and predictable and at other times hazardous, unpredictable and threatening. People contribute both to its health and also its destruction. As we approach the hurricane season, the disastrous potential of the natural environment becomes the focus of our concerns in the Caribbean. The seriousness of Hurricane Ivan’s impact on our region, and the devastation wrought by Katrina on New Orleans, have spurred our efforts to prepare for such possibilities in the future. But memories can be short. Where rainfall has been plentiful and flooding occurred in recent years, the likelihood of future drought and the contingent demand for water are almost forgotten.
After the threat of a natural disaster has passed, the ‘business as usual’ attitude often predominates on the assumption that such devastation will not recur in the near future and as other pressing issues claim the headlines. The bad news is that hazards are here to stay and with increasing frequency, intensity and duration. The effects of climate change are likely to be irreversible, and are expected to grow worse. Unlike hurricanes, sea level rise will not just be confined to a season. Nor will the pressure for radical change in agriculture and industry be a mere temporary phenomenon. The possible inundation of coastal settlements, the disruption of vital services and installations caused by sea-level rise and the mass migrations that will follow, together with an increase in vector-borne diseases, will bring about circumstances for human suffering and human conflict in the Caribbean on a scale unimaginable.
In attempting to mitigate the worst effects of hazards, it is essential that they are seen and tackled within their wider context, namely the proper management of the environment as a whole. Thus we need to concentrate on reducing risk over the long term while proactively making the necessary adaptations required in the context of environmental change. This involves paying much more serious attention to measures regarding causes and consequences of long-term environmental degradation and poverty that together increase vulnerability to hazard and also contribute significantly to their frequency and severity.
The situation is certainly complex and needs a holistic approach. UWI scientists are already engaged in physical, social and behavioural research into many issues fundamental to sustainability. The university also provides a forum for critical thinking as it pursues work on the three main pillars of current concerns for the future—namely—the environment, material or economic productivity, and social wellbeing involving health, equity and security. This includes scholarly and outreach activities organized at The University of the West Indies or taking place internationally, in which UWI academics are engaged in partnership with public and private sectors and civil society. Private companies support UWI Chairs in Environmental Management and Water Resource Management, and private sector support must be encouraged for scholarship in fields such as these. The UWI also forms part of a University Consortium of Small Island States (UCSIS), for as in practice, so in research and teaching, although activities occur locally, their implications are global. The training of new cadres of researchers and professionals, and the generation of new ideas and new vision must be ongoing and incremental. Much is being done, but there is so much more to be done as UWI takes the lead role in the region and participates internationally in the responsibilities of advancing sustainable futures.
By the 1980s, it had become patently clear that development—by then indelibly stamped in our consciousness as Western-style modernization and economic growth—was not in tune with the limits of the environment to supply the resources needed to support it. So the global discourse brought the environment, social equity and economic growth together—in the hope of partnership. These were the pillars of Agenda 21 ratified by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) and reinforced at a conference that focused on the particular problems of small island developing states (SIDS) in Barbados (1994). Checks on progress were ostensibly made a decade later in Johannesburg (2003) and for SIDS, in Mauritius (2005). As climate change had topped the agenda of the Johannesburg Summit, it is salutary to note the calculation that some 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission was brought about just by the air travel of government delegates and NGO representatives who flew there. (This is equal to emission attributed to a million persons in India or 135,000 vehicle drivers in the UK in a year.)
Nevertheless, there can be no scapegoats in this scenario. If we were to calculate our personal carbon footstep and that of all our institutions in travel and at the workplace, we would have alarming evidence of the urgent changes required in our current practices. While efforts to alleviate poverty have helped to salve our collective conscience at international and national levels, it is not geared to bringing about the changes to the lifestyles which are the real problem with regard to the pressure on environmental resources in the first place. In the Caribbean, no emphasis has been placed on reducing the consumption patterns of the rich, or of diverting the not-so-rich from their determined pursuit of first-world lifestyles as quickly as possible and by whatever means.
It is my belief that most of our competitors have surpassed us because they have developed a scientific and research based approach to the game of cricket and have left us behind just relying on our raw talent. This is not to say that we have not regarded the science of the game, but to suggest that we have not relied on this aspect as much as we should. We too are often informed by research that is not conducted on us, by us or for us and, thus, do not always get the desired result.
