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In My Opinion

Our Environment and a Sustainable Future

Professor Elizabeth Thomas - Hope
Chair of Environmental Managment, UWI Mona

Sooner than we can say “howzat” the third largest world sporting event will be taking place in our back yards. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 comes to the West Indies for the very first time. Several Caribbean Islands are involved in this mega event. Traditionally, from Federation to CARICOM, we have had our challenges with working as a region, but no other forum has assisted us in playing out our similarities and our differences as Cricket, Oh lovely Cricket.

Currently, there seems to be a quiet reserve in the Caribbean, but no doubt this would soon change as cricket is synonymous with West Indian peoples.

While we are busy in preparation with stadia being built, seating pavilions being erected, volunteers being trained and vendors being readied, there is a most significant piece of history that is in train. Two of the region’s most enduring institutions have joined forces in an effort to provide a solid platform and context for a sporting activity of international renown and to ensure that our region is well served.

The West Indies Cricket Board and The University of the West Indies are both intertwined in the realization of this dream. Both the Cave Hill - Barbados and the St. Augustine – Trinidad & Tobago Campuses are warm-up and practice venues. First class cricket grounds have been installed at these two campuses which now furnish the region with a legacy that would see the possibility of these as venues for future regional and international cricket development and competition. At Cave Hill, the newly constructed C.L.R. James Cricket Research Centre and the Sport & Physical Education Centre at St. Augustine are also assisting in developing an academic and research focus for the game. The University is also heavily involved in pitch and ground development for this upcoming World Cup.

It would be very easy for us to simply think about this as a mega sporting event that has finally made its way to the West Indies, but I would like to proffer the view that it is precisely the time for us to use this opportunity to learn some lessons about self, about our integrity and about a new and pioneering way forward for our region.

We have seen in the West Indies that nothing can galvanise our people like sporting success. In Trinidad & Tobago the frenzy over our World Cup football team; in Jamaica the exploits of Asafa Powell; the Golden Girls of the Bahamas and, of course, our own cricket team – past and present – with current icons such as Brian Lara and legendary ones like Clive Lloyd, Vivian Richards, Gary Sobers, the three Ws and Andy Roberts are but a few examples in a long and growing list of excellence. Sport, in the West Indies, has indeed become popular culture!

Cricket is such an integral part of our psyche and our landscape that even the political leaders in this region have come to the understanding that they have to, as part of their very existence, guard zealously the peoples’ game. Indeed, many of the region’s Governments have invested their time and their resources, financial and otherwise, in the upcoming Cricket World Cup. Several political pundits have even forecasted that the event would play a pivotal role in many of the national elections of governments which will follow this competition. Such is the regional investment.

We, therefore, ask ourselves when all of the temporary bleachers are gone and when the lights get turned down low – What will be left? Will we be able to sustain all of these grand facilities that we are currently erecting? We have such a poor track record with maintenance that it is difficult to convince anyone in the know that we will be able to do this. Will we be able to say that all of the rewards, financial and otherwise, have trickled down to our people? Will we have learned anything as a region? What will we have learned as individual nations? Will regional cricket and cricketers be left on a better financial footing? What exactly will be the legacy?

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Environmental conservation and development continue to be in constant tension at best and outright conflict at worst. Among the evidence is the fact that the largest growth in GDP per capita in Caribbean countries over the second half of the 20th century has been where tourism investments were greatest (Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman, Virgin Islands) or where oil and natural gas (mainly methane, which is a greenhouse gas) was produced (Trinidad and Tobago). Tourism competes with nature for wetlands and other ecosystems of the coastal zones: and makes heavy demands on fresh water resources, now reaching crisis levels in the countries that most depend upon tourism. The current and proposed shifts to desalination of sea water are not only costly but also increase the energy used and thereby the carbon dioxide emitted. High economic performance outside of the tourism and gas sectors, as in mining and monoculture agriculture, were also associated over the same period with increased deforestation and increased fresh water demands without managing the impacts.

It is generally hoped, if not assumed, that technology will provide the answer through compensatory mechanisms for the natural processes that cleanse, stabilize and replenish the environment that we have irrevocably disturbed. However, in addition to the environmental side effects of technological innovations, all new technology comes at a financial cost which threatens the poorest countries and the poorest in all countries—reinforcing the social inequities that poverty alleviation programmes are designed to reduce. It also takes time to develop, agree upon, implement and disseminate for widespread use any new technology. If we are to buy time while new technologies and innovations become effective, the question—as yet without an answer—is how much time do we have?


Amelioration of the problem has been proposed in various ways. The virtual trade in carbon (where greenhouse gas savings in a developing country are paid for to offset emissions in a developed country) provides political solutions rather than environmental ones. Other current carbon offsetting schemes may help—e.g. trees planted for purposes of carbon sequestration in lieu of carbon emissions of air travel. However, it takes several years for a seedling to become a tree and only six hours in a plane to contribute a possible 3.6 tonnes per person to carbon dioxide emission.
Public support of ‘green’ companies, retail outlets and supermarkets could move production patterns in environmentally and socially sensitive directions. Fiscal incentives for environmental good practice would also help to change corporate behaviour. There has to be the political will and government action, private sector practice and the public fully engaged if the goal posts are to be successfully repositioned.


Platitudes and politically safe language about sustainable development are easy to repeat but will not get us very far. A new mindset and commitment are needed that leads to enhancing appreciation of the positive aspects of Earth as home—source of life and livelihood as well as of creative inspiration. We need to be determined to keep it that way. Promotion of a culture based on being empowered by the environment rather than obsessively seeking power over it, must permeate thought and action.
The ‘bottom line’ is that sustainability has to be principally based on understanding and respecting the dynamic of the environment, so that its ever-changing limits and capacity may be recognised and continually re-assessed, and this pursued with the goal of enhancing social equity within our region. This is not the language of popular discourse and many will disagree with this ‘bottom line’. For those concerned with ‘what is in it for me?’, and who can only be mobilized into environmentally precautionary and socially cooperative action by the threat of imminent disaster, then take this suggested ‘bottom line’ as the language of survival. Our future depends on it.

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