Progress and biodiversity

On The day after World Biodiversity day “Those were the days” recalls the days when Point Lisas and Westmoorings were still under construction with who knows now how many organisms, creatures unknown to science being crushed by concrete even as I wrote . . . “Scarcely a day goes by without some quotes in Press from Parliamentarians — of both persuasions — on this country’s crying need for housing and jobs. Thanks to OPEC Government has more than enough money to pay for industrial growth and housing, The private sector is building houses apace for those who can afford them (and for some who can’t) between bidding for slices of the official building boom cake. We are making hay while the oil boom lasts. It might not be as much hay as we need, but it’s hay, nevertheless. And it can only be good — can’t it?

Perhaps. Much depends on how we are making our hay because there’s a right way and a wrong way of haymaking. Do the right thing in the wrong way and we could end up worse off — that in future we’ll be paying dearly for developments today. Prophets of doom and gloom point out that there are no standards and only a few out-dated regulations to control and direct industrial growth and housing developments. They agree that growth is good — but only provided there is proper planning to protect our health and preserve the natural environment.

Most of us reckon the natural environment will last our lifetime. If and when the worst happens, we won’t be around to suffer — so why worry? However, Nature has a nasty habit of catching up with us sooner than we think. For the past 10-15 years we were warned of the dangers of uncontrolled development on hillsides, yet we thought the cutting and quarrying and burning wouldn’t affect us. Last year’s (1979) disastrous floods proved us wrong. Those with liking for local seafood are already reaping the first fruits of industrial growth and housing developments and consequent pollution in the fragile waters of the Gulf of Paria. Our Gulf coast isn’t a tourist trap, there are no white sand beaches with waving coconut palms leaning out over crystal clear blue waters, no coral reefs.

Instead, it is a coast of mud and mangrove, flat, dull and apparently useless. Yet life abounds in the mud and the mangrove, in fact far more life than can be found on any tourist beach because mangroves are the natural nursery for that high-protein food, fish. What safer place is there for a fish to go through its larval stages than the sheltered waters of a mangrove swamp where dead leaves rot, biodegrade to make food for microscopic organisms that, in turn, are food for larger organisms that feed oysters, crabs, mussels, juvenile shrimp and young fish? We complain about the rising cost of seafood — yet make no protest when developers destroy the swamps (2003: some did when the Invaders’ Bay mangrove  was destroyed to make way for PriceSmart, MovieTowne — and now — is it a Hyatt Hotel?).

Maybe we let it happen because we don’t care for seafood. How many of us realise that mangroves force rivers to drop the silt and soil washed down from the hills and by so doing, reclaim land from the sea the natural way? Or that mangrove swamps are also a natural water purification system? So, in ignorance, we destroy the swamps — and the untold numbers of creatures in them — in the name of Progress (Point Lisas) and housing (Westmoorings). And we do more than that. Through living — and eating — in polluted waters both finned and shellfish often become unfit for human consumption. They may look good to eat, even taste good, but. We know all about oil pollution; most know nothing of thermal (heat) pollution that kills fish; pollution by industrial wastes, by agricultural pesticides, by housing developments with malfunctioning sewerage — all four threaten our Gulf.

It’s estimated that every day ISCOTT (2003 the — then — new steel plant) will empty 2,000 cubic metres of water cooled to 43 degrees Celsius into the Gulf that has an average temperature around 27 degrees Celsius. Fertrin (a fertiliser plant) will add another 7,000 gallons a minute at 40 degrees, the liquid natural gas plant expects to be pumping out a next 20 million gallons an hour at 42 degrees. Estimates for Fedchem (a chemical plant), the new smelter and other heavy industries aren’t available, but all seem to point at inescapable thermal pollution. Brechin Castle wastes have killed life in the Couva River that (like all rivers in our small island) carry the deadly, dumped wastes down to the sea. Our farmers spray crops with cocktails of pesticides long outlawed in developed countries (perhaps not so much in 2003 as in 1980?).

Those long-lasting poisons wash down to the Caroni and Oropouche swamps to threaten all life there. Heavy metals (copper, lead and mercury) are already known to be present in the waters off Point Lisas. Housing developments and the silt brought down from burned hillsides have destroyed all life in the Diego Martin River and the waters off Point Cumana. This forces our fishermen to go further and further out to sea (and at greater expense) for their catch. What should be cheap, nourishing seafood becomes an expensive luxury.

The poor hold their heads and bawl; the rich complain of the cost of seafood. If the pollution continues and the threat of heavy metal poisoning spreads the oyster sellers may be out of work; there will be no crab for the Sunday callaloo.We ignore pollution — and the threat to our health — at our peril.” Checks on the Internet reveal the theme of World Biodiversity Day 2003 to be the threat to biodiversity from alien species like Acacia Mangium, the Australian tree that survives the worst dry seasons on our quarry lands — and thrives on burning. See Sunday’s Environment Watch Column for more info.