World Environment Day then and now

This week we’ll dive straight in with a piece that first appeared in Newsday, on June 5, 1996.

“So, it’s rolled around once again. Yet another World Environment Day and yet another tree-planting ceremony. I wish I had a dollar for all the trees planted every World Environment Day in TT since World Environment Days began.

I wish every tree that was planted in TT on World Environment Day in years past were alive today, beautifying our highways and byways and hills. Picture the banks flanking every overpass on the Uriah Butler/Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway and the open spaces around the flyover at the junction of the Beetham and Churchill Roosevelt Highways shaded by tall and stately trees. You can’t begin to imagine that? But trees were planted in those places years ago on World Environment Day. I planted some myself by the Couva overpass. Former Agriculture Minister Kamalludin Mohammed wielded a ceremonial spade to plants trees by the Barataria flyover. Where are those trees today? Roadside bush fires destroyed most. The others were food for goats and cattle tethered on those free grazing grounds in the rainy season. Yet more died natural deaths of thirst in long dry seasons when those who’d planted them the previous June 5th forgot to water them the following March, April and May — or until the rains set in once more. no, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to discourage anyone from planting a tree this week. I simply want to remind all tree-planters that planting isn’t enough. Those who are planting trees should commit themselves to care for the trees they’ve planted. Otherwise tree-planting is pointless.

Political tree planting with nice, bright, shiny, commemorative spades makes a nice press photograph to persuade young and innocent green voters that they are being taken seriously — at least this one day in the year. But planting a tree of itself, is no more than a public relations exercise unless the young trees, like all young things, are tended and  cared for until they’re big and strong enough to take care of themselves. Which, being interpreted, means until they’re  too tall for goats to nibble their tender leaves and their bark too tough to tempt them either, and a naturally fire-resistant tree is tough enough to withstand a roadside bush fire. Some, if not most, of this year’s tree planters will be planting trees raised by the Forestry Division. Why not give a thought to raising your own tree (or trees) this year ready for planting on World Environment Day 1997 (2003 note, this means 2004 as well, because what I wrote seven years ago is  more important than ever today).

Raising your own tree can be fun for all the family. It’s easy, it may even be exciting. All you need to raise your own trees are black plastic bags (bought from an agricultural store or garden centre) or old plastic buckets or pitch oil cans, some soil, water, a square foot or two of space and some things you’d usually throw away. What could those things be? One could be a mango stone (seed), or a pommerac stone, mammee apple stones, a zaboca stone, grapefruit, orange, portugal or lime seeds. Plant the seed in the bag, bucket or can of soil, water it — and wait. Last year I planted four mammee apple seeds in four plastic bags filled with soil I’d made from compost and a little bagasse. I watered the bags, and waited. Great was the excitement (for me) when thick tough spears pushed their way above the soil. My mammee apple seeds had germinated! I watched the leaves unfold, sheltered my seedling trees from the blazing sun by placing their containers around and under the shade of a taller plant in my small backyard. I gave each bag a teaspoonful of those blue slow-release fertiliser pills (well, that’s what I call them — you know what I mean). Any weed hoping to set up house with my mammee apple seedlings had met their match in me. Shining bush, shadow beni, Ti-marie, assorted grasses and what looked like chickweeds were ruthlessly uprooted on my daily tour of inspection.

Today (June 6, 1996, that is — or rather, was) my mammee apple seedlings are two feet high and ready to plant out. I’ve enjoyed watching them grow. One will shade my daughter’s new garden (one mammee apple tree being enough for one garden). The others I’ve given to CLICO to plant and (I hope) care for. I hope those mammee apple trees will grow tall, that their leaves will shade the earth and shelter it from the driving rains and that in the fullness of time — because you have to be patient with mammee apple trees — they wil bear fruit. I know my son-in-law will keep the young tree watered, fed and clean by cutting down, rooting out any strangling vines and parasites like bird vine that threaten young trees. I know that, in time (and God willing — for one never knows what pests may descend to blight that tree, or which neighbour in a dry season to come, might set fire to a pile of garden rubbish and start a bush fire that could kill the young tree). Oh dear, where were we? Ah yes. In time, that mammee apple tree will bear delicious fruit. I may not live to taste the fruit but I hope my grandchildren will enjoy those mammee apples. And that’s what World Environment Day is all about. Saving the environment for our children and our grandchildren.” Sadly, after the cataclysmic fires of the dry season — there’s much, much more of our environment in need of saving in 2003 . . .