The
GREEN Manifesto
Trinidad and Tobago
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Sustainable Development
Sustainable Development is defined as:
'Development which meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'
- Greening is Sustainable!
Topics and Indicators adapted from:
Sustainable Development Indicators, UK
www.sustainable-development.uk.org
Article:
Taken from Trinidad Guardian, 8th June 2008
Is T&T on sustainable development trajectory?
by Professor Dennis Pantin (UWI)
“Development” and “developed country” are 20th century concepts. In this 21st century, the global quest is for sustainable development. There are several reasons for this shift. First, is the recognition that man’s impact on environment has lead to a negative feed-back loop as nature, like Montezuma, seeks revenge.
Global warming and climate change are the “sexy” examples making the headlines but there are many others including the very insidious human health impacts of environmental pollution.
Second, there is now a clear understanding that a simplistic focus on economic growth misses the point. It is not that growth is unimportant but that three derivative questions also need to be answered:
What are the sources of such growth?
What are their human and eco-system health impacts?
Is such growth sustainable given the sources and the impacts?
The question of human impacts can be illustrated by quoting from the core Christian question “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his own soul?” where the latter can be interpreted to include one’s culture, values, way of life even.
Mass tourism, which brings in its wake environmental pollution, prostitution and a drug culture, is an example of how what could appear, on narrow, passé economistic grounds, to be successful growth is, rather, unsustainable development.
Growth indicators
There is no country in the world that could now be classified as having achieved sustainable development. Perhaps this will never be fully achievable particularly as some of the requirements for realising this holy grail depends on what other countries are doing.
In fact a well-known ecological economist, Herman Daly, describes what so many admire as “developed economies” as, in fact “over-developed” as a result of their per capita resource use and environmental pollution being unsustainable if generalised to the entire world’s population.
The critical question is what are the key indicators or signs of sustainable development that need to be monitored and in which direction are they trending in a particular country? In other words are social, environmental, economic or political indicators trending toward or away from sustainable development? In summary the question is whether countries are sustainably developing or not? From this perspective we are all in the same boat.
Some countries are likely to show, at best, a majority of positive trends but still with some negative trends. Unfortunately, many other countries are likely to reflect largely a trend away from rather than toward sustainable development.
The concrete question is where does Trinidad and Tobago stand within such a sustainable development framework? A complete answer depends on research work that is still to be fully done.
I will attempt to now begin to draw my own current conclusions based on partial evidence but also a greater familiarity “on the ground” as it were as a participant observer.
Trending away
The crime pandemic (particularly murders, kidnapping and domestic violence including infant/child “fratricide”) alerts us to a more subterranean reality of a tearing away of the social fabric of the society.
Behind it lies, inter alia, a decaying education system where for decades performance and competence have been punished and cronyism (based on several types of in-group affiliation) rewarded.
The recent attempts to increase teachers’ salaries, for example, comes after an environment was created in which few university graduates see teaching as a career option as opposed to 15-20 years ago.
Other underlying factors of social decline include the long neglect of disadvantaged communities such as the provision of basic amenities as garbage collection (a point Barack Obama made recently in terms of US ghettos).
A number of youth-training focused initiatives have now been put in place (HYPE,MUST, etc) and have the potential to put a brake to and later turn around the trend but not by themselves.
PM Manning recently said the “youth of this country’”never had it so good. In a material sense, and in terms of institutions created, he is probably correct.
What this perspective fails to recognise is the reality that many such youth face on a daily basis including a significant under-performing education sector and fear of violence for as simple a reason as the sneakers they are wearing. 
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