Commentary
Newsday
WAYNE KUBLALSINGH
Opportunity for a changed economy
The FOUR certainties of extreme weather events are rising temperatures, melting ice, rising seas and heavy rainfall. A significant portion of Trinidad’s land mass, located at the mouth of the Orinoco delta, includes flatlands, marshes, and wetland formations: the Caroni and Naparima Plains and the Caroni, Nariva, and Oropouche North and South Marshes.
What we call the Northern Range is the northeastern Atlantic extension of the Andes Range. Wind passing over a warmer, fuller Atlantic picks up megatons of heat energy, turning into storms, heavy rainfall.
These circumstances mean extreme rainfall, floods, landslides, liquid soil. And the social, economic and infrastructural costs. This phenomenon cannot be stopped. However, it can be countered and overcome by a changed economy.
Constituency Government
For TT, no mitigation or transition to a “low carbon” or “green” economy would be effective without government reform. Mitigation may not be effectively managed by Port of Spain. Our regional corporations are ill-equipped for effective leadership in matters of extreme weather events, accelerating crime and economic decline in rural Trinidad.
The nation should move with dispatch to install 41 Constituency Chiefs, Constituency Officers and Polling Division Captains for hands-on and direct administration. Each provided oversight support and accountability from a council. Direct, direct, on-the-ground and proactive leadership is needed.
Infrastructure projects
Hydrology before hydraulics. Hydrology refers to the behavior of water in its natural and artificial habitats. Hydraulics refers to artificial systems to manage hydrological events.
The TT hydrological map is a necessary prerequisite for the planning of infrastructure projects, such as that envisaged in the state plan for a national transport proposal, which was recently unveiled by the Minister of Works and Transport at a meeting of the select committee of Assembly.
Ample retention dams should be built on the Caroni and Naparima plains to capture sheet flow across the fields. They must be connected to canals and irrigation systems to provide water to communities, industries and farmers in the less wet season.
Small catchment basins or ponds can be constructed in the foothills of the Northern and Central Ranges to catch water even before it flows down into populated areas, where densely packed residential areas, paved areas, concrete surfaces, commercial centers and infrastructure industrial limit penetration.
Mangrove afforestation is necessary. Mangroves absorb the brunt of extreme tidal shocks. They provide migration routes for marine and riverine species, species diversity and nurseries. Such afforestation, pursued methodically and persistently over several years, will boost the oyster and fishery economy.
A horticultural revolution is a large-scale tree planting campaign by the citizens of the constituencies, the heads of the constituencies and the captains of their polling divisions in order to:
(a) stabilize slopes and soils in general, (b) absorb water from the soil, (c) encourage a change in consumption habits from packaged and processed beverages to local fruits, (d) increase fertilization by bats, bees, butterflies, birds to improve afforestation, (e) produce hardwoods and specialty lumber for affordable housing and small boats and other craft markets.
A small ship and craft market should be built. Pirogues, dinghies, punts, barges, canoes, kayaks. This should be linked to standard operating procedures for rescue, recovery, shelter, emergency drills and constituency-level transport. A new economy must be developed to meet evolving climate circumstances.
Shifting the energy equation
Global warming and climate change give us the rare opportunity to change or look at our energy equation. To move, as the “saw” of fossil fuels goes down, the “saw” of renewable systems, technologies and products up. Not just to build a “renewable” or “green” or “sustainable” or “low-carbon” economy, but the first complete low-cost economy on the planet.
This is an economy that obeys Einstein’s principle, E=mc2. Infinitesimal particles can produce incredible amounts of energy. Building an economy based on socio-economic and cultural change – taking little or nothing and building something.
With the democratization of energy (T&TEC and NGC) and water (WASA) through legislation, free supply sources of sunlight, wind and water can be harnessed with continuous improvement of photonics (solar cells, battery storage, transmission, station) and protonic. (computers, broadband, artificial intelligence).
To reduce the economic costs of living and improve income for citizens. Key cost of living inputs can be significantly reduced: water, electricity, fuel/public transport, land, food, housing and money. Below are five such markets:
1. ASH, affordable and sustainable housing market. This includes a project to build a model house loaded with optimal photonic (solar) and protonic (computing) energy. Materials, water, electricity, food, broadband, waste and other technologies.
2. Recycling and waste management market. Centers, constituency-based warehouses, for collection, sorting and distribution at the factory, market or port.
3. The market for renewable technologies (solar cells, batteries, turbines, cables, etc.) production, repair of installations as profitable as the current economy of combustion engines.
4. The market of electric vehicles, or vehicles that use clean fuels, methanol, hydrogen, ethanol, etc.
5. Materials market. This market would trade wood based on soil or waste (plastic material) or forest material.
TT currently consumes approximately 8,000 gigawatt hours of energy per year. Almost all of this energy is derived from fossil fuels. Norway is 99 percent renewable-based, New Zealand 81 percent, Brazil 78 percent, Colombia 75 percent.
Our first objective must be to achieve not just a 50 percent ratio, but to lay the foundations, legislatively, politically, and technologically, for a complete, low-cost economy based on Einstein’s principle of making something big out of little or nothing.
