Saving Our Environment
We are committed to working for the preservation and protection of our environment. Are you in with us? Over the next few months, Guardian Media viewers of CNC3 Television, readers of the Guardian, and listeners of the TBC Network can expect our team of dedicated cross media journalists to mirror the state of our environment in a multi-media series. No one can call the environment soft news anymore. Not after the reminders small island States like us hear repeatedly of climate change, rising waters, coastal erosion and other forms of degradation. As an oil-based economy, we are witnessing the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which is spilling tens of millions of gallons of oil, killing 11, injuring dozens. Further, Trinidad and Tobago has been exposed as having among the tenth highest per capita carbon emission in the world.
Guardian Media has always been a partner in the development of Trinidad and Tobago. We pride ourselves not just being the voice of the people, but also an agent of change, using our powerful multi-media voice to educate and inform and campaign on vital social and economic issues. In this context, Guardian Media has undertaken to support and when and where appropriate, partner with the government, environmental agencies, Non-Government Organisations, Community-Based Organisations, and individuals advocating for greater “green” awareness. In particular, we welcome the Government’s clean-up and beautify campaign, which starts Sunday. We endorse the project and urge national participation.
Press Secretary Garvin Nicholas has confirmed that the exercise involves three stages.
First, there is cleaning and clearing major water courses, secondly, a municipal level clean-up, including bulk disposal, followed by the final stage of beautification. The Guardian Media sincerely hopes this is the beginning of a wider and larger commitment by the government toward a sustainable environmental programme that will include recycling and stricter enforcement of environmental laws. In tomorrow’s edition of the Guardian we will bring you a bird’s eye view on the state of our environment from Dr Joth Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Environmental Management Authority. On Sunday, we bring you commentary from a senior environmental engineer. As the weeks roll on, you will see images that are haunting and hurting our population. They include the badly polluted Gulf of Paria and islands in the Bocas, littered and defaced landscape, clogged and ruined water courses and much more.
You will see oceans of plastic and bottles, filth and garbage on the beaches. You will get a get a look at the graphic state of the Trinidad and Tobago environment. We will bring you analyses from the experts on how the cutting and burning of forests on our slopes have exacerbated flooding in our urban centres and clogged up our rivers and drains. We will show you how solid waste destroys our mangrove and wetlands. We will partner with relevant agencies to begin the necessary and long road toward recycling our bottles and plastic.
We are dedicating the entire edition of today’s CNC3 Early Morning Show to the environment. The Morning Panchayat on 106.1 FM would also feature interviews and analyses on the subject. We invite you to partner with us in this crucial on-going exercise. Email your comments, photographs of both the degradation and the beauty of our environment to the following email address:
ourworldourchoice@guardian.co.tt. In partnering with you, the Guardian Media believes we can all work toward protecting and upkeeping our environment.
Let’s all work at saving T&T.