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bvi go green festival

May 31st, 2010

BVI Go Green FestivalThe British Virgin Islands Go Green Festival will take place from June 24 to June 26 2010.

The BVI’s charm is that, things evolve slowly and sustainably. Climate Change means that we are our planets worst enemy and I firmly believe that the BVI will become lost in the shuffle and become a dumping ground for outdated, seemingly cheap but destructive products and technology.

Many people in the BVI have realized that we must do something now. There is a swell of progressive energy in the BVI and it is time to make it mainstream.

The challenge will not be for want of the change but the investment in the education and infrastructure. New organizations such as Green VI, Green Technology, Alternative Energy Systems, and are at the forefront, but we need more.

We need to send a shock wave to the people of the BVI. We need our very own “An Inconvenient Truth.”

I firmly believe that the BVI is small enough at 64 sq miles of total land mass and with a population of just under 30,000 can be the Greenest or most Carbon Neutral Territory on the planet.

The challenge is passing on the knowledge and making conversions accessible to the people of the BVI. And this is where the concept of the BVI Go Green Festival began.

More information is available at gogreenbvi.com, BVI News Online, and the BVI Facebook page.

[Image: gogreenbvi.com]

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youth learn about sustainable agriculture in the bahamas

May 31st, 2010

Participants at Bahamas youth forumRecently, young people in The Bahamas participated in a forum intended to educate them about agricultural sustainability for opportunity creation:

Regional officials for the 40th anniversary of the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Youth Development Forum gave lectures to sensitize young people to the importance of agriculture to national development.

“The CDB is aware that the Government of The Bahamas has over the years placed its youth at the centre of its development strategies,” said Mark Taitt, CDB Director of IT Solutions.

“In this regard, the bank looks forward to working more closely with the Government of The Bahamas to develop a set of youth campaigns that can be readily incorporated into its youth development agenda.”
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“Successive governments of The Bahamas made policy decisions by annunciating the need to strengthen agricultural science in all schools,’’ said Lionel Sands, Director of Education in the Ministry of Education.

He said they are required to maintain flower and vegetable gardens, followed by the need for farmers to increase broader mutton and pork production to meet national demands.

“These decisions can be viewed as government’s vision for sustainable agriculture through the involvement of students represented here today,” he said.

The Ministry of Education stands by its belief that sustainable agriculture and food security could be realised in The Bahamas, if practicing farmers, educators and students carry out the government’s mandate.

“We continue to place emphasis on tourism, when in fact, being able to feed ourselves and the tourists alike should be high on our agenda,” said Mr. Sands.

Read more at thebahamasweekly.com.

[Photo: Bahamas Information Service/R. Bethel]

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fgcu field trip to st. lucia – field notes

May 31st, 2010

FGCU St. Lucia kiln preparationA couple of months ago I posted an article about students and staff from Florida Gulf Coast University and their inter-disciplinary field trip to St. Lucia:

While in the country, students will study traditional craft practices and tropical island ecology – which Fay describes as the human-land relationship.

The group is documenting their experience in St. Lucia via a blog. Here’s an excerpt:

We started out the morning with a trek across the Balenbouche property to the small farm plot on the north side. Here we met a man named Sox, who farms this area as part of a local co-op. Sox was very excited to tell us about his plots and the types of plants being organically grown there. His produce includes lettuce, lavender, chives, pineapple, okra, mustard, eggplant, basil, cilantro, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers and yams. We were all astonished by how diverse these crops were. After this we drove into town to meet with the director of the co-op, Felix.

At this meeting we learned that the farmer’s co-op of southern Saint Lucia was formed in 1984 in for many purposes, including: to provide an economical buffer to the local subsistence farmers, to help enhance the limited or virtually nonexistent communication between farmers and the markets, and also to provide a much needed dependable form of transportation of goods to the market. We came away feeling much more attuned to the Saint Lucian’s pride for their land, as well as the co-op members’ struggle to promote local farming to current farmers, as well as the youth.

Read more at fgcusaintlucia.blogspot.com.

[Photo: FGCU St. Lucia blog]

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9th caribbean week of agriculture

May 31st, 2010

[Edited September 29, 2010: for updated information on this event, click here.]

The government of Grenada has committed to hosting the 9th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in October 2010.

The Government of Grenada has given commitment to host this year’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA), which would take place during the first week of October 2010.

The Ministry of Agriculture will, to that end, be holding a meeting with regional heads from the Inter- American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture IICA, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the CARICOM Secretariat, (the tripartite Secretariat of the Alliance).

The CWA has been taking place under the patronage of the Alliance for Sustainable Development of Agriculture and the Rural Milieu (“The Alliance”).

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fao agronomonist on agriculture in haiti

May 31st, 2010

Hillside farming in HaitiChief Agronomist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Volny Paultre, speaks to Peter Constantini of Inter Press Service about possible futures for agriculture in Haiti:

Q: What are you going to do with all the urban people who have been displaced to the countryside? Can they make a living as farmers?
A: Agriculture is part of the solution to the problems of Haiti. But most of the opportunities are not directly in farming. Farming is saturated.
People may believe that the only activity in the countryside is agriculture, but they’re wrong. There are all kinds of opportunities upstream and downstream from agriculture, and in support of agricultural production.
These are societies that live in the rural environment. They can’t make a living with just one economic activity. People need leisure activities, education, health care – everything other societies need. Farmers themselves require all sorts of specialised services, like seed production and tree nurseries for reforestation. There are 50,000 activities that can be developed in support of agriculture.

Read the rest of the interview at ipsnews.net.

[Photo: Nick Hobgood]

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biodiesel for barbados

May 31st, 2010

Biodiesel pump (coming soon to Barbados?)In the works in Barbados: a joint venture for the commercial production of biodiesel fuel:

Amelot Holdings, Inc. announced today that Amelot Oil and Barbados National Oil Company Ltd.(BNOCL) have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU), with the intent to form a joint venture (JV) in Barbados for the ownership and operation of a biodiesel production facility for the supply of biodiesel fuel. The JV would enable Amelot and BNOCL to establish a scalable and sustainable biofuels business.

The Barbados National Oil Company is a national state-owned energy provider in the country of Barbados. Founded several decades ago, the company satisfies about 30% of the country’s total consumption of oil and gas.

Amelot Oil, wholly owned by Amelot Holdings, has been operating a production facility in Barbados since 2008. The Amelot Oil Barbados biodiesel plant operates on used cooking oil. By working with such an impure feedstock threatening to pollute the ecosystem, Amelot Oil managed to stand out in Barbados and demonstrated proof of concept and growing demand for alternative fuel.

Biodiesel, for BNOCL, for use in the planned 6 month pilot project to further study the impact of using Biodiesel in Barbados. This phase also calls for a state of the art gas station with B20 fuel pump which is a blend of 20-percent biodiesel and 80-percent conventional diesel.

Read more in this press release at marketwatch.com. See also the websites of Amelot Holdings (they apparently also operate in Trinidad and Tobago) and the Barbados National Oil Company Ltd.

[Photo: Rob E.]

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damselfish damaging caribbean coral

May 31st, 2010

Three spot Damselfish, BelizeRecent research carried out on reefs from the Bahamas to Belize suggests that as Caribbean damselfish lose their preferred coral habitat, they move on to, and damage, other kinds of coral.

Damselfish are killing head corals and adding stress to Caribbean coral reefs, which are already in desperately poor condition from global climate change, coral diseases, hurricanes, pollution, and overfishing. Restoring threatened staghorn coral, the damsels’ favorite homestead, will take the pressure off the other corals, according to a new study published in the online journal PLoS ONE.
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“Our surveys of reefs around the Caribbean show that the number of predatory fish is not the key to how many damselfish live on a reef,” says [author Rich] Aronson. “It’s all about real estate—places to live.” Until the 1980s, threespot damselfish tended their gardens in staghorn coral, at the time the most common coral in the Caribbean. Staghorn coral, named for its long, thin branches, grew very fast and could keep ahead of the damselfish onslaught. The threespots preferred staghorn above all other corals for its tangle of branches, which provided ideal places to hide, feed, and nest. Although the threespots bit and killed portions of staghorn colonies, the living branches that remained continued to thrive. But outbreaks of coral diseases, compounded by hurricanes and other environmental insults decimated populations of staghorn coral to the point that it is now listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Coauthor Les Kaufman is a fish biologist with Boston University and Conservation International. He explains, “Once staghorn coral disappeared, the fierce little beasts switched to killing slow-growing coral heads.” Coral heads are a lot less desirable from the damsels’ point of view because they have fewer hiding places. Unlike staghorn coral, head-corals cannot recover quickly enough to keep pace with the death-bites of threespot damselfish, so the coral heads could take hundreds of years to recover.

See more in this report at ScienceCodex and in the complete journal article at PLoS ONE.

[Photo: Kyle and Shannon Johnson]

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corporate tree-planting project in barbados

May 27th, 2010

WIBISCO tree-plantingTo celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary, Barbadian biscuit manufacturers WIBISCO have started a tree-planting project:

The project, which is part of a Community Empowerment Initiative to coincide with the company’s 100 years in operation, aims to plant trees within schools, beaches and in communities across the island.

Sales and Marketing Manager at WIBISCO, Diane Payne told the gathering that the tree planting drive would be two-fold, since they would not only be planting trees for shade but they would also be planting fruit trees to encourage greater food security.

The Sales and Marketing Manager disclosed that between June and September, this year they would plant 20 trees to coincide with Environment and Arbor Days, respectively.

“It is our goal to enhance the various communities and to encourage young people to respect their environment. We thought that for our first school (Charles F. Broome) we would plant a mahogany tree,” Ms. Payne explained.

See the full report from the Barbados Government Information Service.

[Photo: &caopy;A. Miller/BGIS]

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usaid funding for conservation in the dominican republic

May 27th, 2010

Punta Cana, Dominican RepublicThe United States Agency for International Development has donated equipment to help conservation efforts in the Dominican Republic:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) … donated five 20 foot boats, six all terrain pickup trucks and 10 motorcycles to improve the Environment Ministry’s patrols in protected areas and other wildlife refuges along the coasts.

The USAID’s grant worth RD$13 million was carried out by it Environmental Protection Program, implemented through a cooperation agreement with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and its partners INTEC, CEBSE and PRONATURA and seeks to improve the country’s capacity to more effectively protect the quality of the environment and biodiversity.

Read more at Dominican Today. The donation was the most recent installment of a multi-year grant to fund conservation work in the Dominican Republic:

July 1, 2009 — The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with the Instituto Tecnologico de Santo Domingo, is launching the Dominican Republic’s most comprehensive environmental protection program in the history of the country. With a $10 million multi-year grant from USAID funding the expansion, the program will seek to engage industries in sustainable practices, conserve biodiversity and establish stable funding for a network of new and existing protected areas throughout the country.

[Photo: Daniel Wilder]

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north-south collaboration on ecological design and manufacturing in guyana

May 27th, 2010

Wai Wai weaving, GuyanaInhabitat reports on The Guyana Project:

It’s not everyday that you get to see skilled artisans and master weavers in action, let alone assume the role of a propitious pupil to such expert craftsmen. Last May ten students of the Pratt Institute traveled to the rainforests of Guyana, South America to undertake “The Guyana Project,” an initiative to get back to the basics and learn the process of designing ecologically manufactured products and furniture from those who’ve been doing it for centuries. Working in the Liana Cane Factory, an outlet located in the indigenous Wai Wai community, students discovered the ultimate spring of inspiration, drawing upon a rich culture and unprecedented experience. What resulted from their remarkable undertaking was an amazing collection of sustainable works that recently made their debut at Model Citizens during ICFF.

Click through to see the Inhabitat gallery of images from the project.

See also the Guyana Project blog, where the project is described as:

an initiative combining cultural, material and process research with design competencies and onsite manufacturing in a factory focused on sustainable and ecological manufacture in Guyana, South America. Eleven designers from the graduate program at Pratt Institute worked in close collaboration with artisans at the Liana Cane Factory and with the indigenous Wai Wai community to produce a new collection of products and furniture made from renewable and local non timber forest products. The project, organized by Pratt professor Rebecca Welz and Patty Johnson of North South Project is aimed at developing a partnership with the artisan workers, creating an exchange rather than a traditional model of manufacturing used by industrialized nations.

[Photo: The Guyana Project]

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