By IPS Correspondents
PORT OF SPAIN, Sep 26 1996 (IPS)

For the second time in 10 years, villagers of Nariva Swamp, in eastern Trinidad have been told to pull up their rice plants and move in order to preserve the environment.

The news is particularly painful the farmers say, since they had been encouraged to move into the area by the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) government in 1986 and now the new administration is giving them the boot just when they were beginning to see the results of their hard work.

In the last few years, they say, things have been going well as national rice production more than quadrupled as they moved in their heavy equipment and dredged, tilled, irrigated and planted on the expansive, watery plain.

But their problems began when the influential environmental lobby discovered that in turning over their rice harvests, irreparable damage was being done to the swamp’s natural environment at the hands of the farmers.

Environmental activist, Molly Gaskin, has been spearheading action to get the farmers, who never received legal rights to the lands, out of the area before even more extensive damage is caused to what she has described as the “unique” eco-system of the Nariva Swamp.

The environmentalists, together with a receptive People’s National Movement (PNM) administration have received a court order enabling the state to move in and reclaim the lands. The rice farmers have remained defiant. That was until a few weeks ago when a determined Agriculture Minister, Reeza Mohammed, decided that enough was enough and he gave the farmers until Oct. 31 to move out voluntarily or be forcibly removed.

“It is not that we don’t want or need the rice. But that we must make an assessment of what has happened, environmentally, before we allow any more rice production to take place there,” says Mohammed.

But Theresa Akaloo who heads the Trinidad Islandwide Rice Growers Association (TIRGA) says there have been no assurances from the state that its interest in maintaining the current high level of rice production will mean that the farmers will be properly relocated as promised.

“I don’t know if the government is going about this thing in the right way,” she says. “They sent people to see when we could move and didn’t talk to everybody, so how they could tell us October 31 when not everybody would have harvested by then?

“We need to keep things going or our banks will be on us,” Akaloo says.

Sixty-nine year old Ramroop Jabar who has been planting rice all his life is very suspicious of assurances from the government. “We don’t know if to trust them (government). “Suppose we don’t get the land … what happen to us?” he asks.

The agriculture minister has promised the farmers that he will take action to ensure that the state-run Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) extends a loan payment moratorium to rice farmers who may experience a financial problems as a result of the move. “I will make sure you don’t have that problem,” Mohammed told the farmers.

Housing Minister John Humphrey who has been closely associated with the environmental movement says the Nariva Swamp is an “exquisite natural environment” the country cannot afford to have destroyed. “There was a time when we did not see the implications of such destruction and the delicate balance we have to maintain,” he says, with obvious reference to the fact that rice planting was once encouraged in the area.

Meanwhile, the government plans to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) with funds received under a special deal with the Swiss government. The farmers fear that any delay in conducting the EIA could mean a slow return to the swamp if it is found that there is no negative effect on the environment.

If the EIA works in the farmers’ favour, Humphrey is suggesting that they also use the opportunity to commercially exploit a large fish population in the area.

“There are tremendous possibilities in this area,” Humphrey says. “The rice can be planted and the fish used to help fertilise the crop and thereby ensure that the rice is grown under more environmentally-favourable conditions while the farmers can make more money with the fish.”

For the moment, though, hopes are not high that if the farmers are moved they will ever return to the Nariva Swamp, home to thousands of unique plants and micro-organisms.

But says Humprhey, the Nariva Swamp dilemma is a classic case of development strategies falling out of favour with long-term environmental considerations.

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