Pelicans off Venezuela’s Los Roques archipelago. Credit: Marcio Cabral de Moura/CC BY 2.0

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Aug 7 2013 (IPS)

The Venezuelan government’s plans to develop tourism infrastructure on virtually uninhabited highly biodiverse small islands in the southern Caribbean have triggered warnings from environmentalists.

“Venezuelan island territories have great untapped tourism potential, and that is why, on the instructions of President Nicolás Maduro, we are planning intensive development of these spaces, but with care for the environment, specifically the islands of La Orchila, La Tortuga and La Blanquilla,” said Tourism Minister Andrés Izarra.

Meanwhile, Luigi Ricardo, president of the government Tourism Corporation in the northeast state of Anzoátegui, announced that a five-star 150-room hotel complex will be built on the small island of La Borracha, part of the coastal Mochima National Park.

The hotel complex will offer 300 beds, “a swimming pool for adults and another for children, tennis, volleyball and basketball courts, parks, a professional golf course and an indoor gym,” Ricardo said.

There will also be “a shopping centre, restaurants, nightclubs, clothing and shoes stores, a café, a pharmacy, a cinema, and exhibition space for artists from the entire eastern region,” he said.

La Tortuga, with an area of 156 square km, La Blanquilla of 64 square km and La Orchila of 40 square km, are islands ringed with beaches of fine white sand, at a distance of 70 to 200 km from the mainland, while La Borracha, only 4.5 km long and three km wide, is basically a rocky outcrop situated 10 km from the northeastern coast.

The Venezuelan Network of Environmental NGOs (Red ARA), made up of 24 organisations, declared its “concern about and staunch repudiation of the project to build a major tourist complex on La Borracha.”

The proposed works “contravene the legal framework in force for constitutional protection of national parks and the decrees” creating and regulating activity in the Mochima National Park, Red ARA said.

The network was referring to article 127 of the constitution, which says: “The state shall protect the environment, biological and genetic diversity, ecological processes, national parks and natural monuments, and other areas of particular ecological importance.”
The decree they mentioned is number 276 of 1989, on national parks, which expressly forbids urbanisations and tourist clubs, public or private, and holiday complexes.

Juan Carlos Fernández, an activist with Fundación Caribe Sur, told IPS that “a study of this type must include data on the area affected, the materials to be used in the developments and the potential degradation they cause, and how their impacts will be mitigated and reversed.”

On La Tortuga and La Blanquilla there are temporary shelters and small jetties, while on La Orchila there has been a small naval base for the last 60 years.

Fernández challenged the idea of launching a tourism offensive on these islands “with their rich yet fragile biodiversity, their corals and breeding grounds, instead of first developing beaches on the mainland, where there is a greater need for job creation.”

He also criticised the authorities’ refusal to countenance proposals from scientific and environmental forums to establish a binational “ecological corridor” on islands off the continental shelf – La Orchila, the Las Aves and Los Roques archipelagos of Venezuela, and Bonaire and Curaçao of the Netherlands – to take advantage of the genetic, species and oceanographic connections between these islands that emerge from a submerged mountain range.

This area of 17,800 square km of sea and islands is also of archaeological and historical interest. In May 1678 the fleet of French Marshal and naval commander Jean d’Estrées was shipwrecked in Las Aves on its way to Curaçao, where it was planning to attack the Dutch.

Alberto Boscari, head of the environmental organisation Fundación La Tortuga, said it was not possible “to discuss a tourism project on this island when the area that was environmentally destroyed by the attempt to create a large development there in 2007 has not even been restored yet.”

The Venezuelan Environment Ministry has kept mum about the tourism projects for the islands. But governing party congressman Manuel Briceño, chair of the legislative Environment Committee, told IPS that “these projects must be assessed in environmental, rather than economic, terms.”

Venezuela “has a sufficient heritage of territorial assets for tourism activities, as long as they follow proper guidelines and are ecological. In the National Assembly (legislature) we should look not only at what is done, but at how it is done,” Briceño said.

“Tourism involving cruise ships, sun and sand is not the only option. There is an alternative, involving study, observation, research and the education of young people who need to get to know their country. Low-impact infrastructure could be developed, instead of enormous steel and cement structures,” he said.

Izarra, the tourism minister, said that Venezuela can offer “a tourism that is not about visiting museums, but based on natural beauty, and the only way it can be sustainable is by means of ecosocialism, that is, respect for the environment and communities, while having the lowest possible impact.”

The aim of this kind of tourism is “to become a major economic activity in Venezuela, and a real alternative to oil revenues,” he said.

Venezuela takes in some 100 billion dollars a year in oil income, while in 2012 a total of 783,000 foreign tourists brought revenues of 1.04 billion dollars, the Tourism Ministry informed the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias news agency in January.

María Eugenia Gil, of Fundación Aguaclara, asked: “When there is so much to be done, why don’t we improve what little we have, rather than risk repeating our mistakes in extremely fragile areas?”

The activist said the beaches in question were nesting sites for endangered species, like sea turtles, and a haven for migratory birds, which makes biological studies of the areas important.

Severe flooding is one of many devastating effects of climate change, as the Caribbean island nation Dominica experienced in 2011. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Peter Richards
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2012 (IPS)

Their speeches did not grab international headlines like that delivered by U.S. President Barack Obama, nor did other delegates walk out as they spoke, as was the case for Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders are nonetheless hoping that their united front on the environment at the just concluded United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will spur the international community to take them and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) much more seriously.

“The islands of our planet are at war against climate change, warming temperatures and rising seas,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told delegates. “This war is not a future event, it is a present-day and ongoing battle… the survival of our islands is at stake.”

Caribbean countries are hoping that by the time the international community gathers in the Pacific in 2014 for the Third International Conference for the Sustainable Development of SIDS, there will be progress on a number of recommendations that, for instance, emerged from the Rio+20 conference held in Brazil earlier this year.

“The failure to date to reach a legally binding outcome on climate change is cause of grave concern,” said Dominica’s U.N. Ambassador Vince Henderson. “While the debate continues, the challenges to our islands are becoming greater.”

Figures released by the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) show that over the last decade, damage from intense climatic conditions has cost the region in excess of half a trillion dollars.

“In real terms, the threats posed to the Caribbean region’s development prospects are severe and it is now accepted that adaptation will require a sizeable and sustained investment of resources,” Jamaica’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Roberts Pickersgill told a community-based climate change workshop in Kingston on Tuesday.

Barbados-based environmental resource management specialist Sandra Prescod Dalrymple agrees that while the international community should feel an obligation to support the Caribbean, it also a fact that the developed countries “are growing less willing to do so”.

“The region needs to draw on its own resourcefulness and pursue innovative financing in climate change efforts. It is clear that we are being impacted by climate change and that our economic earning sectors are suffering as a result this would only worsen,” she told IPS.

Antigua and Barbuda recently joined other small island states at the Summit of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), to send the message that they cannot wait “for our lands to disappear before we act”.

“We must act now to respond to the climate crisis, and ensure that not a single country is sacrificed, no matter how small,” said the island’s Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer.

“There is coral bleaching beyond the depths of our shores, and hurricanes are becoming more recurrent and severe,” he said, adding “it is my government’s hope that the selfish act of inaction will dissipate in Doha (Round of Negotiations) and that a positive outcome in climate change negotiations will usher in new hopes for humanity and compassion for our planet.”

St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas said he was troubled that the main contributors of greenhouse gases were still not taking responsibility for the coastal degradation, coral reef bleaching and decimation, infrastructure damage and loss of lives that their actions have wrought.

“The physical, mental and financial burden that other countries’ energy usage has inflicted on countries like mine has been enormous – plunging us deeper into debt, and severely frustrating our efforts to meet our Millennium Development Goals,” he told the UNGA.

“While a shift to renewable energy will not instantly solve the myriad problems caused by a significantly fossil-fuel based global economy, the embrace of green energy will, indeed, help to halt the intense downward spiral into which our fossil-fuel based economies have thrust our planet,” Douglas said.

Guyana, which has entered into a multi-million-dollar agreement with Norway to implement an “avoided deforestation” plan, said that despite “strong scientific and economic case for action, the global response to the climate crisis falls far short of what is required both in terms of scale and in urgency”.

President Donald Ramotar said that the projected level of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is much too low and that scientists have warned of catastrophic consequences if the rise in greenhouse emissions is not halted.

“Already some states are facing imminent extinction. To add insult to injury, the promise of fast-start financing made at Copenhagen (Denmark), a few years ago, has not materialised,” he noted. “The result is that those most at risk are effectively deprived of the means to adapt to this existential threat.”

But Prescod Dalrymple believes the Caribbean should continue to focus on building resilience and find novel ways of accessing the resources to do so.

“The onus should not only be on governments but the private sector needs to step up and be fully engaged. We need to engage technology, train and re-train our workforce and make use of our large population of youth that are looking for career opportunities and decent work,” she told IPS.

“I support public private partnerships and would wish that the region would move towards mandating standards and operating procedures to build climate resilience in new and existing ventures,” she added.

Caribbean countries have also stressed the importance of extending and amending the Kyoto Protocol before it lapses at the end of this year.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the accord is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialised countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five percent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.

Barbadian Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Maxine McClean said her island welcomes the decision taken in Durban to launch negotiations on a new legally-binding agreement that would take effect after 2020.

But, she said, a post-2020 agreement is meaningless “if ambitious actions are not taken now to reduce global emissions and provide finance and technology to vulnerable developing countries.

“This is essential if we are to adapt to the ever worsening impacts of climate change. The upcoming Climate Change Conference in Doha must, therefore, prioritise the pre-2020 actions necessary to ensure that the world is on track in 2020 to meet the below two degree or 1.5 degree globally agreed goals.”

Coastal erosion threatens a roadway on the south coast of Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet – even uneventful – this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.

But over the past 10 years, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, have seen radical climatic shifts. There is no question in Douglas’s mind that these changes are the direct results of climate change.

“Growing up, I knew nothing of hurricanes, (but) in the last decade St. Kitts and Nevis has felt the wrath of hurricanes like never before,” said Douglas, who has been the head of government here for the last 17 years.

Yet the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are “hardly unique” in experiencing these hurricanes, Douglas said. “We can remember only too well the brutality of  (hurricanes) Ivan and Emily” in Grenada in 2004 and 2005, despite the fact that at the time, Grenada was considered “very safely nestled in the more southerly reaches of our archipelago”, he told IPS.

In July 2005 Hurricane Emily left a trail of destruction in Grenada, which was still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Ivan the previous year.

Those who live in the region face multifaceted and troubling ramifications as a result of climate change, Douglas, who has primary responsibility for the environment and climate change in the quasi-cabinet of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), told audience members from across the region during a climate change seminar earlier in September.

The OECS is a nine-member group comprised of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members.

Douglas stressed that policymakers need to jump into action, as climate change has a dimension to it that is both urgent and existential.

“More than ever we are confronted with the threat of frequent and severe droughts, hurricanes, dwindling fish stock and all of the other threats that so clearly reflect the nature of our own island existence,” Douglas said.

Engaging the community

Michael Taylor from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) agreed with Douglas on the need for urgent action, saying the conference at which Douglas spoke was quite timely. But he added that while government involvement is key in terms of sustainability, community participation is even more critical for continuity.

“The training of civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations is critical in building general awareness to secure effective resilience of communities and their adaptation to climate change,” Taylor said.

“Unless the local population fully understands the issues and are prepared to make a commitment to participate actively, success can be jeopardised,” he said.

Last year, USAID supported a similar workshop in St. Lucia that examined climate impacts related to managing water resources. As a result, national initiatives are now being implemented in several Caribbean countries.

These include Nevis, through the development of a master plan for the water sector; rainwater harvesting in St. Vincent; and the distribution of desalinated water procured through reverse osmosis to householders in Bequia.

OECS Commissioner of St. Kitts Astonia Browne told IPS that like most small-island developing states, the environments of OECS member states and the challenges they face are characterised by their small geographic area, small open economies, limited infrastructure and high vulnerability to natural disasters. These countries must find their own way in confronting these challenges, as external funding is hard to come by.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change identifies the Caribbean region as one of the most vulnerable regions to be threatened by climate change impacts over the next 30 to 50 years. The region will have to grapple with increased temperatures, more tropical storms, flooded wetlands and coastal lowlands, sea level rise, and more.

“We cannot wait for the developed world to determine whether or not we survive climate change. Each of us must do what is within our power to act towards reducing our vulnerabilities and building our resilience,” Browne said.

She expressed concern that natural resources are degraded by practises such as poorly planned development, population growth, pollution, exploitation of resources, and more. Unless they are brought under control, countries will not be able to withstand the impacts of climate change.

They will lose the ability to “provide services and functions vital to the sustainable development of our small island economies”, Browne warned.

Preserving the tourism industry

Participants in the two-day seminar, held under the theme “Climate Change and Our Coast – Exploring Possibilities, Finding Solutions”, examined the impact of climate change on the critical sector of tourism and the policies and processes used to address these challenges.

Douglas called the implications of climate change “obvious and catastrophic for tourism”. He said that adaptation integrated across a wide range of sectors, rather than in a piecemeal fashion, is the only way the region will be able to deal with the effects of climate change.

“Tourism will be particularly hard hit by climate change. As ocean temperatures rise, many coral reefs will experience bleaching”, which leads to “decreased interests in diving and snorkelling and a significant loss in associated revenues”, he said. “With more frequent and violent storms, beaches, coastal development and coastal infrastructure will be severely threatened.”

“It has been suggested that climate change is the greatest threat that small island nations face,” Douglas said. He agreed with the idea, he continued. “Climate change compounds all the other threats and hazards that we face.”

At this Bonaire reef, the olive-green coral is alive, but the mottled-gray coral is dead. Credit: Living Oceans Foundation/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
CAIRNS, Australia, Jul 24 2012 (IPS)

Most corals thrive only in shallow waters, where there is enough light for them to grow. But the rapid rise in sea level, due to the melting of polar ice, is making these conditions increasingly scarce.

Measurements from tropical seas around the world reveal that the rise in sea level (3.3 mm/year) is happening at a faster rate than many corals have grown in the past 10,000 years, according to new research released at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS).

“The Caribbean once had 60 percent coral cover, and that has now collapsed to 10 percent,” said Jeremy Jackson, professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, in a special address to the symposium, held Jul. 9-13 in Cairns, Australia. “Corals are critical and endangered ecosystems.”

Sea-level rise is just one threat to corals, which have been decimated by overfishing, pollution, and bleaching from warmer sea temperatures due to climate change, Jackson added.

A colorful piece of coral is made up of thousands of tiny animals called polyps, which create cup-like limestone skeletons around themselves using calcium from seawater. Coral gets its beautiful colors from microalgae that live symbiotically with it.

Reefs form as generation after generation of coral polyps live, build and die, creating a habitat for themselves and about 30 percent of all the species living in the oceans.

When corals are stressed by overly warm sea temperatures or pollution, they begin to look white or bleached due to the death of the algae. They become vulnerable to disease and die if the bleaching lasts long enough.

Eventually, weakened or dead coral is broken into rubble by waves and storms.

Jamaica may be the Caribbean country where reefs have deteriorated most. While it once possessed a great abundance of living coral, only five to ten percent remains, because of pollution and overfishing. “That’s happened because the people are so poor,” said Jackson.

Each island is different, however. Bonaire and Curaçao have 20 to 30 percent coral cover left, and that may be growing due to good reef management, which has created no-fishing zones, reduced sources of pollution from the land, and controlled tourist access, he said.

“Reefs provide coastal protection, food, tourism and other important services that have huge implications for human society if we lose them,” said Roberto Iglesias Prieto, a research scientist from the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

One study in Belize estimated that without reefs protecting the coastal communities, storms would cause 240 million dollars in damages.

Overall, some one billion people depend directly or indirectly on reefs for their livelihoods, and more than two billion depend on seafood as a major source of protein.

With only a few exceptions in remote locations, the quality of coral reefs has declined around the world and will continue to decline, said Iglesias Prieto.

“It will be a tragedy for humanity to lose the benefits and services that reefs provide,” he told Tierramérica *.

Marine scientists are united in saying that those vital services will almost certainly be lost unless urgent action is taken to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide that are both warming the oceans and making them more acidic.

“When Captain Cook sailed by Cairns less than 300 years ago, the atmosphere contained 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. It is now 392 ppm, a 40 percent increase,” said Janice Lough, senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

In tropical oceans, most species live within a narrow range of water temperatures of about two or three degrees Celsius. If temperatures stay higher for long periods, then some cannot cope, nor can they always move somewhere else, Lough said.

“Small changes can have big impacts,” she told Tierramérica.

For many tropical reef fish, growth and reproduction decline when the water temperature goes up just two or three degrees, said Philip Munday, a researcher at the School of Marine and Tropical Biology at James Cook University in Australia.

One apparently small but unexpected change is the fact that emissions of carbon dioxide are turning the oceans sour. The oceans have now absorbed about a third of all human emissions of this greenhouse gas. This has kept the global climate from warming faster, but the additional carbon dioxide is altering the oceans’ chemistry, making them 30 percent more acidic.

Munday has also discovered that increased ocean acidity affects fish behavior in surprising and unexpected ways.

“The ocean acidity we expect before the end of this century affects the central nervous system of some species, altering their sense of smell, hearing and reactions,” he said.

The colorful clown fish (Amphiprion ocellaris), more popularly known as Nemo from the movie, will be fatally attracted to the smell of predators under these conditions, Munday has learned.

These “sensory impairments” of reef fish and large predatory fish occur when the atmosphere contains 600 to 850 ppm of carbon dioxide, which is expected before the end of this century without efforts to reduce emissions, he said.

The rates of changes in the oceans are far faster than species have ever had to adjust to, said more than 2,500 marine scientists in the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs released at the symposium.

But despite all the bad news about coral, there are “glimmers of hope” as shown in Bonaire, Curaçao and other places where there is good reef management and the impacts and stresses on these ecosystems are low, said oceanographer Jackson.

“Fortunately, taking actions that are good for human society (like reducing emissions) are also good for reefs,” he added.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

A couple looks at their backyard garden in the Cassada Gardens community in St. John's, Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST. JOHN'S, Antigua, Jun 18 2012 (IPS)

As a boy, Hilson Baptiste remembers going to his neighbour’s home and giving them a large slice of pumpkin grown in his family’s backyard garden. In return, he would be given two fish for his family.

But Baptiste, who is currently Antigua’s minister of agriculture, regrets that in his country, those days are over. He is now part of an initiative to prevent the island from spending millions of dollars on importing food that could easily be grown, in some cases, in the backyards of many homes.

In 2010, the twin-island nation imported approximately 16 million pounds of vegetables, according to figures from the Antigua and Barbuda government. Baptiste said serious measures must be taken to drastically reduce that figure.

“I want to see that happen. You would not have to buy anything from the supermarket; you can grow your own and share with your neighbours,” he said. He related his boyhood story of exchanging pumpkin for fish, noting, “We build better communities when we do this.”

Even the island’s ceremonial head of state, Dame Louise Lake-Tack, is supporting the initiative. The representative of Queen Elizabeth in Antigua and Barbuda, she has no problem getting her hands dirty as she seeks to boost food production in the country.

To ensure that the 80,000 inhabitants of this small two-island state understand the need to drastically reduce the millions of dollars spent on importing food, Lake-Tack assisted the government by distributing seedlings to homeowners, a move authorities hope will address the issue of food security here.

Known as the National Backyard Gardening Programme, the ministry of agriculture-led initiative is aiming at getting the population to produce four million pounds of food annually in their own backyards.

“We encourage people to grow all types of vegetables and even fruits,” Owolabi Elabanjo, an agriculture extension officer, told IPS.

“We’ve seen a rise in (the) production of tomato, sweet pepper, okra, lettuce and seasoning like rosemary and thyme. We are also now introducing vegetables that (are not) common in many homes.”

Family farming

The programme initially began with the help of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2008 and now, approximately 2,500 families are registered.

FAO’s sub-regional coordinator for the Caribbean, Florita Kentish, said the FAO is a firm believer in activities to alleviate the effects of rising food prices and global economic hardship, and to ensure that even the most vulnerable have good nutrition.

“Home gardening has a long established tradition of offering great potential to improve household food security and alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in many ways,” Kentish said. The FAO and the World Health Organisation are jointly involved in the initiative to improve nutrition.

Home gardening can help achieve such goals by offering direct access to a diversity of foods rich in nutrients. It also helps people save money by spending less on food and earn extra income by selling garden produce, ultimately increasing their purchasing power. During seasonally lean periods, home gardens can serve as an additional source of food.

The initiative is especially important in rural areas where income-earning opportunities are fewer, Kentish said, adding that it is becoming increasingly important for vulnerable households, including those headed by females.

The government is taking steps to better support the initiative, which has been extended to some of the nation’s schools, Baptiste said.

“We are zoning Antigua off into three or four zones to focus on each zone once per month to ensure that we assist you to better supply yourself and your family with all the vegetables you need,” he told those registered under the programme.

In the month of May alone the ministry distributed more than 15,000 seedlings – among them tomatoes, butternut squash, zucchini, peppers and an assortment of fruit trees – to families.

Environmental challenges

But despite such drive and commitment to the programme, Elabanjo said Antigua and Barbuda was at a disadvantage in terms of agricultural production, especially when climate change is factored into an already precarious environment.

Even before climate change became an issue, Antigua and Barbuda lacked an adequate water supply, Elabanjo told IPS. “All of the other islands can use free water (from streams and rivers) for production of food but an average farmer in Antigua has to pay for water.” Higher temperatures brought by climate change have exacerbated the problem.

Elabanjo, a Nigerian farmer who moved to Antigua 20 years ago, explained that during the summer, an entire month can pass without any rainfall.

“Antigua is one of the few islands where we don’t have good rainfall. The conditions are semi-arid, so we have one of the lowest rainfalls in all of the Caribbean islands and above all, we don’t have a single river in Antigua,” he said.

“But when you go to St. Vincent, Dominica, St. Lucia…everybody has an abundance of water,” which is critical for agriculture, he pointed out. He praised the nation’s farmers for managing to grow produce despite the environmental constraints.

The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from Jun. 1 to Nov. 30, also affects production levels.

“Right now, as the hurricane season is here, you will see some farmers reducing their production because they are not sure if a hurricane will come and destroy their crops,” Elabanjo said.

Without insurance, farmers have no protection, he added. “Rather than losing money they tend to cut back, and by cutting back they affect supply.”

Finance Minister Harold Lovell welcomed the initiative, noting that several years ago, society had turned its back on agriculture. But the resultant importation of foods and vegetables came at a high cost to the country.

“Even if we do not produce everything that we eat, we should produce substantially what we eat, and we should also eat what we produce,” Lovell said.

In Antigua and other Caribbean countries with a strong tradition of agriculture, most impoverished people buy their food. In Antigua’s case, Elabanjo said, the majority of it is imported.

“Our environment is not conducive (to) the production of certain crops so most of the produce you see in the market or the supermarket is imported from neighbouring islands of Dominica or St. Vincent,” he said.

But if the backyard gardening initiative – which boasts a range of participants, from the impoverished to those who are working professionals – works, the future might soon look different for Antigua and Barbuda.