A leatherback turtle on the beach. Communities in Trinidad and Tobago are actively conserving the leatherback. Courtesy: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region Follow/CC by 2.0

By Nalisha Adams
NAIROBI, Nov 26 2018 (IPS)

On the north-eastern shores of Trinidad and Tobago, on the shoreline of Matura, more than 10,000 leatherback turtles climb the beaches to nest each year. But there the local community is keenly area of one thing: ‘a turtle alive is worth more than a turtle dead.”

It’s a lesson the community learned almost three decades ago when the government of Trinidad and Tobago first created a tour guide training course in the north-eastern region. Dennis Sammy, Treasurer of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), also a community leader from Matura, was part of the course. But instead of just working as tour guides, the community had a bigger vision of conservation, at a time when people were “killing lots of turtles”.

The area of Matura is one of the few places in the world where the leatherback turtles nest. Sammy tells IPS that it is also easily accessible via a beach road, something which places the turtles at risk to poachers.

But in four years the community residents, who had formed a conservation organisation, were able to stop the slaughter of turtles, Sammy tells IPS. The residents themselves had been part of the problem initially, he adds.

“They changed because the community became part of the solution.”

By 2000, the population of turtles rose as a result of the conservation efforts, thereby creating a problem for local fishers as up to 30 turtles a day became caught in their nets.

Now, ecotourism is practiced and people pay to come watch the turtles nesting.

Sammy is one of the participants at the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, which is currently being held in Kenya and spoke to IPS alongside a side event on blue enterprises.

He uses the above example of turtle conservation as a key example of a community-led intuitive during the discussion on the blue enterprise titled “SIDS inclusive economic development through community-led conservation and social enterprise”.

“We have seen one turtle, by documenting and tagging it, come up so many times and we have been able to identify the number of people seeing this turtle. And we have traced back the value that these people pay to come and look at this turtle, and it’s a very high value,” Sammy says.

He explains that this is clear to the local communities that, “a turtle is worth more alive than dead”.

Nicole Leotaud, Executive Director of CANARI, a non-profit technical institute which facilities and promotes participatory natural resource management, says that in order to engage further community engagement, the Local Green-Blue Enterprise Radar, a tool that engages small enterprises by questioning them about their sustainability.

The radar is a list of questions, with each question being an indicator related to the SDGs. It looks particularly at poverty, environmental sustainability, well-being, and good governance.

This happens through a facilitated process where each and every member of the enterprise, not just business leaders, are asked probing questions.

“The blue economy and green economy are very top-down concepts being imposed on us. How do we make it real and how do we involve local communities and recognise small and micro enterprises as part of economic development?

“Very much you are hearing about big sectors, tourism and shipping and [seabed] mining and how do you involve the real enterprises that are there and always doing it?”

Nicole Leotaud, Executive Director of CANARI, a non-profit technical institute which facilities and promotes participatory natural resource management. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

CANARI asked the questions how local, rural and marginalised communities could become part of the movement that was not only delivering economic benefits to communities but also asked how these communities could practice environmental sustainability.

“The radar is really designed for community enterprises that are using natural resources,” Leotard tells IPS.

“They are already starting to make changes. We are not telling them to make changes, it is a self-discovery.”

Leotaud explains that the organisation Grande Riviera Turtle Conservation experienced a similar process of discovery.

“One community enterprise working on turtle conservation have big tanks where they keep baby turtles, if these have been born in the day,” Leotaud says. She says thanks to the radar, the organisation then looked into not merely conserving turtles but also conserving water and using renewable energy.

“They said can we think about renewable energy. It would not only be good for the environment but it would be a steady energy supply because [they are based] in a remote village where they are cut off [from electricity] all the time.

“They realised that they can do better in terms of energy and water. And they realised they have a few powerful leaders but they are not doing enough to engage other members of the enterprise and bring them in, they are not doing enough to build partnerships,” says Leotaud.

“They said: ‘Ah now we see how we are part of the blue economy.’”

Mitchell Lay of the Caribbean Network of Fisherfolk Organisation says that in order to help community enterprises become part of the blue economy and to become even stronger, the actors already operating in the space have to be recognised.

The small fisheries sector, he says has “across the globe operating in the aqua environment over 90 million individuals. In the Caribbean region, the Caribbean community alone, we have in excess of 150,000 operating in the entire production already in the blue economy space.”

He says their contributions should be recognised. These contributions include “not only to SDG 14, but to the other SDGs. Their contribution to eradicating poverty, in terms of job creation, their contribution to human health and wellness. The contribution to ending hunger.”

Lay says support is critical because of the nature of the enterprises as they are small and micro and that their sustainable development needed to be promoted.

“So support from a policy perspective, support from other perspectives as well, capacity development etc.”

Meanwhile Leotaud says that “Community enterprises especially because they are informal they are marginalised. They are not part of the decision making they are not part of the discussion. So how can we get them to feel a part of this movement, for them to make their own transformation? And for them to call on governments?”

She explains more enabling policies were needed and that CANARI was working on building a more enabling environment for the micro enterprises.

She says that community enterprises don’t have access to finance, and that the technical capacity available in countries for enterprise development was not tailored for them.

Ordinarily they live for at least half a century. But at least 20,000 leatherback sea turtle hatchlings never made it past their nesting ground at Grand Riviere, a stretch of shoreline along Trinidad’s north coast, in what’s been described as “an engineering disaster” last weekend.

Instead, the hatchlings and eggs were destroyed by heavy duty earth-moving equipment brought in by authorities to halt erosion and save homes and businesses in the area. The erosion was being caused by the Grand Riviere River, which authorities said started meandering away from its natural course last December.

“The remedial work was deemed an emergency due to the drastic and sudden erosion that had taken place in an extremely short space of time,” the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources said in a statement.

A makeshift hatchery for leatherback turtles. Volunteers at Grande Riviere saved at least 500 hatchlings from heavy duty machinery used to halt erosion. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The erosion was endangering “several buildings, including a hotel (that) is one of the most popular tourist accommodations during the turtle nesting season”. “The Ministry remains concerned about the welfare of the turtle nesting site and the sea creatures that make their home on that space,” the statement added.

The government department said it was unfortunate that in its efforts to halt the degradation of the area, some of the eggs and hatchlings there were negatively affected.

But Planning Minister Dr. Bhoe Tewarie said the actions that led to the death of the endangered leatherback turtle hatchlings should not be excused.

“The people who operated the equipment in there and the company that operated it….should be held to account,” Tewarie said, adding that “the government as a whole needs to address the issue of the incompatibility of policy issues which emerge”.

“The ministries need also to align their strategies and their actions to the policy framework within which the government is operating. And there is no deviation from the fact that the policy framework is sustainable development, and we need to get in line and get on board with that issue,” he added.

“The impact is not as severe as has been claimed”

But Dr. Joth Singh, the chief executive officer of the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), said that while he regretted the tragedy, the remedial work would ultimately save many more eggs and hatchlings, as the river would have washed away parts of the beach that were more nest intensive.

“The intervention was imperative, if not, there would have been significant impact on the nesting areas left and the season is still ongoing. The fact is that the impact is not as severe as has been claimed and circumstances were created where the authorities were made to appear to have been negligent,” he said.

Newly appointed Environment Minister Ganga Singh said that it is not in the “DNA” of Trinidad and Tobago to destroy the nesting grounds of the turtles and that the works were not carried about arbitrarily but after proper consultation.

He insists that the best interests of the community had to be considered.

But Sherwin Reyz of the Grande Riviere Environmental Organisation said that the dredging was unnecessary.

“This is the part of the beach (with) the most nests…thousands of eggs and hatchlings were lost,” Reyz said, adding, “we all agree that the work had to be done but we believe they did not have to dig up the whole beach”.

Calling for an investigation

In a swift response to the tragedy, Nalini Dial, chair of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Animals Are Humans Too, called on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to launch a full investigation into the incident.

Dial said her organisation was “aghast and distressed at the mindless, needless, callous killing of hundreds of baby turtle hatchlings” and that the killings were yet another demonstration of the lack of concern the four-party coalition People’s Partnership government and the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) show to the voiceless people.

Like Tewarie, Dial said the perpetrators should be held accountable, noting that the leatherback turtles are an endangered species “and anyone found guilty of harming them should be punishable by law”.

Grande Riviere is Trinidad’s most nest-intensive beach during the laying season of sea turtles, including the critically endangered leatherback, and is the third most prolific site in the world. The nesting season runs from May to September every year.

In May of this year, the EMA held a Sea Turtle Convention, to bring focus to the protection of these critically endangered marine animals. Leatherbacks, the largest sea turtle, can grow to almost 10 feet and weigh 800 pounds.

All turtles are regarded as critically endangered worldwide, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory.

Tragic, but not devastating

One Caribbean turtle conservationist said the destruction at Grande Riviere would not significantly affect the reproductive output of the nesting ground and would not accelerate the decline of the species.

Len Peters, head of Turtle Village Trust said that although the destruction was unfortunate, much of the nesting area had already been lost to the river.

“We would have lost more nesting space eventually. We didn’t lose a lot of eggs, although this is an engineering disaster,” he said.

The executive director of the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network, Karen Eckert, agreed that the incident will not significantly affect the reproductive output of the beach “and certainly will not accelerate the global decline of leatherback sea turtles”.

Scientists says sea turtle population, already under pressure from over-exploitation, fisheries bycatch and habitat modification face potentially serious problems from changing sea conditions in their nesting areas as a result of climate change.