Professor Plater's Blog

Tales from Trinidad & Tobago

 

Blog 8:  Home (May 11, 2010)
The Fulbright experience has been magical: I’ve been very fortunate to meet wonderful people, eat delicious foods, watch incredible wildlife, and help make Trinidad’s legal landscape a bit more environmentally friendly.

As I’ve mentioned previously, there is certainly room for despair in Trinidad. Recently I went hiking to the top of El Tucuche—the second highest peak in Trinidad and home to the El Tucuche golden frog, a globally imperiled endemic species—and fires were ravaging the mountain. On a separate hike I found evidence of poaching of Trinidad’s other endemic species, the Pawi.

But there are many hopeful signs as well. I did see fire fighters climbing the mountain to protect El Tucuche, and the evidence we collected about the Pawi killing may actually serve as evidence to prove the bird’s presence for a separate lawsuit challenging quarry operations in the vicinity.

In many ways, the legal problems I was asked to address were really just a small part of the solution to environmental degradation here. This is often the case: when clients come to lawyers we often find that the legal problems that need to be addressed are just the tip of the iceberg: enforcement, community organizing, and societal values all need to be considered when searching for solutions to environmental problems.

In Trinidad it is essential to get the legal words right, but not sufficient to win the day. But it may help break the downward spiral that often prevents environmental problems from being solved here. What seems to occur, across all societal issues, is as follows: some legal problem is identified, which makes enforcement officers reluctant to bother collecting evidence, which makes prosecutors reluctant to bring charges, which causes judges to perceive crimes as inconsequential, which emboldens the public to disobey the law, which further impedes enforcement efforts, etc.

You can see evidence of this in many places: from traffic violations to grocery shopping to library rules to trespassing signs, most posted regulations just don’t seem to be obeyed.   It’s an addictive phenomenon:  the last photos are of me and my friends falling into this mindset!

It is difficult to figure out how to break the cycle, but getting the legal language right is as good of a place to start as any. To date the regulations I’ve drafted were warmly received, but the election, which is now scheduled for May 24, has slowed adoption considerably.
I’ll be home before the election, so I’ll need to keep abreast of things while I’m back in the States. Hopefully this will also give me an opportunity to return to Trinidad and give a bit more back to this magical land.

Photos:

Brent Unauthorized (above)

Book Bags

Bush Fire

Friends

Parking

Poached Pawi

 

Blog Entry 7: Birds (April 29, 2010)

This week I want to share some photos I took of the birds of T&T. These were taken at my home near campus or else at the Asa Wright Center, a world famous birdwatching destination. Can you identify any of these species?  Send me an email with your best guesses!

Bird Photo #1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Photo #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog Entry 6:  Regulations (April 5, 2010)
In Trinidad we’ve had a few days off from school after a series of public holidays.  This has given me more time to finish drafting sea turtle protection regulations.

The first regulation attempts to fix a conflict between two laws: the Fisheries Act and the Conservation of Wildlife Act. The Conservation of Wildlife Act considers sea turtles to be protected species, which means they cannot be taken at any time. However, the Fisheries Act, has regulations in place that provide for an open season on sea turtles from November 1 until February 28.

A magistrate judge recently ruled that the Fisheries Act regulations govern the take of sea turtles during the specified open season.  I’ve been asked to rewrite the regulations to close this loophole in sea turtle protection.

This problem is easy to fix on paper: I drafted a revision to the Fisheries Act regulations eliminating the open season. Here is what I submitted:  you can see how the original regulations could be read by the judge to permit harvesting of sea turtles.  I tried to amend the language to close it. Do you think this draft is sufficient to keep the season closed?

1. These Regulations may be cited as the Protection of Turtle and Turtle Eggs Regulations.
2. No person shall—
1. Kill, harpoon, catch, otherwise take possession, destroy, harm, harass, or pursue, or attempt to kill, harpoon, catch, take possession, destroy, harm, harass, or pursue of any female sea turtle which is in the sea within any reef or within one thousand yards from the high water mark of the foreshore where there is no reef  on land or within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Trinidad and Tobago;
2. Take or remove or cause to be taken or removed any sea turtle eggs from any sea turtle or any sea turtle nesting area on land or within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Trinidad and Tobago;  after they have been laid and buried by a female turtle or after they have been buried by any person;
3. Purchase, sell,  or offer or expose for sale or cause to be sold or offered or exposed for sale or be in possession of any sea turtle, sea turtle egg, or parts of or products made from any sea turtle.
3. No person shall, between 1st March and 30th September, kill harpoon, catch or otherwise take possession of or purchase sell, offer or expose for sale or cause to be sold or offered or exposed for sale any turtle or turtle meat.

The second problem is a bit more difficult. Artisanal fishermen in Trinidad incidentally catch and kill about 1,000 adult leatherback sea turtles each year, an unsustainable rate.  Trinidad has the 2nd largest nesting population of leatherbacks in the world, so if this population goes it is possible that the entire species might go with it.

Drs. Karen and Scott Eckert, the principals behind WIDECAST (Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Network), began holding meetings with fishers to address this problem over five years ago. Through these meetings WIDECAST discovered that fishers could actually earn more money if they stopped fishing with nets and used other gear types instead that do not entangle turtles. 

This is so because when turtles get caught in nets it takes time to untangle the turtles and fix the nets, and that’s lost fishing time to the fisher. If they don’t entangle turtles in the first instance they can stay on the water longer and ultimately earn more revenue, even if the number of fish they catch per hour decreases to some extent.

So a proposal has been made to close the most importatn sea turtle nesting areas to fishing with nets during the nesting season.  I’ve drafted a regulation that would implement this closure area: can you think of any improvements to it?

Leatherback Sea Turtle Conservation Area.
Made under Section 4

1. These regulations may be cited as the Leatherback Sea Turtle Conservation Area Regulations.
2. Prohibition.  No person may fish with, set, haul back, or be in possession of any fishing net, including any net specified in Section 2 of the Fisheries Regulations, between 15 January and 30 July, in the area bounded by the high water mark of coastal Trinidad and straight lines connecting the following coordinates in the order listed (see map below):
          Coastal Trinidad (10°49’ N 61° 9’ W)  to 10°57’ N 61° 9’ W;
          10°57’ N 61° 9’ W to 10°51’ N 60°46’ W;
          10°51’ N 60°46’ W to 10°31’ N 60°52’ W;
          10°31’ N 60°52’ W to the point where 10° 31’N intersects the Trinidad coast.

Later this month the President and Minister of Agriculture will get a chance to review these regulations.  After that we’ll know if there is any hope of getting the regulations implemented by the current government. 

But to add to the intrigue, the current Prime Minister just called for new elections, and the media is reporting that these elections may happen by May 10.   Depending on how the elections go, we may have a new government in Trinidad and Tobago, and a new set of ministers to advise on sea turtle protection.  Check back here and I’ll let you know how it all sorts out!

Photos:

Conservation Area

Wildlife Section Buildling

Video: Sea Turtle Laying Eggs

 

Blog Entry 5: Governance (March 26, 2010)
Ideas become bills and then laws in Trinidad and Tobago through an interesting pathway, which I’m just beginning to understand. 

For my students that participated in a public comment assignment, you’d be in for a treat if you were here: the public consultation process in Trinidad is more intimate, more plush, and more community-building than the typical 3-minutes-or-less, talk-into-the-microphone experience we’re accustomed to in San Francisco.  

Whether or not it is more effective for environmental regulations remains to be seen.

My first taste of this process came when Trinidad and Tobago opened three polices for public consultation. To get to this stage, the government authorized the funding of an advisory/stakeholder group to meet and try and establish a policy framework to address climate change, forests, and protected areas. 

The group met many times over several years, and with the help of consultants drafted the policies that were now open for review. If the policies are adopted, eventually they would be used to draft legislation implementing these policies that could secure passage through parliament.

The public consultation process was a posh event. Held in one of Port of Spain’s finest hotels, the event was facilitated by consultants, included a full meal for all participants, and was operated like a consensus-based meeting of colleagues.

The climate change policy, which is the least fleshed-out of the three policies open for consultation, drew criticism from some participants because it lacked specificity and any measurable emission reduction targets. Another participant suggested that the conspicuous absence of Trinidad and Tobago’s energy sector from the meeting indicated that the policy in fact accomplishes little to reduce emissions from Trinidad’s largest sector of the economy (to be fair, other consultations in the South where the sector is based are still forthcoming).

The climate change policy does note that Trinidad and Tobago’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased exponentially over the years, but states that since the nation is considered a developing country, such growth is normal.

The forests and protected areas policies were much more substantive, but still contain gaps that may make it difficult to obtain measurable improvements on the ground in Trinidad and Tobago. As noted previously, three key problems face Trinidad’s public lands: bush fires, quarrying, and poaching. 

The policies, perhaps because of the diverse stakeholders present on the advisory committee that wrote them, try to promote a multiple use framework for these areas. But the policies contain little to ensure that the problems with multiple use statutes in other countries—namely, that easily monetized uses such as mining are oversupplied on public lands while ecosystem services and non-consumptive recreational uses tend to be under valued and undersupplied —will not be repeated.

All in all, a fascinating day learning about the unique ways laws are designed and crafted in this wonderful country.  If you are interested in learning more, the government has a portal where the policies can be found.  You can even submit comments if you like!  http://190.213.5.22:81/policy/

 

Blog Entry 4:  Regulation (March 14, 2010)
Trinidad & Tobago has several environmental laws on the books, an environmental management agency, and hundreds of citizens committed to protecting the environment.  Yet the country, like many others, faces significant challenges protecting fish, wildlife, plants, and human health.

The question is, why, after all this effort, are there so many environmental challenges that remain unmet? I don’t have the answer to this question for Trinidad, or the United States, or any place for that matter. The tools we have to work with in traditional liberal democratic societies may simply not be up to the task: we may need to invent new tools, or reshape society altogether with a new system of values. 

In Trinidad today, bush fires regularly ravage forests that have no natural adaptation to it, disrupting the ecology and harming human health with large doses of particulate matter.  Quarries for rocks and gravel for the construction industry are numerous, grinding away Trinidad’s countryside to build more housing and roads. Wild meat markets are increasing, and the regulations protecting imperiled species aren’t strong or severe enough to deter poaching.

But there is still much hope here. On the weekends, hiking groups lead nature walks throughout Trinidad, and these walks attract between 50-200 people looking to experience the wildness in their backyard. In the United States 200 folks on a walk in the woods would probably ruin my day, but here it seems like a hopeful sign. The folks on these walks come from a diverse spectrum of Trinidad society, and the hikes seem to bring people together across race and class divisions that affect other elements of society here.

And just this week I met with environmental enforcement officers and local environmental attorneys who have dedicated their lives to improving the environment in Trinidad. It is my hope that I can help by coming up with sustainable models to solve some discrete problems, but also work with these new allies to craft systems that will make environmental activists obsolete. Perhaps we’ll discover how to make environmental values priorities in democratic societies, not afterthoughts.

There is both comfort and anguish in knowing that thousands of miles from home there are people from different backgrounds struggling (the comfort) against a common problem (the anguish).  Working with these allies helps the comfort trump despair. With our different perspectives we might just find answers to environmental problems, once and for all. Here’s to working on root causes together!

Photos:

Island Hikers Prepare for a Nature Trek (above)

Scarlet Ibis, Trinidad's National Bird, Occasionally Poached

White Capuchin Monkeys are Occasionally Hunted for Bush Meat Trade

 

Blog Entry 3:  Economics (2/23/2010)
The University of the West Indies is a fascinating place.  In many ways it is like any other institution of higher learning: it has a diverse faculty, a library worth exploring, eager students (and some not so eager), and robust athletic facilities. 

But in other ways it is an entirely new experience: orange-winged parrots and tropical kingbirds can be seen outside my office, the local foods like doubles and callaloo are outstanding, and I’m teaching a new course: environmental economics.

Although I’ve primarily been a student and practitioner of environmental law for the past 10 years, I did a significant amount of coursework in economics in graduate and undergraduate school.  Still, it was intimidating to teach the course after being away from the material for so long.

My supervisor gave me some leeway to work with the material; the class I’ve designed is essentially about market failure.  That is, it's about how high transaction costs, externalities, monopoly power, inequitable distribution of wealth, and the lack of adequate information in the market place exacerbates environmental problems, and what market mechanisms can do to help us fix these problems.

So far the class seems to be going well, but ultimately the students decide that.  They’ve got some interesting group projects for the class: they are investigating whether the endemic piping guan could be saved using economic incentives, whether fish are underpriced in the market, whether a bottle deposit bill should be implemented in Trinidad, and a few other interesting topics.

But there are some challenges here that were unexpected.  Crime in Trinidad is apparently rising, so security on campus is fairly rigorous, and there are packs of feral dogs roaming the area most days.  So far my trip has been without a hitch, but a colleague has been robbed twice, and he was attacked by a pack of dogs: he almost lost his leg. 

And of course, Trinidad’s world famous Carnival brought most everything else in the country to a halt, including my class.  I was informed that no one would attend my classes the week of Carnival, so I proactively cancelled them and checked out the spectacle a bit. 

It soon became apparent that the adults partied way too hard for me, so we checked out the kid’s carnival parade and steel band competitions, which were quite impressive.  I was even fortunate enough to meet Ravi B, a local celebrity and one of the soca “monarchs” for this year’s Carnival.  Perhaps he’ll be a celebrity spokesperson for the Wild Equity Institute some day! 

I’ve posted a few photos of the experience so far here, and I’ll be back with another update and a few more photos soon.  As always, feel free to contact me if you have any thoughts or questions about the program!

Photos:

Economics classroom (above)

Teaching Economics

University of the West Indies

Carnival

 

 

Entry 2: Arrival (2/09/2010)

Our trip to Trinidad couldn’t have gone more smoothly, and we arrived on time and in one piece. After unpacking a few items, I prepared for a meeting with Dr. Andrew Lawrence, who directs the program on Tropical Biodiversity Conservation and Management at the University of West Indies. He informed me that my environmental economics course would be taught on Mondays: the very first day of the new semester.

This didn’t leave us much time to explore the country before classes began, so we went at it in earnest. Fortunately we had an opportunity to go on some explorations with the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalist Club and some other hiking groups in the country, and their knowledge of the trails—and more importantly, their ability to find the trailheads in the dense tropical forest—was essential in exploring the area on a short schedule.

We were able to visit the Tamana bat caves in the central range, and explore several trails in the Northern Range searching for wildlife. Somehow we got lost on two of the three hikes we went on: too much dawdling looking at animals got us separated from the group. I also lost my wedding ring in a river.

But like the rest of the trip, everything worked out perfectly. We were able to get a ride out of the forest back to our cars from a quarry truck driver, and somehow I knew precisely where my ring was in the river bed and quickly retrieved it.

And back at our home, we found blue-crowned mot-mots, crested oropendolas, rufous-breasted hermits, turquoise tanagers, and dozens of other birds enjoying our yard. Nearly every morning brings some new opportunity to experience tropical biodiversity right in our home.

Soon classes will start and research projects will begin in earnest. I’m excited about the opportunities and challenges the new course presents. I’ll keep you all posted and let you know how it goes.

Photos:

Port of Spain (above)

Emperor Butterfly

Bats

 

Entry 1: Anticipation (1/22/2010)

I love teaching at San Francisco State. I love the Environmental Studies Program, I love the students in it, and I love helping students discover both what they need to know about environmental law and what they believe about it.

So when I accepted a Fulbright Scholar award to teach abroad for a semester at the University of West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, I didn’t do so lightly.

But having visited the country in 2007, I knew that it was an opportunity I simply couldn’t pass up. I’ll be teaching a new course (for me) on environmental economics, learn new skills, and get an opportunity to help a new masters program in tropical biodiversity conservation and management succeed in empowering great stewards of some of the most biologically rich lands on Earth.

I’ve also been asked to help draft new regulations to protect nesting leatherback sea turtles in the country. On my last visit, I had the most intense sea turtle experience of my life on a small beach in Northeastern Trinidad called Grand Riviere.

Every sea turtle superlative you can think of applies to the leatherback: most ancient, largest, deepest diving, most imperiled . . . it is a spectacular species.

Grand Riviere is a crucible of all the hope and despair surrounding the leatherback: you can see hundreds of adults nesting & thousands of young emerging from the sand, but you can also see stray dogs and black vultures preying on the young as they race to the ocean, and the drift net vessels off shore that incidentally capture adults, often drowning them, are everywhere.

We’ll try and draft new rules that will encourage local fishers to swap out gear for more efficient gear that is less likely to drown turtles. Over the next few months we’ll meet with Fisheries officials and local conservationists to see if we can draft a solution that the government will adopt and enforce.

Check back here and I’ll let you know how things go. And if you are thinking about an international masters program, drop me a line!

Photos:

Grand Riviere Beach (above)

Tons of Leatherback Hatchlings

Leatherback Laying on the Beach

Professor Plater Holding Two Turtles