Tobago is at that stage where the population can choose to stay as is, or morph the entire community into the future they desire. To expand, Tobago can remain forever dependent on a financial dispensation from the national budget making its historical minimal contribution to GDP. Or, it can take its natural assets, that is its people, culture and geography into the global marketplace.
But why is this conversation even important to the Environment Tobago? Because it has much to do with enabling a suitable framework for development, which if not tackled in time will lead to environmental degradation, long term poverty and the many downstream ills that follow - such as crime, corruption in governance and business sectors just to name a few.
If Tobago were to continue on its present course - “under the autocratic and insensitive regime that is with us for close to one hundred and eighty years” [paraphrasing Vanus James] then, for the foreseeable future the population will have to continue to endure [due to poverty, poor quality of life].
This means the very core of Tobago’s potential is at risk. Poverty is a key factor in diminished ecosystems, leading to compromised nature’s services (such as adequate freshwater, good soil cover and clean air). Environment Tobago has long subscribed to the tenets of development that is sustainable - a consideration that is now an imperative given the rapid advance and unpredictable nature of climate change.
The way for Tobago to advance its development; to structure a product that can be consumed within the global economic matrix, will require a reworked system of governance (says Vanus James). No kidding. But just how difficult is such an undertaking? Let’s think on this.
It will require Undoing. Undoing of a system of government inherited from the British when Tobago was a colonial prize. Undoing of a legislative roll that was embedded in the Tobago House of Assembly Act 1980, and not trivially undoing of supplementary text in the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution.
Constitutional reform is a big conversation, encompassing by necessity, every other aspect of Trinidad and Tobago governance. From this perspective, Tobago would want to get its proposal together before the wider national reform dialogues waters down its urgency.
How will that play out? We discuss an approach scenario here.