Environmental Situation Assessment: Trinidad and Tobago

 

A few years ago, I was invited to an interview for a contract position to do some environmental work (program planning, monitoring, and evaluation; policy analysis) in Trinidad and Tobago, so I took a couple of days to examine the environmental situation there.  It was pretty disheartening to see how much that country has already "overshot" its ability to feed itself from its own rich agricultural resources.  During the interview, I showed my analysis to the government official.  It was rather evident that he did not like what he saw, and that he did not appreciate my publicizing the fact that his country had already passed the point at which it could support itself from its own food sources (as many other countries have also done).  I didn't get the job, but the paper I presented to the official is still interesting reading.  The country's population now exceeds its carrying capacity, and when fossil fuels run out, many Trinidadians will die of hunger.

 Click here for .htm file, here for .pdf file.