When the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) decided to celebrate International Day for Biological Diversity recently, Saint Lucia was the obvious choice for the festivities. Home to more than 2,000 native species, Saint Lucia is rich in some of the world’s most unique flora and fauna.
The Biodiversity Fair, which took place in the grounds of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in May, was just one of a number of events undertaken by Saint Lucia’s Department of Sustainable Development as it nears completion of the Biodiversity Report — a comprehensive summary of Saint Lucia’s diverse ecology. The report, which is being drafted with the help of the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility, will be used to guide future policies as well as monitor how the country is meeting international conservation benchmarks.
An economic powerhouse
“Biodiversity is the source of so much. It’s the source of our food, our pharmaceuticals,” said Crispin D’Auvergne, Programme Coordinator for Climate Change at the OECS Commission, speaking on the sidelines of Saint Lucia’s biodiversity day celebrations.
“We have to ensure we safeguard that resource and use it wisely. If we mistreat our environment, it can’t provide the food we need. We should not take our flora and fauna for granted. If we use it wisely, it will continue to sustain us, as it has for generations.”
While International Day for Biological Diversity was all about raising awareness of Saint Lucia’s environment, stakeholders are looking to strike the balance between celebrating the natural world and commercialising it. The island ecosystem isn’t just a pleasant backdrop to human activity, but a central part of Saint Lucia’s daily life. Biodiversity is a significant contributor to the national economy. The teeming reefs, lush rainforests and pristine beaches bring millions of tourism dollars to the island each year and are helping tourism operators carve out a profitable niche in eco-tours including birdwatching, hiking, snorkelling, diving and fishing activities.
Biodiversity’s role in the agricultural sector is obvious, with much of the island’s plant life ending up in grocery stores and on the kitchen table. Farmers know firsthand the importance of preserving the environment that is directly tied to their livelihoods as they sell their wares to local suppliers and export them abroad.
Medicinal applications such as bush teas and herbal remedies are also an important subset of biodiversity’s economic implications. Popular not just among locals, they also form a part of the tourism product as international visitors are often eager to try out new, natural treatments and wellness products. All across the Caribbean, the region’s flora and fauna offer a myriad of applications.
“The Caribbean is a biodiversity hotspot because of the large range of species and sub-species of animal and plants found throughout the relatively small area of our region. A number of our islands have species that are unique to them; that makes them globally significant,” says Karen McDonald Gayle, Conservation Finance Programme Manager at the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund. “It is important to note that there are species we have in the region that are not only cute to look at, but contribute to global science — either for its existence value but also for the science it can support in areas such as medicine and cosmetology.”
With such tremendous value and potential available, natural resources must be protected from others trying to make a quick profit at the cost of long-term, sustainable economic growth. The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization was adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010 and came into force in 2014. Two years later, the Global Environment Fund began working with eight Caribbean countries, including Saint Lucia, to raise awareness of the international agreement and encourage ratification within the region.
The Nagoya Protocol ensures that if a plant, animal or other organism is used for research or development, any benefits are shared equally with that country’s citizens. In Saint Lucia, work around the Protocol has involved training workshops and information on monitoring and enforcement. According to Minister for Education and Sustainable Development Gale Rigobert, these activities are a necessary first step in preparing to institutionalise the agreement. “The Department of Sustainable Development recognises that this protocol can revolutionise the way in which we use biological resources and generate income from them and so we are ensuring that all systems are in place before we ratify the Nagoya Protocol.”
Celebrating, commercialising and conserving
While Saint Lucia takes a slow but steady approach, several of its Caribbean neighbours are now party to the Protocol, with St Kitts and Nevis ratifiying it last year and Grenada signing in 2011. But you can’t sell what you can’t protect, and so moves to commercialise natural resources must also go hand in hand with conservation efforts.
Last year the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned that the Eastern Caribbean was in dire need of stronger conservation strategies to protect its threatened biodiversity. In Saint Lucia the most vulnerable natural inhabitants include the endangered Amazona Versicolor parrot, the Saint Lucia racer snake, staghorn coral and pencil cedar trees.
McDonald Gayle warns that the threats to biodiversity are mounting and there is much work to be done, saying: “The critical challenges now include balancing the more immediate economic needs of a development versus the longer term benefits of biodiversity; preserving biodiversity in the face of rising temperatures and other climate change impacts; and the intellectual and cultural property preservation of biodiversity products in the region.”
But if conservation efforts are to succeed, there needs to be a greater level of public awareness about their importance. Giving Caribbean citizens a sense of pride, and ownership, in their unique environment can engender a sense of responsibility for its upkeep and preservation. The region’s human inhabitants have not always appreciated the value of their fellow creatures, however. McDonald Gayle says: “In some cases, our citizens do not realize the value of what they have seen all their life and, in others, cultural tales and fears make the job harder. For example, the region is rich in endemic reptiles but we do not consider them precious or worth preserving. This is something that is changing slowly now.”
