Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Every day, car­go ships dock across the Caribbean car­ry­ing goods that keep is­land economies mov­ing—food, med­i­cine, elec­tron­ics, con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, farm sup­plies and ve­hi­cles.

But ex­perts now warn that the re­gion’s next en­vi­ron­men­tal threat may not ar­rive with sirens, warn­ing la­bels or flash­ing lights. It could come dis­guised as a used ve­hi­cle rolling off a car­go ship in Port-of-Spain. A con­tain­er of pes­ti­cides bound for farms in cen­tral Trinidad. A ship­ment of dis­card­ed elec­tron­ics head­ed for a land­fill al­ready strug­gling for space.

For small is­land de­vel­op­ing states like T&T, where land is lim­it­ed, en­force­ment agen­cies are stretched and ports re­main the lifeblood of trade, ex­perts say tox­ic traf­fick­ing is emerg­ing as one of the Caribbean’s most over­looked en­vi­ron­men­tal threats. And it is big busi­ness.

“En­vi­ron­men­tal crime is the fourth most prof­itable area of crime in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” warned Jack­line Wan­jiru, pro­gramme man­age­ment of­fi­cer with the Sec­re­tari­at of the Basel, Rot­ter­dam and Stock­holm con­ven­tions in Gene­va. Wan­jiru de­scribed this as a glob­al un­der­ground trade of­ten linked to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works, mon­ey laun­der­ing and cor­rup­tion.

Her warn­ing came as cus­toms of­fi­cers, en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tors, agri­cul­tur­al au­thor­i­ties and pol­i­cy­mak­ers from across the re­gion gath­ered in Trinidad for a work­shop host­ed by the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Train­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer for the Caribbean (BCRC-Caribbean) and the Rot­ter­dam Con­ven­tion Sec­re­tari­at, last month.

For the re­gion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 15 Caribbean Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States say the is­sue is no longer aware­ness. It is en­force­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al treaties de­signed to reg­u­late haz­ardous chem­i­cals, pes­ti­cides and waste mov­ing across bor­ders.

“For many Caribbean small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, the chal­lenge is no longer sim­ply aware­ness of the con­ven­tions,” Anand Maraj, act­ing di­rec­tor of BCRC-Caribbean, told del­e­gates dur­ing the work­shop’s open­ing.

“In­creas­ing­ly, the chal­lenge lies in the op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ties of im­ple­men­ta­tion, co­or­di­na­tion, mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment,” Maraj added.

T&T on the front line

As host of BCRC-Caribbean, T&T oc­cu­pies a unique po­si­tion in the re­gion’s fight against haz­ardous chem­i­cals and waste.

Ad­dress­ing del­e­gates, San­jay Singh, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, said Caribbean coun­tries face “re­al chal­lenges” tied to lim­it­ed re­sources, il­le­gal trade and the trans­bound­ary move­ment of haz­ardous chem­i­cals and waste.

“Strong in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion is es­sen­tial,” Singh said, not­ing that cus­toms, health au­thor­i­ties, en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­cies, agri­cul­ture min­istries and en­force­ment of­fi­cials all have crit­i­cal roles to play.

For a coun­try with a ma­jor in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, ac­tive ship­ping lanes, agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties and grow­ing waste chal­lenges, the is­sue is hard­ly ab­stract.

What tox­ic trade looks like in the Caribbean

Un­like dra­mat­ic im­ages of chem­i­cal spills or leak­ing drums, haz­ardous trade of­ten ar­rives in forms most Caribbean peo­ple would bare­ly no­tice.

It can be ob­so­lete pes­ti­cides en­ter­ing agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties. Old re­frig­er­a­tors or air-con­di­tion­ing units con­tain­ing ozone-de­plet­ing sub­stances. Lead-acid bat­ter­ies. Dis­card­ed tele­vi­sions and com­put­ers. Plas­tic waste. In­dus­tri­al sol­vents. Even sec­ond-hand ve­hi­cles near­ing the end of their use­ful life.

Ac­cord­ing to Wan­jiru, some of the waste streams most com­mon­ly linked to il­le­gal traf­fick­ing glob­al­ly in­clude plas­tic waste, elec­tron­ic waste and end-of-life ve­hi­cles - the kinds of goods com­mon­ly im­port­ed in­to is­land states with lim­it­ed dis­pos­al and re­cy­cling ca­pac­i­ty.

“Is­land na­tions are quite vul­ner­a­ble,” Wan­jiru said, point­ing to lim­it­ed land space, lim­it­ed re­cy­cling ca­pac­i­ty and gaps in en­force­ment.

Laws lag­ging be­hind the trade

At the pol­i­cy lev­el, re­gion­al of­fi­cials say one of the biggest weak­ness­es re­mains out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion.

“A lot of the leg­is­la­tion in the re­gion is out­dat­ed,” said Shali­na Rooplal, re­search an­a­lyst at BCRC-Caribbean.

“We haven’t seen the leg­isla­tive back­ing to prop­er­ly im­ple­ment these con­ven­tions. There are no en­force­ment pro­to­cols in place, lim­it­ed hu­man re­sources, lim­it­ed fund­ing and in­fra­struc­tur­al ca­pac­i­ty is al­so a ma­jor is­sue.”

That chal­lenge is al­ready play­ing out in coun­tries like Be­lize.

Al­do Cansi­no, en­vi­ron­men­tal of­fi­cer with Be­lize’s De­part­ment of En­vi­ron­ment, said while pes­ti­cides are reg­u­lat­ed, in­dus­tri­al chem­i­cals re­main a ma­jor blind spot.

“At the mo­ment, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an in­dus­tri­al chem­i­cals leg­is­la­tion,” Cansi­no ad­mit­ted.

That means au­thor­i­ties of­ten have to piece to­geth­er in­for­ma­tion through en­vi­ron­men­tal ap­provals, ozone pro­grammes and oth­er frag­ment­ed sys­tems rather than through one ded­i­cat­ed le­gal frame­work.

Be­lize has al­ready seen first­hand what chem­i­cal lega­cies can look like. Dur­ing one na­tion­al dis­pos­al ef­fort, of­fi­cials iden­ti­fied be­tween 25 and 35 met­ric tonnes of ob­so­lete DDT, a pes­ti­cide banned or re­strict­ed in many coun­tries, which had to be repack­aged and ex­port­ed for safe dis­pos­al.

For Cansi­no, one les­son from the work­shop stood out clear­ly: “Cus­toms is an in­te­gral part of the con­ver­sa­tion, be­cause every­thing comes in.”

While some coun­tries are still build­ing le­gal frame­works, oth­ers are show­ing what stronger sys­tems can look like.

In Bar­ba­dos, every pes­ti­cide ap­proved for na­tion­al use is logged on a reg­is­ter shared di­rect­ly with cus­toms of­fi­cers.

“Cus­toms, hav­ing that list, is able to check as items are com­ing in,” ex­plained An­tho­ny Headley, di­rec­tor of Bar­ba­dos’ En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion De­part­ment.

“Where they iden­ti­fy a sub­stance that’s not on the list … it’s de­tained.”

From there, reg­u­la­tors de­ter­mine whether the ship­ment can be reg­is­tered, repa­tri­at­ed to its coun­try of ori­gin, or ex­port­ed off-is­land for dis­pos­al un­der Basel Con­ven­tion pro­ce­dures.

Bar­ba­dos now runs reg­u­lar pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns to help busi­ness­es and work­ers un­der­stand chem­i­cal la­bels, tox­i­c­i­ty sym­bols and safe han­dling pro­ce­dures.

A co­or­di­na­tion prob­lem

For Mario Yarto, agri­cul­tur­al of­fi­cer with the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Rot­ter­dam Con­ven­tion Sec­re­tari­at, the biggest chal­lenge is not al­ways iden­ti­fy­ing dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals, but en­sur­ing the agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for stop­ping them are ac­tu­al­ly work­ing to­geth­er.

“The in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms to co­or­di­nate be­tween the rel­e­vant agen­cies and cus­toms of­fi­cers are not al­ways ef­fec­tive,” Yarto said.

He point­ed to gaps be­tween min­istries and agen­cies that must work to­geth­er if haz­ardous chem­i­cals are to be prop­er­ly mon­i­tored and man­aged.

Yarto said the ul­ti­mate goal is not sim­ply stronger in­sti­tu­tions, but stronger pub­lic aware­ness.