An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Three small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es took the top prizes in the in­au­gur­al Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Grant Chal­lenge 2023, a com­pe­ti­tion host­ed joint­ly by ANSA Mer­chant Bank and ANSA Bank, in part­ner­ship with The Crop­per Foun­da­tion un­der the Caribbean Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Hub. 

Win­ner Da­reem Jef­frey, the own­er and founder of Ecow­ash, re­ceived a grant of $100,000. Ll­e­van Ramhar­rack Den­dron, own­er of Biotech, placed sec­ond and re­ceived $60,000, while Ker­ish­na Bood­hai, own­er and founder of Eco-Na­ture Farm, placed third and re­ceived $40,000.

The award cer­e­mo­ny held at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Fri­day. 

Ian De Souza, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank, said align­ing with the Na­ture Pos­i­tive move­ment was a defin­ing goal for bank which has placed fo­cus on nat­ur­al cap­i­tal at the cen­tre of its op­er­a­tional ex­is­tence.

“The Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal frame­work has al­lowed us to bet­ter un­der­stand how busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing our own, de­pend on and im­pact the nat­ur­al world. It has helped us see how these im­pacts, and at­ten­dant risks, can be mea­sured, man­aged and min­imised,”  he said

De Souza ap­plaud­ed small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es for for­mu­lat­ing new en­tre­pre­neur­ial ideas and stim­u­lat­ing ex­ist­ing busi­ness plat­forms while fo­cus­ing on na­ture pos­i­tive busi­ness mod­els.  

“For many, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic served as a spring­board—a time to re­think old ways of do­ing things and to seize op­por­tu­ni­ties that were once thought of as too am­bi­tious or too risky. With all of that, we are here to­day, show­cas­ing some of the fruits of those bold, for­ward-think­ing ini­tia­tives,”  he said.

The Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Grant Chal­lenge ini­tia­tive em­pow­ers lo­cal busi­ness­es with prac­ti­cal tools to tack­le fu­ture en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, fos­ter­ing a vi­sion of strate­gic growth., he added.

De Souza not­ed that the bank re­mains com­mit­ted to lead­ing the do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try in this re­gard, cham­pi­oning re­spon­si­ble, na­ture-con­scious eco­nom­ic prac­tices. 

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Crop­per Foun­da­tion and the es­tab­lish­ment of the Caribbean Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Hub, he high­light­ed that the banks en­vi­sions that by 2030, busi­ness­es, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, and gov­ern­ments through­out the Caribbean will rou­tine­ly in­clude nat­ur­al, so­cial, and hu­man cap­i­tal con­sid­er­a­tions in their de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es.

“To­geth­er, they are set­ting the foun­da­tion for a more re­silient and sus­tain­able fu­ture for the re­gion. The banks are proud to rep­re­sent ANSA McAL’s am­bi­tion to ‘in­spire bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world’, a ral­ly­ing cry that unites all sec­tors with­in the ANSA McAL Group,” he added. 

Keisha Gar­cia, en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Lead for ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed said the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion has suf­fered the high­est glob­al de­crease in its Liv­ing Plan­et In­dex since the 1970s, hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced a re­duc­tion of 95 per cent in ter­res­tri­al, ma­rine and aquat­ic ver­te­brate species and the en­vi­ron­ment has lost 95 per cent of its wildlife pop­u­la­tion since the 1970s.  

“Here in the Caribbean, we have al­so lost about 50 per cent of our liv­ing coral since the 1970s. Re­cent pro­jec­tions show that cli­mate change can re­duce coral pop­u­la­tions by over 90 per cent by 2050 – a sta­tis­tic with dire con­se­quences for us,” she said.

“Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, over 70 per cent of our com­mer­cial fish species are un­der threat be­cause of un­sus­tain­able ex­ploita­tion. Look­ing to the fu­ture, cli­mate change is ex­pect­ed to re­duce re­main­ing pop­u­la­tions by an ad­di­tion­al 40 per cent.”

Gar­cia added: “Our aim with the Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Grant Chal­lenge was a bold one. It was to nur­ture and pro­mote dis­rup­tive blue-green busi­ness­es here in T&T in a sec­tor that con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to our lo­cal econ­o­my.”