 St. Lucia joins the rest of the world in observing the first official United Nations World Wetlands Day in 2022. As part of national activities to commemorate the day, February 2, a panel discussion has been convened here and now by the Department of Sustainable Development with support from partner agencies to highlight the condition of our island country's wetlands, specifically our mangroves, and the ongoing efforts to stop and reverse its decrease and degradation. So here we are. Hello and welcome. My name is Jesse Lyons from the Department of Sustainable Development, and I will be staring this panel. I'm joined by a distinguished cadre of environmental executives and experts who have understood today's assignment and are ready to provide meaningful contributions. So just to bring you through their names, at this time we do have Ms. Makiba Felix. She is a fisheries biologist from the Department of Fisheries. We have Mr. Jeremiah Edmond, an officer within the Sustainable Development and Environment Division within the Department of Sustainable Development. We have Mr. Vincent Clark, head ranger for the Point Sable Environmental Protection Area with the National Trust and Ms. Magdalene Jurson, a forestry officer within the Department of Forestry. And we also have lined up for later on in this broadcast, but in studio, Mr. John Callext, coordinator with the Southeast Coast Project, and he's also attached to the Sustainable Development Department. And we have Mr. Craig Henry, a chief executive officer within the National Conservation Fund. Greetings all and thank you for availing yourselves for the occasion. I want to start with Mr. Edmond from the Department of Sustainable Development. For the benefit of our viewership, if you could provide us with a working definition of wetlands, as well as providing a layout of St. Lucia's wetland sites. Okay, good morning. Good day all. Simplest definition I would give is a wetland is an area be it natural or artificial, which is either flooded or swampy area, either for partly, for some time, or permanent. You have different types of wetlands, you have categories. So you have swamps, you have marshes, and you have mangroves. They follow the different categories and they have different functions, but all of them are equally important in environmental functions and providing ecosystem services, whether it be regulating or provisional or others. So in St. Lucia, we don't have many swamps remaining or marshes, but we have a lot of mangroves. Well, not a lot, but we have mangroves. Our largest mangrove is Makote in the south. It's about 60 hectares in area and it's an important nursery for fish and other bird species, some migratory bird species that come there during the migratory pattern. We have other areas, I think in the Pusepla, I think it's point sub, we have another mangrove. We have mangroves at shock. We have in border words, you have at Kazaba, you have at Esperas in Moshi, you have at Maki, in Barbono, you have Monripo, you have Praler, and you have Black Bay. So we have quite a number of mangroves scattered along our coastlines in St. Lucia. And some of them are more degraded than others, but efforts are being made to try to reverse this degradation and conserve this mangrove because they provide ecological functions as well as provide livelihood opportunities for many solutions. So I think I will be there. OK, coming to you, Ms. Dresden, Mr. Edmond mentioned degradation. Speak to us about the conditions of our wetlands in St. Lucia. What does it look like? What has happened over the past few decades when we talk about human activity and so on? Climate change as well. A lot of times when we speak wetlands, we zero in quickly to the mangroves. And I know we're celebrating wetlands there and we usually focus on the sites of international importance. Yes. But they're not the only wetlands that we have. And the condition of our wetlands is just as troubling as the sites of international importance. So we'll deal with one first and then the other. There is a saying that if we do not, if environmental protection takes precedence over economy, the country will die. And I think that has fuelled a lot of the decisions that have been taken in regards to conserving wetlands. There's a lot of destruction that has taken place over the past several years, particularly to our mangroves. Because of where they located on the coast, they find themselves as targets because they're usually in very prime location for development. And so if a developer, whoever he be, expresses interest, usually the mangrove is sacrificed. So you have a lot of degradation that has happened. You have areas where we have lost entire seafronts because the mangrove that existed at that point to protect surges and to protect from storms disappeared. You have areas where private owners have claimed portions of seafront because they claim it to be their property. There are instances in my experience where I have gone to an area where you used to have mangrove and there's a lot number inside of the seawater. The lot is being sold from the high water mark. It's been measured from there. You have instances where you have massive trees that I've seen. Diamonds are so big that my arms can't go around them and they've been cut to accommodate housing schemes, to accommodate hotel development. The destruction that we're talking about is scary. There are areas where we used to have mangroves, I'll say, viewfort and not necessarily Makote but within Percival, where you've had to have hard breaks placed in the ocean because what used to be there was mangrove that protected us. We have extreme sea level rise happening and there's nothing to shield us. A district like viewfort that is really below sea level already. When you have situations like the Christmas trough of 2013 and huge portions of road are disappearing, we believe that it's a freak incident but no, mangrove was cut to make way for development and that is what obtains in St. Lucia. If the thought pattern is not changed, we're going to have a situation where this, almost this entire country will be inundated by seawater and our life will be forever changed. Thanks for that, Ms. Drewson. We're going to get into a little bit more expanding on the extent and the impact of development in just a bit as well as the legislative provisions because you mentioned about the claims to land ownership and the situation surrounding that in just a bit. But Ms. Makiba, I want to get to you now as a fisheries biologist to come to some of the misconceptions that we have around wetlands, of course towards leaning towards reducing their value overall. I could give you one perhaps the fact that of course for the purpose of debunking, for instance, swamp, dirty water, poor water quality, perhaps affecting our environment overall. In your debunking, outline the significance of these habitats from a biological and environmental perspective. A bit more than Mr. Edmund did initially. So in San Lucia and many places globally, a lot of people believe that the mangroves are breeding grounds for animals such as mosquitoes and other infectious animals. But this is not the case. The mangroves provide a lot of ecological benefits, economic benefits and biological benefits to the local communities. In terms of ecological benefits, the mangroves act as industries and they are a breeding ground for a lot of marine organisms such as fish and other aquatic organisms. They also provide coastal and shoreline protection and stabilization during hurricanes and flooding events. They are also used for the economic benefits, they are used for timber, they are used for charcoal production and they also provide a lot of regulatory services. They are mitigated for climate change and they help with the reduction in the atmospheric carbon dioxide. They trap the carbon dioxide in the soils and in the roots of their structures. Okay, thanks for that. Outline, of course, definitely showing and highlighting the significance of wetlands overall from, as you mentioned, not only ecological but economic as well. A lot of these misconceptions have implications and Mr. Clark, I want to come to you with that as someone who actually works on the ground at the Point Saab Environmental Protection Area. Speak to us about the implications of these misconceptions. What have you observed at your site? How have these notions and these thoughts that perhaps the swamps are, the wetlands are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and people perhaps have less of an appreciation for wetlands. So how has this translated to human behavior impacting our wetlands? A lot of people believe that mangrove are just a dumping area for garbage. So people do not respect mangrove and say, okay, this is just trees and shops that grow there and I will just dump anything from anywhere in there. What they don't understand that is if you destroy the mangrove, when you have another carbon footprint will not be stored, your sulfuric gas will be exposed to the atmosphere. So when you destroy mangrove, the mud day is still with sulfuric gas and this will actually go back all the way to the atmosphere. So if we're going about protecting wetlands, all these things have to be taken into consideration and educated public about this. Why wetland is so important? If I may add Makiba, I think one of the challenges, one of the main challenges is as long as there is not a house on it or not a development, people assume it's supposed to be a free-for-all that we can either dump our trash or we can squat on it and not understand that it has a significance. Wetlands gain the type of wetland is determined by what its water source is. Say for instance, we're referring to mangroves. Mangroves are a type of swamp. They belong to the swamp category and swamps usually receive their water from two points. They receive their water, some of it will be salt, some of it will be fresh. Now typically, the salt water is a constant. It's always there. But there's almost always interruption with the freshwater. And while the trees within that particular area are salt tolerant, many of them are not designed to be completely saline conditions. It's supposed to be a bracket situation. One of the challenges, say for instance, that as Jag was describing in Perciper, is that the freshwater supply to this particular river has all but been cut. It has been dammed completely. Private persons in the area where that led up to the stream, dammed the water for their pigs, for domestic use, for various purposes, and you have very little freshwater coming in. This is a ravine. And I mean, I will speak to a lot of persons who will remember this growing up in Viewfort or living in Viewfort. This is a ravine that typically, if you were on one side of it when it rained, the overflow was so huge that you could not cross. You had to remain on one or either side of it. That phenomenon has all but stopped because enough freshwater isn't coming down anymore. Now, once you interrupt the freshwater supply into a swamp, you've created a bottle deck and species are going to die. The hydric soil that Vincent referred to, you don't have hydric soil anymore because hydric soil is not designed to be a completely saline soil. And so it becomes almost a poison because it is too salty. There is supposed to be a refreshing that happens. If the sea constantly brings the life, the story that is told by the absence of the freshwater is that somebody in the ridge that he spoke about, somebody in the in the ridge part of it has messed up. What we're supposed to do, what is supposed to concern us the most in this country because our entire water supply comes from our ridges. And if the freshwater supply is being interrupted, it means that management isn't happening and we are in serious, we potentially are in serious trouble. So it is, it becomes a problem when persons figure, this area is empty. Let me construct on it. Let me build on it and not understand that it's a cyclical experience that we have. Everything is tied together and the behavior of one messes up the other one. Thank you for that. And we have to stick a pin in that so we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more about the impact as well as the actions that are being taken. The theme for this year's observance is wetlands action for people and nature. We will delve a little bit into that. Of course, that's grounded in an appeal for financial, human, and political capital to save the world's wetlands. And we will speak a little bit about St. Lucia's peculiar effort. Stay with us. Assembly last year, when it designated the 2nd of February as World Wetlands Day, a moment to raise awareness of wetlands importance for a sustainable and prosperous future. World Wetlands Day is an opportunity to engage all stakeholders at all levels, to strengthen and multiply action for wetlands. Whether by championing conservation, redirecting public and private funding streams, transforming agricultural practices, reducing water waste, contributing to restoration efforts, or supporting local wetland cleanups, we can all take action. Thank you so much for staying tuned. This is a panel discussion in observance of World Wetlands Day 2022. We do have a panel, a distinguished panel, of experts and executives from various partners, from various agencies here in St. Lucia. This is an event that is being hosted by the Department of Sustainable Development to highlight the situation with our wetlands here on Ireland, as well as the efforts that are ongoing to improve and to reduce degradation. Before we went to break, we were discussing the impact for St. Lucia's wetlands, of course, our peculiar situation in terms of human activity. We were just rounding off with some word from Ms. Jurson before we had an interjection from Mr. Clark. He wanted to make a point in terms of the impact of human activity on our wetlands, before we move on to the actions that are being taken by policymakers, persons on the ground from the Department of Forestry and Fisheries. The impact of wetlands like humans, especially rivers and streams leading to mangrove like Magdalen Sea. A lot of the environmental impact assessment when it comes to mangrove and waterways leading to mangrove is not being actually addressed in the proper way because they just select, like I said, a hotel can be there. When you destroy the waterway to the wetlands, it will divert the water in a different area. The different area can be detrimental to you by causing a village of flooding in the different areas. So if you look at Denry, the typical example, you have the school, the police station, and that was a wetland area. Mangrove was right next to it on the other side, which would control and take the water as a basin. Look at what's happening in Denry. Anytime it rains, because of the divergent flow of the water through the mangrove and destroy the mangrove, Denry is always flooded. So this is one of the impacts that developers have to take in consideration. The waterways into mangrove must not be thoroughly tampered with at all. Okay. And coming back to the extent and the impact of the development with you, Ms. Jerson, we have two wetlands of international significance. If you could just touch on that a little bit. And what actions would need to be taken for us to maintain protection of these sites? There are several concerns and several possible actions at the very top of it will have to be giving the bodies that manage these areas. And we're talking about Mahote mangrove and the savants bee, approximately 85 hectares of land. The agencies that manage these areas have almost no teeth in their legislation to take action. And in many instances, at least in my experience over the past 25 years, it's always been a hot potato with persons shifting from blame or responsibility from one to the other, because perhaps the persons who are interested in doing a thing, their agency, their legislation is not strong enough or does not speak to it. And then the agency that actually has legislation, it's not a priority. So one of the first things that needs to happen is the legislation needs to be strengthened. And I don't know any time a legislation is ever strengthened if the policymakers do not agree with the thought or the purpose for which you're speaking to them. So we have to convince the policymakers that if we don't change the way we're doing things, it's going to be detrimental to us. The second thing is land tenure is a serious situation. Who owns the land on which the mangroves or the wetland exists? I think one of the other things that needs to happen is it needs to be policy that the crown, quote unquote, has power and make these areas reserve. Another thing that needs to happen is people need to be held accountable for their behavior and the actions in the past. And like I have said, I've had a lot of experience dealing with situations where persons perform acts that are heinous acts of dumping. And the persons who are supposed to go in and intervene, there is no follow through with the powers that be to hold persons accountable. I'm trying to be very diplomatic and technical so I don't give details. But I'm telling you, I'm boiling on the disservice because I have so many experiences of discovering garbage, identify that this is this agency who has dumped it. But I am unable to do anything, Jesse, because I work for an agency that does not have legislation that supports me arresting a person. You see what I mean? So one of the first things that needs to happen is we need to get our act together in terms of how important this is to us, what it would mean for our survival, for the future generations, and then give authority to individuals to actually hold persons accountable for the actions. And politicians not get involved and unapologetically, politicians not get involved because this is the situation that we faced in the past, where persons are brought to bear for something they've done and intervention happens based on who is being supported by whom. And therefore, persons believe that when I do it, I've had situations where I encountered a man with a grater in a protected area. And when I spoke to him, he says to me, I never hide with him when. Mr. Clark, can you attest to that? Have you had experiences where you find persons in contravention? Yes, several times at the Makote mangrove. And our last incident was with the police. And he came with his friends to actually cut down the mangrove's unsustainable cutting. And when we approached him, he told us that there was nothing that he could do. I was just going to call the commissioner. And then he called the commissioner right away. And then he drove off. So there was nothing that we could do. So there is, Magdalene has rights to say that. And we have been confronted with several different agencies that believe that because they are a government agency that they could come to the wetland and do whatever they want because they work for the government. So it is a lot of challenging in managing outside because you have no power sometimes because you still have to go to the police, to police, to police. So it is challenging to actually manage the site in a sustainable way that you wish to. Even persons who are lively has been tampered with certain government agencies like Magdalene say, welcome there. And we'll just do something because from the government, especially when they drive an SLG vehicle, I'll tell you print bank, they will come and say, oh, because you know that there's SLG's government. So there is nothing you could do because you have no power. They have more power than you. So an integrated approach is needed for enforcement, increased awareness, sensitization of what is happening. We, before the, well, when we went to break, we exchanged one sustainable development and environment officer for another. We now have, well, removing Mr. Edmund for a while and putting in Mr. Kalex to who is the coordinator for the Southeast Coast Project. Good day to you. Thank you for being here. We're talking awareness, increased awareness. We're talking about protection, conservation of our important sites, environmentally important sites. Speak to us about the work of the Southeast Coast Project in advancing that effort. Okay, first I would just want to give a brief overview of the Southeast Coast Project and then respond to your question. The Southeast Coast Project is financed by the Global Environmental Facility, which we call Jeff. And it has been implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, in collaboration with the Department of Sustainable Development. And we work with many agencies and the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Agriculture, especially and all of their departments are involved in the various components of the project. The Ministry of Social Transformation, we work with other agencies such as the National Trust, the IECA Inter-American ICA for Agriculture, OECS. And we also work with some of the local groups in the areas, the community-based organizations, the library foundation. So as you mentioned earlier in your presentation, it is an integrated project and therefore we have to work with several agencies to help us implement our activities. The main objective of the project is to encourage economic development of the Southeast Coast, while maintaining healthy ecosystems, which includes wetlands and quarries, etc., sustainable livelihoods, and try to ensure the global environmental benefits. The actual area for the program or the project is from Mandalay Point in Denver and we go all the way into the library. There are three basic components of the project. The first one is what we call Ecosystems Management. Under that component, we build the capacity of the public and private sector, community residents, NGOs and CBOs in the area to manage those ecosystems in the Southeast Coast. The second component is the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes, and that the project will provide support to work with the Department of Forestry to help rehabilitate our ecosystems that are damaged, including, you know, mangroves and terrestrial ecosystems. And the third component is basically sustainable livelihoods. We want to identify sustainable livelihoods in the, well, not just livelihoods, but economic opportunities that double assist with sustainable livelihoods in the project area and support people to actually access, you know, the residents access those opportunities. So, in terms of we have vegetation and protection, one of the things we have to do as part of the project is through our communications program, where we will be sensitizing and creating awareness of the importance of our ecosystems. So, of course, including wetlands and mangroves, not just the importance, but what happens, you know, what are the benefits from these ecosystems? And what happens when we degrade those ecosystems? So, who are the stakeholders that are being engaged? Okay. So, of this, we target the school, the school children, the school kids, from primary to secondary and even tertiary. We target the farmers, the fishermen, those individuals who actually utilize the services in these ecosystems. So beekeepers, charcoal makers, the tiny farmers, et cetera. And the general population, general community in the project area. So, through our communications program, we'll be targeting these specific areas in the community for the awareness programs, you know, through our program. Okay, understood. Coming back to you, Makiba, to speak a little bit about research that perhaps would have been done so far or is ongoing, because at the base of every point you want to make, it needs to be founded with research metric. What work is happening now to reflect a threat to our wetlands, reflect a threat to our mangroves that can be used by policymakers, by teaching the teachers, and so on, in an effort to get persons to understand, to effect policy change, legislation, et cetera. Well, currently there has been work done in investigating the water quality of the rivers and investigating just the general health of the mangrove trees in the areas. So, a lot of the time the mangrove, like Jack and Magdalen mentioned earlier, out of the time the mangrove acts as a filter and it protects the coral reefs and the other marine organisms and other marine ecosystems from the pollutants that come down in the waterways. So that includes, it entraps litter, it traps pesticides and other harmful toxins and other harmful pollutants that could enter the waterways. So, sometimes we go out and we investigate the quality of these ecosystems, we investigate the quality of the water, and we make notes of different things like algal blooms in the area which could indicate a high level of nitrogen and phosphorus chemicals entering the waterways and these could come from farmlands when the fertilizers enter the waterways. We also do investigation into the health of the mangrove trees and this includes going out on a regular basis and just looking at the quality of the trees that leaves, investigating the growth as well as any dive back that may be in the area. Okay, coming back to you Ms. Drewson, how effective is that information for policymakers drafting papers and so on and how effective is it in convicting the persons who, convicting the hearts and minds of individuals who can, who have the power to make those changes at a legislative level? That's far not very. Would you like me to expound? Please do. So, there's so much work that has been done. We have evidence as far back as the existence of Canary did so much work. We had the CEDA project from so many decades ago where there's so much documentation that happened. There's information available to have informed the policymakers to make different decisions. We have evidence of working with Opicon-Chackle producers for a Sri Tugla decision years ago to work with Opicon-Chackle producers, record, there's so much data that was compiled describing how you can sustainably have livelihoods within the mangrove and ensure that the mangrove is not lost. However, we still end up with DSH. Like I said, the data has not been very effective in informing policymakers on decisions that they need to take because you still have mass clearing, you still have decisions being taken to erect hotels in an area that if I have to expect my grandchildren to see them, if things continue the way they are, they will not experience mangrove. They will not experience having Savant's Bay as is. So, the short answer, not very effective. We are not giving up, however. I remember giving Mr Khalik a hard time when his project was introduced because I have experienced so many projects that came over the years that sounded similar and I am extremely skeptical about the support that will be given to what needs to be done. We're not giving up, we're continuing, but it is with very tender feet. Forestry at this moment is engaging in a project with South Lewis where we're going to begin to look at how much sequestration is actually happening within the Makoti mangrove, see if we can measure. Perhaps explaining to persons why a mangrove, a wetland, is a much more effective medium for cleaning the air. If perhaps we can attack it from that angle, maybe something will change because usually we consider trees our first line of defense. But recent information is having us know that wetlands do a far better job in storing carbon than terrestrial forests have traditionally done. In your research you will discover that when you lose one inch of top soil, it will take about 200 years to build that back. The information which we know that this entire study is new, but the information that we're receiving and we're coming up with is that you can actually build back about a centimeter of soil. Which means in five years you would have gained what would have taken the forest 100 years to build back. That seemed to be a vital piece of information to help convince. So perhaps if we come at it from that angle to tell people that the heat that we're experiencing, one of the main ways we can save ourselves from dying from overheating will be to preserve our wetlands. Perhaps if we come at it from that angle, maybe things will change. So we're not giving up, but it's not been easy. Okay, despite your tender feet projects like the Southeast Coast project, as well as work ongoing by the St. Lucia National Conservation Fund is ongoing as well as many other partner agencies. But we do have the chief executive officer who will be joining us after this break. We're overdue and we will also have Mr. Edmund coming back because we will be having our final segment directly after this break talking about the actions that are being taken to protect our wetlands and we conclude stay with us. We all know where water comes from. But have you ever wondered where water goes once it reaches the ground? Although it might stay still, water never stops moving through the earth. When water meets land, they merge together. This union is called wetlands, lakes, rivers, swamps, flood plains, estuaries, mangroves, peatlands, shorelines, coral reefs. These are examples of wetlands. These environments are an important part of our daily lives and contribute to our well-being. They naturally filter and store water, making it available to the living world, including us. Wetlands are therefore extraordinarily rich and biodiverse ecosystems where life is bursting. They are home to 40% of the world's plants and animals. Half of all bird species depend on wetlands and two-thirds of fish breed or live there. Wetlands are all around the planet, yet only cover 6% of the emerged lands. They are our most valuable ecosystems and play a crucial role in sustaining life on our planet. However, wetlands are being lost at an alarming rate. Since 1900, two-thirds of these vital areas have been destroyed. Seeing the need to protect wetlands and ensure the wise use, governments established in 1971 the Convention on Wetlands, which is the world's first international treaty focusing on a single ecosystem. Today, 50 years later, the Convention has been adopted by 171 countries. Through the designation of protected areas, the implementation of affected policies and the sharing of knowledge, the Convention enables countries to take action to protect their wetlands and use them wisely. Wetlands provide clean water, essential for human consumption and production of food. They protect us from storms and floods. They store more carbon than all the world's forests combined, making them critical for addressing climate change. And importantly, more than one billion people living in cities and rural communities in all countries of the world depend on wetlands for their livelihoods. We cannot afford to lose more wetlands. They are a powerful nature-based solution to the many challenges the world is facing. Taking action now for wetlands is foundational for creating the future we want. Over the past 50 years, the Convention on Wetlands has helped us better understand the value of these precious ecosystems through increasing awareness, knowledge and action on the ground. The Convention provides a clear way forward for taking action for wetlands. Wetlands protect life. Our future depends on wetlands. Thank you so much for staying tuned. We continue the conversation on wetlands here in St. Lucia. The impact that human activity, climate change is having on these habitats as well as the work that is being done to try to conserve those spaces. We have been having a lot of weigh-in from our lead stakeholders who have been trying everything that they can in terms of restoring some of the degradation that has happened to date. And of course, zoning in, zooming in on some of the lack of awareness, the lack of sensitization, the sensitization that needs to be done here in St. Lucia so that persons can have a greater appreciation of our wetlands, more specifically our mangroves. And on that note, I want to go to go come back to Mr. Calyxt who wanted to respond to the word from Ms. Jusson before we went to break. Just want to mention before though that we do have Mr. Edmund back on the platform as well as the Chief Executive Officer from the St. Lucia National Conservation Fund joining us. Thank you so much for being here, sir. Of course, we're trying to smash in as many as much input as we can to get a varied understanding of our peculiar circumstance here in St. Lucia. So, Mr. Calyxt, the floor to you before we move on to the development and the actions that are being taken to improve our wetland situations that we face. Okay, just want to add that I think the South East Coast project recognizes the importance of having information to make decisions. In our first component, ecosystem management, which was the capacity of the public private and NGOs to manage ecosystems in the area, what we intend to do is to develop a management information system. So, from all the coincidences that will be taking place on the project and information coming from our other partners in the project area, we are going to design a database and then work in conjunction with the Department of Forestry and the Department of Physical Planning, create a management information system which will be accessible to government agencies, government ministries, individuals, the decision makers, the community residents themselves, developers. So, everybody will have access, I guess, at different levels to that information. Now, I'm not sure, Mr. Wilson, what information or how it was taught, you know, from CIDA and the other agencies before, but we believe that having a good information system where people can actually access the information and so you can know, okay, where the man was located, how many, where they are, the species, as Makiba pointed out, what is caused in the die-back in these areas. So, you have information at your fingertip to tell you or to help you to make a decision on a development or it could be a hotel or just housing development. So, we're hoping that by working with Physical Planning Department and Forestry, you can have that information system established to assist decision-making in the Southeast Coast project. You also mentioned the issue of carbon sequestration and the importance of, if people don't understand the importance of those wetlands and mangroves sequestered in carbon, they would better understand, appreciate the use of the function of these ecosystems. I can tell you that one of the components of our project as well is to calculate in terms of the, in the project area, from all our rehabilitation works coming from the forestry, the forest, productive agriculture landscapes, the mangroves, et cetera, will also be undertaken a study to determine or to calculate in terms of everything that you've done in terms of rehabilitation. So, for instance, we are supposed to rehabilitate 2,000 farm detectors of productive forest areas and 5,000 hectares of marine ecosystems. So, to measure the carbon sequestration from these two activities. So, I'm happy to be together at the Southeast Community College to also involve in that exercise. So, we can work with them because you, I think, are targeting just the sepa, but we're targeting the entire project area. So, we can actually work with them as part of that exercise to, you know, enhance our our data collection, you know, in that component. So, great. So, we have, so the project is going to be delivering some of the, some of the concerns that you have addressed, all right, if you want to, you know, address some of these concerns as part of the project. So, cushioning with, I hope you are consoled by this cushioning of information and the initiatives. And also from the National Conservation Fund, Mr. Henry, speak to us about efforts on your end, your organization's end. Thank you, Jesse, for the invitation. I think it's been a very substantive discussion thus far. And I'd like to share, personally, and of course, representing the National Conservation Fund, the concerns with regards to the condition of wetlands in St. Lucia. Basically, I would remind our folks that the fund, we fundraise to support what we call biodiversity, natural resource management activities, or priorities in St. Lucia. So, we're a unique institution devoted to supporting private and public institutions, the Forestry Department, Department of Sustainable Development, even the Opikwachakal produces as a community group. So, we depend a lot on partnerships, and we understand that it is through these strategic collaborations and partnerships that we can address some of the very important concerns with regards to our biodiversity and natural resources in St. Lucia. If I speak specifically to wetlands management and wetlands conservation, I would be happy to announce as well right here that we are also partnering with the Forestry Department in putting together St. Lucia's first carbon offset project, and that delves into something that we are not quite familiar with, or used in St. Lucia, with carbon sequestration, and that involves an area of mangrove that is also in private hands. So, the level of partnership and collaboration and research that goes into pulling together a project such as this is novel, and it is something that I myself am not familiar with, so just imagine the wider solution in public. However, the important thing for us right now is to again go back to the issue of how we value and how we teach people to value our wetlands and the importance that they have. Even the policy makers and the political directorate, they too have to understand better, and perhaps probably gather the will that we expect from them to take certain actions or make certain decisions that would be in favour of preserving our wetlands. And so, we are also engaging conversations at that level, because we do understand that without these important resources or ecosystems, how damaging it could be to community life, to our own geographic space, we are dealing with coastal erosion at a very high rate, and it's very concerning. The loss of our biodiversity and the loss of livelihoods, what will people do in these communities affected. And I have to applaud Jack for highlighting the example of Denver, and it is something that people should pay attention to, because if you speak to anyone from Denver, even the grown folks, they will describe to you what the natural geography of that place used to be and what has changed and continue to suffer from inundations even when other places don't experience that type of impact. So, in a sense, what we want to do and I think what we all want to accomplish is to have a situation where we understand what the value of our wetlands are and how, what are the things we could do to improve the conditions of these wetlands. And it doesn't have to be a one or the other option. It's just a matter of coordinating the efforts. It's also something, if we got to take into consideration what are the needs of the community as well. So sustainable livelihoods is something that we speak of all the time, but what does that mean? There are things that, again, the practice and we have very good examples. They pick on charcoal producers and you have that collaboration where they're able to practice even charcoal production. Now, you might say that charcoal production and bio-phetical to carbon because it produces carbon, but the reality of the solution space or life is that we use charcoal and it is something that you have to contend with. So when things are done sustainably, the importance and the critical issue is that you have to be practical about things. You have to give people information so they can make proper decisions and you also have to consider the elements. How far, what are the alternatives? So if, for instance, the charcoal production becomes an issue where it's really something that we can no longer practice and what are the alternatives? What are you going to ask people to do instead of doing charcoal production? So I have worked and many of us have worked with community groups to consider alternatives in terms of livelihoods, whether it's honey production, again, something that is also important to the environment with bees and the importance of bees and how they are useful for our flora. And so these are things that many people over the years have worked very hard and considerable resources have gone into it and I always say, I will repeat and I will applaud Magdalen for saying. There is a depth of information out there. It's not full lack of data or understanding. There is an enormous amount of data, a lot of research. Donors now do not even want to fund research projects. They want to see action on the ground and that is the essential element. When people see things happening, they start to believe. So some of us learn by reading and some of us learn by seeing what goes on in the community and what works. So I think it's time to practice what works, what really comes out, the activities and to focus on that and try our best to deliver best practice for St. Lucia. That's the important thing. It's indigenous. It is ours. We all can benefit from that. I think the St. Lucia National Conservation Fund is ready to work with any agency, any project, because we have had discussions with Mr. Khalid to see how we can create synergies among various activities because that's the other thing. We tend to operate in silos in St. Lucia. So I don't know if it's a matter of, I don't want to speculate too widely. But anything, what I'm saying is that it makes sense that we should all try to see what are you doing and that I can join. We can pull our resources to make no sense in, you know, St. Lucia is so small for that kind of thing. So we've had discussions before on that with Mr. Khalid and with the Forestry Department. And I'm glad to hear of the collaboration with the Southwest Committee College because we ourselves have approached the college trying to see how we could provide skills through, you know, learning and skills and information. That's it. We do have had a project with the Southwest Committee College. We provided equipment, environmental monitoring equipment, and that, through that, the students gained the skills in terms of the use of the equipment. But from that, we get some essential data of areas like mangroves and wetlands that is very lacking because more and more, it is something where we do not pay attention to it. And I think that is one of the problems as well. That if something, we don't see something, we don't hear of it, then it's not important. So I think I've said some sufficient. Thank you, Mr. Henry. We're running out of time. But it would be an atrocity viewed as an atrocity by the regular St. Lucien who has been listening and watching the news in the last couple of years to not bring up the contention that has been sparked by the prospect of development at the Makoti site. Ms. Justin, if you could just speak to us about the position of the Department of Forestry as it pertains to the Makoti site and any prospect of development there. It is important for us to discuss land tenure before I see Forestry Department's perspective. Forestry Department's interest is in conserving flora and fauna. However, the land belongs to invest St. Lucia. Well, speak to us about then the threat that, well, the risk that we are faced with should the Makoti site be taken over by development. Everything we've said today, every contribution has added to why it will be an atrocity if this development continues or if such development across the country, if it happens. We lose biodiversity daily and some of the species that we lose, because we have so little information on many of them, we don't even know what we're losing. We don't know how to begin to reclaim it because we've lost things that we didn't even know we lost. I think we are tethering on the brink of disaster. Like I said, viewfort is below sea level. Persons who know the history of how viewfort came about will understand why it is important that everything that is done in relation to the Atlantic Ocean be handled carefully. Viewfort came about as a result of a massive slide, which means that we are still vulnerable now. Anything can still happen now. So the actions that we are taking, the decisions that we are making in terms of protecting, creating the barrier or keeping the barrier, the natural barrier that we have, which is the mangrove. This is the stopgap for us. If you were to walk Ms. Leos along the beach from Lobster Port and get all the way to Bois Chateau, you will experience so many different types of, the experience would be so different. Coconut Bay experiences a massive surge of seawater in on dating their grounds. However, on the same stretch, when you get to Bois Chateau, the experience is different and the only thing that is different is that the mangrove is still there. The mangrove was removed to construct this hotel. I cannot give you a example. On this same stretch, you have the land that is secure from the beach at Bois Chateau to where the mangrove is, is almost beyond a mile. But right on the beach, we have lost the entire seafront where Coconut Bay is. That is what is in store for Viewfort, for instance. If we do not reclaim the mangrove, regreen it, replant it, ensure that the fresh water comes, whatever is blocking it, bring it back. So in some instances, you have the nursery that the charcoal people are doing and we're planning to plant. In some instances, if you remove the hindrances from whatever is causing the blockage, the mangrove has the potential, the ability to regreen. Adjacent healthy mangroves can produce seeds that can cause regreening on its own without having to plant a single raised seedling unless we have the mindset that what we need to do is to reclaim and restore. We are in for trouble. A lot of times, we negate the fact that it's a trade-off that you're trading your mangrove for a development. But your mangrove comes, it provides a service that without it, it would cost you something. So the valuation, the economic benefit that a mangrove provides is that if you didn't have mangrove, you would have lost X amount of dollars in infrastructural damage. So a lot of times, persons don't try to make the connection that if there was no mangrove, then this road would have been destroyed. And I don't give a cost. So ecosystems need to be valuated, whether it's a mangrove or a forest. But you can put a monetary value to it. If we do that now, we can see that by giving up these ecosystems, this is the cost, the dollar and cents cost of losing an ecosystem. And once you start doing that, it paints a clear picture for policy. We can say that, okay, it costs me $5 million more a year to maintain this road if I remove this piece of forest or I remove this mangrove. So if you can put it in dollar and cents, which policy makers like to see, they like to see the dollar and cents part of it. If they don't see the dollar and cents, it doesn't really make, it's not appealing to them if they don't see that dollar and cents. So if you could provide information in monetary terms that if you give up X, you're going to spend Y, then maybe it's a situation where now they're more amicable to put in more support towards environmental conservation and environmental stewardship. That's what I think. And finally, I just want to get a word from you, Mr. Edmond, on the ongoing efforts from a policy standpoint. In keeping with the 2030 gender SDGs of the work that's happening at the Department of Sustainable Development in the conservation of our wetlands, whether it be part of something or on its own. Okay, so from the department's standpoint, for wetlands in particular, wetlands falls under the Ramza Convention, which the focal point is not how sustainable that forest is. But in terms of just general conservation, I think the wetlands are a resource of biodiversity for our island because in particular our two Ramza sites, you have a lot of migratory birds which come, you have a lot of local endemics, which birds which live there and as a habitat. So in terms of biodiversity conservation, let's look at it from that point. They're not just wetland conservation, they're not a bad biodiversity conservation. These are important areas that we need to pay attention to because every year, hundreds of species like margulins are being lost every year. We know that hundreds of species were extinct. And some of them you have very little information on so you can't even begin to see how you could get them back or increase their populations. But from a department's standpoint, I mean we're trying to get policy that would, or legislation to strengthen biodiversity in the evolution. I think we have one bill draft form at the agency office for biosafety and there's another one we're trying to push through on sustainable use and conservation. We're trying to push down through as well. We recently submitted an instrument for accession to the Niagara protocol on access to benefit sharing for biodiversity and the utilization of its products. So from a policy level, we're trying to get persons to understand that biodiversity is important and there are benefits that you could gain from the use of biodiversity built in a wetland, in a forest. And these benefits could be for livelihoods, for personal livelihoods, for economic. You could get for food security and nutrition. You could have for medicine and just you could have ecosystem just to improve the human well-being because studies are showing that just being in a healthy environment could have many beneficial effects on the human body, relieve stress. So these areas that we have, we need to, and we need our policy makers to put some more support behind developing or, well, we have a lot of policy but we need implementation of this policy. We have a lot of policies that have been endorsed by different cabinets but they are not fully implemented and that's what we need to do now. We need to implement these policies that a lot of work has got into to develop. So we need to now implement these policies and get persons to even know about these policies because there are many policies that you could think of that a lot of people didn't even know about. And even with that, I think that I'm finding out that I didn't know before because there are areas which are protected areas on the books that I didn't even know about like shock and water wash, these mangos are protected mangos but when you go in these areas, the level of degradation that you see, you would not think that this is a gazetted protected area but it is. So the other thing that policies and protections, protected sites that people don't even know about because it has done so long ago that unlike Baguino said because of land tenure issues, yeah people forget. So from the policy number, we're just trying to implement policy and get transformative change from these policies that are already existing and do that we plan to develop. Thank you very much for that. Implementation, action, wetlands action for people and nature, the theme for this year's observance of World Wetlands Day 2022. It is the second of February 2022 and this theme is grounded in the appeal to invest financial, human and political capital to save the world's wetlands. You just heard from a comprehensive view there from as I indicated in my introduction, a distinguished panel, experts and executives, persons who are on the forefront of restoring and protecting, conserving our wetlands here in St. Lucia. I would like to thank the panel, Mr. Jeremiah Edmund from the Department of Sustainable Development, also from the Department of Sustainable Development, Mr. Calyxt, Mr. Henry from the National Conservation Fund, Ms. Jerson from the Department of Forestry, also off the platform we have Mr. Clark who came all the way from Viewfort, also head ranger for the Point Sabs Environmental Protection Area from the National Trust and Ms. Felix, Makiba Felix, fisheries biologist from the Department of Fisheries. They're giving us an outline of you know the work that has been ongoing to understand our wetlands a little bit more and the impact, the benefit that they have for our country. I'd like to thank you so much for watching. It's all the time we have for now the producers are calling. Do enjoy the rest of your observance for World Wetlands Day 2022 and we do hope that you have time to ponder some of the ways in which you in your community, whatever you can do if you have a wetland in your area, can do to conserve reverse degradation, reverse the damage that has been done in your own area and see how you could partner with organizations like the NCF, like the Southeast Coast Project, like the Department of Fisheries, Forestry, to really bring our wetlands back to where they once were. My name is Jesse Leon signing off for now. Do stay tuned for more programming. Goodbye.