Antigua SIDS4 Conference: Pressing Environmental Issues in Antigua and Barbuda

By Kwame Nkosi Romeo

The ALP administration never discussed climate change; only when it became a source of money did the ALP government, led by prime minister Gaston Browne and the Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the US Ronald Michael Sanders, start to scheme and speechify about it. 

Both greedily jumped on the climate change bandwagon with cap in hand, talking about the disastrous consequences of climate change.

ALP offers no responsible environmental governance regarding the dynamics of climate change, only ecological degradation! 

The citizenry campaigned against Browne's environmental terrorism, particularly the ecological damage caused by Peace Love and Happiness (PLH) in Barbuda, YIDA, WISEZ, and the Public Works Department (PWD) in Antigua!

So the notoriously infamous Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the US, Ronald Michael Sanders's observation is deceptive propaganda and the worst kind of hogwash; wishing to anoint Browne as the environmental savior is evil, disdainful, sinful, and continues to preach the politics of insincerity. 

Sanders was an advisor to former prime minister Lester Bryant Bird and is now Browne's advisor and financial campaigner for climate change grants and debt write-offs!

But the IHI crook Sanders knows no better, having been part of the environmental destruction in the twin-island state. There was no murmur about the effects on people's livelihoods or the environment. 

Sanders's practices involved sand mining, which damaged Barbuda and PLH's environmental transgression, destroying the coral reefs and the country's ecosystem.

Additionally, Sanders was silent on the Ecological damage to Greencastle Hill and the Bendals community, the destruction of the Mackinnons area for a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) involving the ALP government, Antigua Aggregates, and Devcon, the demolition of the NEMA by YIDA, and reckless dredging.

No ALP administration seriously considered climate change a threat; there was never any mention of climate change or any contribution to such a severe issue—only now! 

Now that billions are up for grabs, the ALP 'rattatrap' government is on the prowl!

ALP policy dictates continued instead of condemning the destruction of Barbuda's pristine environment, ALP and PLH plundering the Codrington Lagoon in Barbuda, a Ramsar Site, and ignoring the Ramsar Treaty.

Both Sanders and Browne saw no evil! The citizenry did not hear a word calling out either the PLH or YIDA. 

In defense of those two investors, the ALP created an Apartheid clique of laws, taking away the land that belonged to local people and assigning it to billionaires and themselves. 

This neo-colonial practice is clearly to make Barbuda a nation of refugees, similar to what occurred in Palestine following the Balfour Declaration. 

Is this what we want for the twin-island state to displace the Indigenous people of communal land?

All for the sake of money in the politicians' pockets, the corrupt deals with YIDA and PLH, CIP and investment ripoff, concessions, and wage restraint put people's livelihoods at a disadvantage. The people must overturn all these evil deals!

The ALP is heartless and cares nothing about the people, so for Sanders to be saying otherwise is a damn lie concerning Browne's noble heart and sincerity as Chair of Alliance Of Small Island States (AOSIS) 2021-2022, representing 39-member AOSIS with Sanders expressing: Browne spoke for the people of these countries when he told world leaders at COP27:

"We don't want to be climate refugees in anybody's country. We want to maintain our civilizations that have existed for hundreds of years."

So why should Barbudans be refugees in their country?

Browne never added anything new to previous discussions on climate change but emphasized the same agenda and openly took over Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the UN Dr. Walton Aubrey Webson's role as the actual Chair of the AOSIS; Webson served one year instead of the two!  

No prime minister has ever chaired AOSIS; that precedent was a backroom deal, a tradeoff for the next appointee.

Still, Browne's action suggests he has the divine right to sideline Ambassador Webson.

 

The agitation and policy have been continuous since the advent of AOSIS in 1990. 

According to Wikipedia," At the UN Climate Change Conference in Berlin in 1995, AOSIS advocated very strongly for a commitment to timetables and target measures for climate change. 

It gained the support of developed nations, including China, Brazil, and India. 

AOSIS has advocated since 2008 for including a temperature target to restrain global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels."

All the blame cannot go to a few major world polluters; responsibility rests with the Antigua and Barbuda government. 

The government must curtail CO2 emissions by growing most of what we eat, prohibiting mega cruise lines that pollute our ocean with wastewater and effluent, investing in solar power, and promoting a better organized public transport system. 

Did Browne not know the nexus of imports and shipping accounts for massive economic leakage and significant CO2 emissions? 

This CO2 release reduces the seawater's pH balance and creates Ocean acidification from the greenhouse gases of burning fossil fuels, cement production, and land-use change. 

These factors contribute to climate change and devastate the economies of small island development states (SIDS).

"Oceans have absorbed one-third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere from human activities, causing the seawater pH to decrease by 0.1 units since the Industrial Revolution". -Impact of ocean acidification in the coastal and marine environments of Small Island Developing States (SIDS)- April 24, 2017.

Plus, the Antigua and Barbuda government's lax landfill policy presents a looming crisis that evolved into a subsequent fire hazard, confirming the finding of David Spencer, a former manager at the National Solid Waste Management Authority, who asserts the landfill should have been closed in 2012. 

In 2015, a landfill conflagration, including several thousand tires, erupted. The tires burned fiercely and emitted toxic fumes, further endangering the environment to the disadvantage of the surrounding community and exposing governments' dishonesty and environmental failures. 

According to Ruth Spencer, landfill challenges include illegal dumping and construction of hotel waste, which harms the watershed and ecosystems:  

".....is 15ft higher than it should be and located next to a wetland so that it negatively impacts watersheds ecosystems."

Additionally, the Antigua and Barbuda governments have aggravated the problem. 

For example, the government's tariffs are unreasonable. CSL lacks equipment, such as waste compactors, to alleviate the waste crisis. 

Naturally, worsening garbage disposal problems concerning cans and plastic bottles constitute the burgeoning dilemma of residual contaminants in the nation's water table. 

This ecological disaster is present at the Cook's Sanitary Landfill (CSL) along with the nearness to the wetland area coherently threatens the environment, and this is problematic according to environmental activist Martin Dudley;

"All these sewage trucks pumping out your septic tanks have a temporary arrangement to dump at Cooks. That temporary arrangement is 20 years old. How bad is Cooks? I would posit that Antigua has a waste crisis that has not been recognized," 

(Cook's landfill is cause for concern - Antigua Observer October 14, 2017

By lessening CO2 "consumption emissions, "policymakers can improve local healthy food production without a foreign takeover, thus reducing carbon footprints and 80% of deaths from NCDs. 

Restrict the misuse of concessions, unfair trading practices, and robbing people's land to compete with local farmers. 

For example, with one investor controlling nearly 90 acres of land growing produce for most hotels, employing workers from the Philippines is responsible for the considerable leakage. 

But, policymakers support this economic plunder and apathy toward economic and social justice.

(CO2 emissions in the world and Latin America and the Caribbean)

CO2 emissions in the world and Latin America and the Caribbean | GRID-Arendal 

CO2 emissions; Our World in Data- How much CO2 does the world emit?

Which countries emit the most?

By Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Antigua & Barbuda Sub-project 1.1

https://www.iweco.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/IWEco_ProjectDocument_Antigua_Barbuda_2016.pdf

Annual global emissions of carbon dioxide 1940-2023 published by Ian Teso, April 12, 2024:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/#:~:text=Global%20carbon%20dioxide%20emissions%20from,by%20more%20than%2060%20percent.

Upcoming:

CARICOM Hypocrisy, Double Standard, and Lack of Solidarity Failed the People of Haiti!

Did Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the US Ronald Michael Sanders Plot to Overthrow Ambassador to the UN Dr. Aubrey Webson as Chair of AOSIS 2021-2022?