“Check number four!”
My brother-in-law Paddy up in Canada is mostly into food and fillies. So when I saw the above message and the link to a website, I expected a tantalizing dish or leggy Arabian.
I was wrong.
The article was titled 10 Countries Most At Risk and, in another place, 10 Countries You May Never See Again. Robin Esrock, the author, is a Vancouver-based travel writer, co-host of the series Word Travels, has been published in over a dozen newspapers worldwide and lectures across Canada. Maybe he knows something. The link is http://travel.sympatico.ca/RobinEsrock/Articles/countries_at_risk.htm
Two of these countries, the Maldives and Tuvalu in the Pacific, are already considering relocating their entire populations. Others face massive disasters from flooding, melting glaciers, drought, climate change and rising sea levels.
Of country number four, Esrock writes: “A popular winter getaway, [it] is facing more intense hurricanes, coastal erosion, rising sea levels and damaging coral bleaching. The government has been working for nearly 30 years to protect its threatened coastal zone, which, thanks to tourism, also serves as the country’s best economic resource.
“It has spent millions of dollars helping to stabilize erosion along its 97km stretch of coastline, including building a waterfront promenade that doubles as a tourist attraction and coastal buffer for devastating windstorms.”
Yes, friends, country number four in this “most at risk” list is Barbados!
Alarmist? Exaggerated? Nonsense? Perhaps.
But read on . . . .
First, our Dr Leonard Nurse, Nobel Prize sharer, is not one of those blowhard UWI types “all sound and fury signifying nothing”. He speaks with the quiet authority of a man who knows his onions and he leaves no doubt that global warming and climate change are a reality.
Ask him to show you the coastal areas of Barbados which would be underwater with even a moderate surge from a hurricane or volcanic eruption.
Secondly, those of us who revel in the panoramic view from Cherry Tree Hill can no longer do so without a twinge of anxiety. Originally, we are told, Barbados was an oval-shaped island. Then, maybe 350 000 years ago the coral cap from this Scotland District slid into the sea leaving a very exposed and vulnerable underbelly.
Could it happen again? I don’t know. But there are worrying signs.
The Horse Hill area and Surinam seem to be on the move, big time. St Joseph’s Church abandoned, its wall a gaping crack. William Burton, a hiker who has scaled Kilimanjero and toured the Antarctic, tells of major slips in some St Joseph areas.
The erosion control measures once rigorously implemented and maintained by the Soil Conservation Unit – terraces, gabion-controlled waterways – are now abandoned in many areas. Hillsides you could walk, roads you could drive, are now deep gullies and craters.
We seem to have given up the fight and a lot of Barbados is washing into the sea.
To make matters worse, the protective Walkers sand dunes and Greenland clay hills are being mercilessly mined – sand for construction and golf courses, shale for the cement factory.
And house-building continues to be permitted in unstable hilly areas.
Someday in the foreseeable future we may stand at Cherry Tree Hill and watch the sea lapping inland with Cattlewash, Belleplaine, Shorey Village, Greenland, my farm and Foster’s Funland underwater. Patrons at Farley Hill jams may be able to fish from the bandstand for sharks
not unlike those whose greed and inaction contributed to make Barbados a country you may never see again.
In similar vein, we back Denis Kellman’s wish that we move past pit toilets, but only if he hopes to replace them with waterless composter versions. These are safe, sanitary and completely odour-free.
I hope to install one myself in the near future.
As a country in the world’s top ten for scarce water, there is no way we should be using an estimated 7 000 gallons of pure drinking water per person per year to flush toilets. Get serious, Barbados!
On a very sad note, good friend and benefactor Richard Gale has been under the weather recently. We pray for his full recovery. Richard was bestman at our wedding.
He made up for that, however, by having the wife and I up for dinner every week for many a year.
Hang in there, my brother!
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator. Email [email protected]
