'Climate change to affect drinking water, crop yields, insect population'

Ria Taitt Political Editor
Wednesday, February 24th 2010

Planning Minister Dr Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde yesterday warned climactic change would significantly affect agricultural production as well as cause a reduction in potable water, an increase in the spread of the vector population and a rise in the incidence of water-borne diseases in flooded areas.

She said climate change would lead to increased aridity of soil and decreased crop yields. She said increases in sea levels would lead to inundation and flooding of coastal areas and salination of productive soils leading to decreased crop yield and less available areas for agricultural production.

She said in terms of the water resources sector, the temperature increase would result in a loss of available surface water as a result of increased evapo-transpiration, which would be exacerbated by decreased rainfall. She said climate change is also expected to impact adversely on coastal zones. ’The reason we are pointing this out is not for gloom and doom, but to highlight that having understood the problem, Government is providing comprehensive and integrated solutions,’ Dick-Forde stated. She said Government was looking toward food security. Therefore, it had established the mega-farms and use former Caroni lands to enhance food production. Government was also promoting the use of compressed natural gas. Government was also developing a carbon reduction policy. She said Government was also looking at land management and had developed a national action programme to combat land degradation and to promote the sustainable use of land. She said Government was engaged in various projects to protect the coastal lands. She said the solar street lighting initiative, which hopefully would be incorporated into new housing developments, was another project aimed at combatting climate change. Dick-Forde said the specific projected impact of climate change on Trinidad and Tobago are an increase in annual temperate by 0.7 to 2.6 degrees Celsius by 2060, decrease in rainfall and a ’significant’ rise in sea levels by 0.56 metres by 2090. Source: http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161599744