Tree planting goal in sight

Since the start of the Clean and Green initiative, about 400 000 trees have been planted across Barbados and environmental officials are pressing to ensure more than twice that number is eventually planted, National Tree Planting Coordinator Darwin Philips said on Friday.

Speaking at the launch of the latest Clean and Green exercise in Pavilion Terrace, Deacons Farm, St Michael, he said that despite some setbacks, the island remained on track to plant one million trees, as Government seeks to maintain green spaces across the country to help mitigate the effects of climate change,

“We have thus far planted just around 400 000 trees across this island . . . . We have a mandate that this country has signed on to with the Paris Agreement . . . which states [focus on] reducing or mitigating the climate effects with respect to global warming. We are on our way in doing that, in getting our one million trees. It may be slow, but we will get there,” Philips said.

Member of Parliament for St Michael North West Neil Rowe was pleased to have a new recreational site in his constituency, but used the opportunity to express disappointment with the amount of illegal dumping around the country, including in Deacons Farm.

“Please desist from taking it upon yourself to just find an open area to just dump what you don’t want…. I am begging you, those of you who know who you are, to just stop doing the illegal dumping in certain areas of the Farm. It then gives my team more work, especially the Clean and Green team that I have, when it comes to cleaning the area.

“I am begging you to just work with us, work with the Government, work with me, with the Minister to help make things a little easier,” Rowe pleaded. (SB)