COLE BAY–A lack of local food production, unrestricted and uninspected development, insufficient use of renewable energy, solid waste issues, no terrestrial conservation areas, and ineffective public transport have resulted in St. Maarten running at “an ecological deficit,” says environmental agency St. Maarten Nature Foundation.
A country in ecological deficit meets demand by importing, liquidating its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Nature Foundation has used an ecological footprint modelling tool to find out how the country is functioning as a country in terms of sustainable development. Using resources provided by the Global Footprint Network, the study results reveal the average St. Maartener “lives in a significantly unsustainable environment, even compared to other countries and territories in the region.”
Nature Foundation Manager Tadzio Bervoets said the Foundation thought it important to frame the discussions on sustainable development in terms of the country’s ecological footprint as a developing country.
The study’s results clearly show “we are one of the most unsustainable territories in the Caribbean and have a long way to go before we can talk about sustainable development for the island,” Bervoets pointed out.
Although steps have been taken, the situation with the dump, lack of protection of natural areas, especially on land, and the lack of support and recognition for the environment “have made us one of the islands with the most significant challenges.”
Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature. On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets the population of St. Maarten requires to produce the natural resources it needs and to absorb its waste, including solid waste.
The Ecological Footprint is expressed in global hectares – globally comparable, standardised hectares with world-average productivity. If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s bio-capacity, that population runs an ecological deficit. Its demand for the goods and services its land and seas can provide exceeds what the island’s ecosystems can renew.
Today, humanity uses the equivalent of 1.7 Earths to provide the resources used and absorb waste, compared to 3.5 Earths for a resident of St. Maarten, more than twice the global average. St. Maarten uses more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate, through a lack of sustainable development and support for nature and conservation.
“We must begin to make ecological limits central to our decision-making and use human ingenuity to find new ways to live well, within the nature’s bounds. This means investing in technology and infrastructure that will allow us to operate in a resource-constrained world. It means taking individual action, and creating the public demand for businesses and policy makers to participate,” he said.
“As we recover from the effects of the last hurricane season and prepare for the new one we must make sustainable development the central way forward,”
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/75486-country-running-at-ecological-deficit
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