UNITED NATIONS (CMC) — Although a major United Nations Ocean Conference is yet to get underway, officials and prospective delegates are already hailing it as “a dream come true” for Caribbean countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago.

The UN said protecting the oceans is among the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), “the blueprint for a more just and equitable world” adopted by the 193 Member States of the United Nations in September 2015.

SDG 14 on conserving and sustainably using marine resources is the springboard for the Ocean Conference, taking place at UN Headquarters in New York from June 5-9.

The meeting is especially relevant to Caribbean countries, according to Juan Miguel Diez, Director of the UN Information Centre (UNIC) for the region.

“The Ocean Conference is a dream come true for us in the Caribbean. It brings together SDG 14 but also the rest of the SDGs, and provides us with an amazing opportunity to continue to do our work to raise awareness about this particular goal but also to bring stakeholders together.”

The UNIC is based in Trinidad and Tobago, home to nearly 1.4 million people, whose existence is tied to the sea.

“Trinidad and Tobago is blessed with a particular phenomenon in that in our authority or geographic area, the ocean is 15 times greater than the land,” said Neila Bobb Prescott of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) field office in Port of Spain.

“We have so many livelihoods impacted by the health of the marine system, so hence we need to pay attention to it,” she added.

“We may not be the conventional sun, sea and sand people, but the marine resource is where you will find our oil and gas fields, as well where you will find the endangered and threatened species around the island.”

The UN said that although the twin-island nation moves to the beat of calypso, soca and other pulsating rhythms, it is oil and natural gas exports which power the economy.

The University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) estimates that oil and gas exports account for as much as 60 per cent of the island’s gross domestic product and the Director of Maritime Services in Trinidad and Tobago, Ronald Alfred, noted that the sector is closely aligned with shipping.

“Trinidad and Tobago is a member of the International Maritime Organization, and we do abide by all the conventions they have put forward,” for example, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL).

“It is actually in our national legislation, and we do have our personnel that go to ships that come to our shores and check to make sure that the vessels are compliant with these legislations, thereby doing our small part to preserve the oceans for a long time,” he said.

But, sometimes the ship steering the economy collides with another important industry—fishing, the UN said.

It said that, for the past 20 years, the group, Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, has “locked horns with the Government” over “everything that has to do with the sea and all the negative aspects,” according to group’s president, Terrance Beddoe, a former agronomist with FAO.

“Two Sundays ago, there was a tank, which held 150,000 barrels of oil. It sprung a leak at the bottom,” he told the UN. “The policy makers or the people concerned said it’s only 300 barrels, but we have seen this oil stretch a mile long and five miles wide in the gulf (Gulf of Paria, on Trinidad’s west coast). It must have an effect on the fish.”

The UN said navigating future maritime conflicts like this will partly be up to the young people currently studying marine sciences at the UTT campus in Chaguaramas.

Dr Reia Guppy, assistant professor of marine sciences at the university, believes that all major activity in the country – whether in the energy sector, or fisheries and agriculture – is linked to the marine and coastal environments, according to the UN.

“Shipping across the globe is the largest growing industry in the world, and, with the recent opening of the Panama Canal, there’s even more efforts for Trinidad and Tobago to be part of that hub, which means, of course, that, besides user conflict with fishermen, there is also the potential for invasive species coming into our waters,” she said.

“So, there’s a host of research and interest from our department and other environmental units within the University of Trinidad and Tobago to study the marine environment to ensure sustainable development for the country,” she added.

At times, the UN said those stakeholder conflicts can be personal or internal, pointing to Welldon Mapp, who works for the Environmental Research Institute Charlotteville (ERIC), a UN-supported non-governmental organization (NGO), which fosters natural resource awareness among the residents of his fishing village in north-east Tobago.

Mapp has wrestled with the dichotomy of being a fisherman and an advocate for the sustainable management of marine resources, according to the UN.

“The entire thing about conservation is that, when you’ve grown up in a family of hunters and you now realize that you have to protect what you used to use as a livelihood source, whether for food or income, and you realize that you’re creating harm to it and still you depend on it,” Mapp said.

“I think it was the right time in my life for me to take a stand – to really understand what I’m taking from the natural environment, understand how it could be protected, and to fall in place where I could create a balance for myself to make me feel comfortable as a person within my community and not really creating harm, but doing what I’m doing every day but creating a better benefit in the long run,” he added.

When world leaders signed off on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, they agreed to implement a plan of action for people, prosperity and the planet, that supports the needs of both present and future generations, the UN noted.

It said the secretary of Fishermen and Friends of the Sea is not one to mince words, whether railing against the industry, or local politicians, or the UN.

“The sea is part of the planet, and I don’t think the sea is more important than the land or the air. All of the eco-systems—the marine and the terrestrial—correlate and implicate each other in a homogenous mix,” Beddoe said.

“So, I think the sea is as important as the blood that beats in your mother’s heart,” he added. “The sea is as important as the air that we require to breathe. We think that the sea is an abstract thing because it’s ‘over there.’

“But I think maybe a planetary consciousness needs to shift, and we need to start thinking that the things that are not apparently within our realm of influence are, in fact, in our realm of influence,” Beddoe added.