Caribbean Environmental Health Institute

• Author: Duke Pollard
• Profession: Sitting senior judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the highest appellate municipal court of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
• Pages: 703-714

The Caribbean Environmental Health Institute 703

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THE CARIBBEAN ENVIRONMENTAL

HEALTH INSTITUTE

Long before the Conference of Ministers responsible for Health made the Declaration

on Health in 1977, it was generally recognised that sustainable economic development

required protection and preservation of the environment which provided the natural

resources component of the regional development process. In the Caribbean region,

efficient management of the environment is perceived to require a cross-sectoral

approach, given the interdependence of activities in the most productive sectors of the

regional economy namely agriculture, tourism, mining, fisheries and manufacturing.

Unless economic activities in any of these sectors are efficiently regulated, negative

consequences for the environment may be occasioned with adverse implications for

productivity in one or another sector. Furthermore, the environment of the political

entities inherited by the political directorate of the Commonwealth Caribbean in the

post-federation period, had already suffered from severe environmental degradation

occasioned by both the vicissitudes of history and natural disasters. The physical beauty

of the Caribbean region belies much of the environmental degradation experienced

over the centuries and the imperative of survival in an intensely competitive world

economy has influenced governments to promote economic activities which threaten

the integrity of the environment with irreparable impairment.

This was the context in which competent decision-makers in the 1970s recognised

the need for a regional organisation to stimulate, coordinate and play a catalytic role in

environmental management and environmental health, particularly in the areas of

manpower development, project development, information collection and dissemination

and applied research. The Caribbean Environmental Health Institute was the institutional

expression of this environmental consciousness. Subsequently, the Ministers of the

Environment at their first meeting in Port-of-Spain in 1989, issued the Port-of-Spain

Accord which identified environmental problems of urgent and immediate concern and

which basically corresponded to the areas identified in the proposed Environmental

Action Plan for Latin America and the Caribbean elaborated by the United Nations

Environmental Programme Secretariat. These were problems associated with natural

resources management (deforestation; watershed management; soil erosion, degradation

and loss; agricultural pesticide control; degradation of marine and coastal resources);

problems linked to environmental quality (housing and human settlements; air and

noise pollution; vector control and preservation of indigenous historical and

archaeological resources); and problems of global concern (climate change; ozone

depletion; preservation of genetic resources and transboundary movements of hazardous