Future Centre Trust

Shortcuts

• Address
• Opening Hours
• Alerts
• Contact The Organization
• Claim ownership or report listing

• 

  Want your organization to be the top-listed Non Profit Organization in Bridgetown?

“We do not inherit the earth from our fathers; we borrow it from our children”

Twenty-four (24) years ago Barbados hosted the first Global Conference on Sustainable Development for Small Islands Development States (SIDS) in April 1994. The staging of this event lead to a number of significant outcomes for Barbados, one being, The Village of Hope Exhibition, from which the Future Centre Trust (FCT) was born. Officially registered in 1996, FCT was launched to raise awareness on the impact of human activities on natural resources, focusing on issues such as land use changes, agriculture & water resource management. The most significant milestone for Barbados during that time however, was the development of the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA, 1994). The BPOA established guidelines that Barbados should consider in order to balance natural resource conservation and economic development; Critical environmental focus areas, include; climate change & sea-level rise, management of waste, protection of coastal and marine resources, among others, fresh water conservation, energy and biodiversity.

Fast forward twenty-four years later and Barbados is grappled with significant losses and threats to the natural environment: including loss of marine critical resources. Gob (2002) recorded losses to Barbados fringing reef as up to 80% being seriously degraded, with 64 hectares of wetlands and mangroves remaining, and natural forest reduced to 2-4% (Plate 1 &2): ground water contamination, unmanaged water resources, and issues surrounding land use changes are other serious threats occurring in the Barbados land and seascape today. Ironically, the same issues highlighted for attention 23 years ago have seemingly remained in the forefront, despite the BPOA (1994, 2010), national, regional, global policies and Agenda being ratified or agreed upon.

Along with threats from contamination and loss of fresh water resources, losses to mangrove forest is a multi-level disaster issue. A country like Barbados which is 180 to 240 m above sea level is at a greater threat to tsunamis, tropical storms and other weather related natural hazards. Mangroves protect shorelines from weather related hazards acting as buffers, but on the economic and livelihood generation front, they are prime nurseries for marine commercial fishes, additionally, they are habitats for migratory birds and critical ecosystem and climate mitigation resource acting as carbon sinks. Mangroves are the first protection to coral reefs from land based threats, filtering land pollutants and protecting reefs from high sedimentation, which consequently impact on coral reef growth, recruitment and their ability to functionally protect landforms and maintain habitat status for reef species.

The last 50 years of human encroachment, rapid population growth has not been kind to coastal resources (Plate 3), nor aid the scarce water resources of the country. Notwithstanding, the local economy; fishers, dive operators, catamarans, hoteliers, micro-businesses, are dependent on these natural resources for the sustenance of their livelihoods. Some efforts have been made to restore, conserve the last remaining resources in some areas, e.g. Barbados has taken steps in the establishment of parks and protected areas to conserve terrestrial and coastal biodiversity, but efforts have not been significant enough to scale up resource management and restoration initiatives. This is where Not for Profit/Non-Government Organisations considered 3rd sector entities have tried to effect changes to improve on strategies for natural resource management and education.

 ...