Katie Medcalf, Environment Director at the Environment Systems Ltd based in Wales, United Kingdom, accompanied by team members Jamie Williams and Samuel Pike, made a detailed presentation of their work in Anguilla on Thursday afternoon March 10 at the Raymond E. Guishard Football Stadium conference room. The company, which works across the world, specialises in scientific data collection to enable the strategic assessment of where to best place land use actions to create a safer and more bio-diverse environment. The company has worked with Anguilla’s Department of Disaster Management, Department of Natural Resources, and the Anguilla National Trust (ANT), for a period of years to identify land use risk and offer solutions to reduce or mitigate their negative outcomes.
Her presentation, entitled ‘Strategic Land Use Actions to Make a Safer More Bio-diverse Island in Anguilla’, identified flooding and storm damage to the island noting that Hurricane Louis in 1995 caused over 270 million dollars in damages to infrastructure on the island.
Medcalf said, “We need to make Anguilla resilient to these events, and the way to do this is to make sure that nature is working with and for us.” Examples of this is the role of coral reefs, mangroves and sand dunes which protect the land from the destructive energy of the waves during storms by slowing down the waves and protecting shoreline land and homes. She said, “All these systems are so much more effective and resilient than anything you could build out of concrete. Let’s keep and protect them”.
The company’s project in Anguilla uses science to determine and identify areas of opportunity where restoration can be taken to lessen risks to infrastructure caused by storm events. Their 2019 satellite imagery of Anguilla, which was observed and recorded every six days, provided a detailed and accurate source of land and shallow water action, and highlighted areas where reefs and mangroves could be created to protect the land. This information was shared with their Anguillian colleagues from the Department of Environment and Disaster Management as well as the ANT who chose sites to target for restoration. Mangrove plants are being grown and planted in these restoration sites with many community groups and school children involved in this effort.
Addressing climate change, Medcalf noted that current projections show that by 2080, the Caribbean will see a two-degree rise in temperature, and drier, due to reduced and changing rainfall patterns. She said, “In order to meet the challenges of these predicted changes, it is very important that we make the environment resilient now. We have to protect what we have, and put back what we can.”
