Ana Correia – Sustainable Developmentalist

ms. ana correia – susTainable deVeloPmenTalisT

Ms. Ana Correia, 28 years old from Ogle, East Coast Demerara, is the new Occupational Health, Safety & Environment Manager at Trans Guyana Airways. She loves gardening, dogs, and spending time outdoors. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s in Sustainable Development. After graduating from Florida International University she worked with an engineering consulting firm in Miami for a year before switching paths to study Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

When asked why she decided to switch career paths, she responded that she wanted to do something with more purpose that she could use to serve and better Guyana. Being on the cusp of rapid and transformational development with the budding oil and gas sector in play, she feels that Sustainable Development is precisely what Guyana should be pursuing right now, cautioning that “While it is natural for a country that has struggled economically for so long to want to capitalize on oil, we have to realize that it is possible (and essential) for us to do so in a way that prioritizes the environment”. She went on to say “The environment sustains us, so we need to sustain it. It is literally in our best (and financial) interest to preserve the environment because if we push the planet past its limit to sustain us and natural disasters start happening all around the world at a rate that we can’t recover from, we’re not going to be focusing on money, we’ll be focusing on survival”. She asserted that we are already feeling the effects of climate change here in Guyana with the absence of a dry season and the record flooding currently being experienced across the country. “Surviving the physical disaster is one thing, but as we are seeing, crucial pillars in our economy are trembling as a result; our food security is shaky right now because all the farms are flooded and the price of fresh produce has gone way up. Sure, we’re buying canned food in the interim but what would happen if other food producing nations started to go through similar climate change related disasters at the same time?”

In response to the question of ‘So then what can we do?’ Ms. Correia responded that we should be trying to make all of our processes as sustainable and regenerative as possible and that if there are harmful aspects that can’t be avoided (such as deforestation for mining), that they need to be offset with green initiatives afterwards or elsewhere. “We should be reforesting our mining pits and planting mangroves in coastal areas inundated by sea level rise. If an area is prime land for development and the decision is made that trees must be cut down (like the Versailles area on the West Coast), then the developer should be responsible for replanting an equivalent area somewhere else so that our carbon capture capability and biodiversity aren’t adversely affected by our development.”

However, Ana acknowledges that it is difficult to get for-profit companies to voluntarily take measures to offset their impacts or green their operations because these measures inevitably come at a significant cost. She believes that the government needs to start making hard policies that mandate offset projects for high-impact commercial and industrial development as well as softer policies that aim to educate, increase awareness and breed compassion towards nature. “The government has to set the stage for a more environmentally conscious population by setting an example. Mandating offset projects is one thing but companies need to be incentivized and rewarded for positive action or else they will just start to resent you [the government]. Like I’d be upset too if I was the only one spending money one something that’s supposed to be a collective goal. There needs to be effort from both sides”.

When asked for examples of “softer policies”, Ms. Correia said the first one would be including climate change education in the school curriculum from the earliest stage. “Once we start teaching kids about science we need to start teaching them about climate change, about all the things we do that hurt our planet, and all the things we can do to help”. Another potential soft policy she mentioned was giving people and businesses tax breaks for having green spaces. “There would be so many benefitstothat!Forone itwouldcapturecarbon,butitwould also help beautify the city and clean the air. Having people care forplantsinofficespaces wouldreducetheirstressand anxiety, that’s been studied and proven already”.

To close the interview we asked her if there was anything else she wanted to add to which she suggested that policymakers in Guyana hire more sustainable development consultants when drafting their policies and embarking on big projects, citing that there is a real need for holistic proactive thinking. “We are all part of this huge interconnected system and we in Guyana have a real opportunity right now to get this development thing right the first time around. There is a smarter way to develop than how those other big countries did.They’re now alltrying to retrofit environmental solutions ontosystems that weren’t built for that and it’sreally difficult because there’s so much infrastructure already in place - they’re locked in. If we want to we could do it differently… but we have to really want it”.

Ms. Ana Correia admires the work of the GCCI green committee for trying to focus more attention on supporting green initiatives in Guyana. She believes it’s an uphill battle but it’s a worthy cause. Her advice to this generation of environmentalists is “Don’t be discouraged. I know that sometimesitgetsreallyhardtostaypositiveandkeepfighting because it feels like the change will never come – I feel that way a lot too. But it will. And we have to keep pushing for it. The old machine will rust and fail. Our time is coming.”