What is ridge to reef?
The concept of Ridge to Reef is not new; sustainable development specialists already mentioned this in their reports to the united nations in the last century. It is from the year 2004 that it was more often adopted in studies and surveys of coastal ecosystems to become today the anchor of the planning of sustainable development of many lagoons and more particularly those of small islands in the process development, whose regrouping within the United Nations carries the acronym of SIDS for Small Island Developing states.
The basis of the concept is that coastal ecosystems extend from the crests of the mountains, hills or valleys closest to the coast and extend to the reefs. In terms of consequences, the lagoons and reefs “suffer” the impacts of the activity and the transformation of these land areas, especially in terms of the effluents disgorging from these areas going down to the sea.
The lagoons of our island are not spared. They suffer the consequences of pesticides used in sugar cane or other plantations, the felling of trees, diversions and obstruction of rivers and the disappearance of mangroves.
Today, many SIDS are rethinking or basing their development around the rehabilitation of coastal ecosystems to avoid at best the rapid degradation of their main resources, their lagoons.
