Dawn Breaker's Reflections

As a concerned individual who lived 9 (nine) years in Honduras as a child and visited a handful of the less isolated Garifuna villages that could be reached by road along the Caribbean Coast of Honduras when coconut groves were more abundant and healthy, I am now sadly learning about a devastating disease projected to soon possibly wipe out up to ninety percent of a specific breed of very important food and bio-fuel-producing coconut palm trees in Honduras, Belize, a few other parts of Central and North America and some of the Caribbean islands, and causing similar damage to different extents for different types of palm trees around the rest of the world in Africa and South America -- it is called Coconut/Palm 'Lethal Yellowing Disease' (LYD) in English; LYD is yet another new threat among many others to the subsistence and survival of the isolated Afro-descendant Garifuna population and culture of Central America who are heavily dependent on the 'tree of life' also known as the coconut palm. Https://www.thefreelibrary.com/BELEAGURED+GARIFUNA+ADD+COCO…I'm also reading multiple studies on what can and should be done about it and what should not be done today. Vast expanses of coastline with once-thriving coconut groves as far as the eye could see are now lined with 'telegraph poles' of dead, frond-less palm tree trunks that have succumbed to this disease.

As a Baha'I, I believe that the solutions to many social economic and environmental problems the world is facing are spiritual - the root causes of many such problems are hot topics such as racism, sexism, ageism, classism, disunity, neglect, apathy and indifference due to the non-recognition of universal principles such as the oneness of humankind, the equality of rights between women and men, the hand-in-hand agreement and advancement of science and religion, the need for consultation as a community decision-making instrument, etc. the list goes on and on -- and are deeply rooted in the human spirit -- however that discussion lies outside of the scope of what I intended to write about here, which is what we can do right now on the material or physical plane to begin to address LYD (Not that we shouldn't be doing things on the spiritual plane - as a matter of fact spiritual solutions must be put in place first before issues such as LYD can be addressed on the physical plane, else the issue, in this case Candidatus Phytoplasma palmae, will continue to spread and take on new forms that attack once resistant types of palm trees and continue to threaten the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of villagers).

We can start by enacting and enforcing legislation that does not allow large coastal developments with golf courses and large expanses of green turf grasses or ground-cover attractive to the vector (carrier - leafhopper and planthopper insects such as Haplaxius Crudus that look like leaves) to be developed near native coconut groves or plantations in order to keep the vector away from the endangered palms, by equally planting types of grass and groundcover not favored by the vector near groves and in between rows of trees, by funding phytoplasma biotechnology research centered on locating and identifying specific 'strains' of the culprit phytoplasma (for lack of a better technical word-pardon my ignorance) spreading and mutating in regions of interest/concern, and most importantly funding for finding a way to naturally produce and non-controversially, in a non-invasive manner, grow and introduce millions of seedlings of a non-GMO, LYD-resistant coconut hybrid that is much like the currently endangered variety of coconut palm favored by the Garifuna, the Atlantic Tall Palm, with its carefree maintenance, speedy self-reproduction capabilities and quality of fruit nut (texture, flesh oil and water content, aroma, and flavor) so that coconut-based Economic and Social development efforts in the region may continue to advance. It has been determined that fumigation and antibiotics are not a large-scale solution that will work, and are harmful for the environment.

On the other hand, LYD can also be viewed as a potential blessing in disguise and an opportunity for Caribbean coconut producers and exporters of its byproducts to begin to turn a profit as global demand for coconut commodities outstrips supply due to aging plantations with severely reduced production capacity in the Pacific Islands, thereby making prices rise to make local cultivation, harvesting and extraction efforts using new small-scale, affordable low-tech methods feasible, economically viable and sustainable. Economic interest in coconut commodities closer to developed markets, and therefore funding for coconut biotech research would increase and pave the way for the revitalization of defunct coconut groves & plantations and the creation of new, disease-resistant ones and open new channels for industry, trade and socioeconomic development for isolated populations in the Caribbean such as the Garifuna people.

https://www.cabi.org/isc/mobile/datasheet/38647