Echoes of the flood­ing in south Trinidad and parts of Grena­da were heard at the COP29 sum­mit be­ing held in Azer­bai­jan, a far-away coun­try to the east of Eu­rope and the west of Asia. 

That such a coun­try so far sit­u­at­ed from the West­ern world can host COP29 to find so­lu­tions to cli­mate change dis­as­ters every­where demon­strates the plan­e­tary na­ture of the im­pact of the most chal­leng­ing phe­nom­e­non of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The re­cent flood­ing of towns in Grena­da and of res­i­den­tial vil­lages in south Trinidad are in­di­ca­tions of how cli­mate change is im­pact­ing the lives of peo­ple all over the world. While we here can­not ac­count for the rea­sons for the flood­ing in Grena­da, we cer­tain­ly know some­thing of the peren­ni­al flood­ing in those ar­eas in cen­tral and south Trinidad.

Fail­ure to suf­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly clear wa­ter­cours­es dur­ing the dry months of the year is a ma­jor fail­ing of the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. Res­i­dents al­so con­tribute to their own woes in the re­port­ed in­stances of dump­ing of all forms of refuse and sol­id items in­to the rivers and streams.

In­evitably, these are ma­jor im­ped­i­ments to flow in wa­ter­ways, re­sult­ing in an over­flow on­to streets, yards, and in­evitably in­to the liv­ing and work­ing ar­eas of res­i­dents. It has al­so been re­vealed that there are res­i­dents who have built their homes and busi­ness­es close to or over wa­ter­cours­es, de­spite ad­vice from re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The re­cent flood­ing has al­so not ben­e­fit­ed from this Gov­ern­ment’s claim of trans­for­ma­tion of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem to give greater au­ton­o­my and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the ad­min­is­tra­tions in the com­mu­ni­ty that know best the needs of res­i­dents and how to solve their prob­lems.

There has al­so been crit­i­cism by the Op­po­si­tion of claimed pref­er­en­tial dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources to those cor­po­ra­tions held by the Gov­ern­ment. In­ad­e­quate at­ten­tion to find­ing and im­ple­ment­ing so­lu­tions to our en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems weak­ens our claims about the lack of com­mit­ment by the de­vel­oped, in­dus­tri­al world to as­sist­ing with cli­mate dis­as­ters.

So, too, will our crit­i­cism of the said in­dus­tri­al gi­ants of the world have lit­tle res­o­nance when they fail to keep their promise to fund the needs of the de­vel­op­ing world for cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion.

One re­sult of the flood­ing dis­as­ters will be the claims for com­pen­sa­tion of loss­es by farm­ers and house­hold­ers. Those af­fect­ed will al­so re­quire day-to-day as­sis­tance af­ter the flood­ing to make their homes live­able again; es­pe­cial­ly those homes with­out able-bod­ied men to do the bull work of clear­ing and clean­ing for a re­turn to nor­mal­cy.

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris Al-Rawi, whose pro­fes­sion is about law and jus­tice, must sure­ly be ful­ly aware of the need for ex­tend­ing an even and just hand in as­sis­tance to all cor­po­ra­tions and to peo­ple af­fect­ed by the floods.

Most of all, Min­is­ter Al-Rawi has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to bring in­to full ef­fect the op­er­a­tions of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies in a man­ner that em­pow­ers them to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with this por­tion of their port­fo­lios.