Trinidad and To­ba­go is warm­ing 2.5 times faster than the glob­al av­er­age, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta. With sim­i­lar trends across the Caribbean, this is a grow­ing cri­sis which pos­es a se­vere threat to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in our re­gion. With­out ur­gent course-cor­rec­tion on cli­mate change and adap­ta­tion to its ef­fects, the Caribbean will face wors­en­ing loss and in­fra­struc­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion.

This was the stark mes­sage com­ing from the Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean event, “Is­lands All In for GST 2023”, which com­mem­o­rat­ed Earth Day and raised aware­ness of the Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate change process, the Glob­al Stock­take. The event fea­tured a spe­cial se­lec­tion of Caribbean short films in part­ner­ship with the Green Screen En­vi­ron­men­tal Film Fes­ti­val, the on­ly sus­tain­abil­i­ty-themed film fes­ti­val in the Caribbean.

A state­ment is­sued by event hosts Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean says the UN’s Glob­al Stock­take (GST) process can en­hance re­gion­al re­silien­cy to ex­treme events.

The GST will in­form coun­tries' en­hanced cli­mate com­mit­ments on is­sues re­lat­ed to mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion, and fi­nance, as well as cross-cut­ting eq­ui­ty is­sues. It al­so will as­sess how the world is work­ing to­wards stay­ing with­in a 1.5OC warm­ing lim­it, which is at the core of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC)’s land­mark Paris Agree­ment. The Paris Agree­ment com­pels every coun­try to do their fair share to demon­strate their cli­mate ac­tion am­bi­tion and con­tribute to the so­lu­tion. Every coun­try around the world must ac­count for their Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) and whether they are achiev­ing them. This will feed in­to the Glob­al Stock­take.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean re­lease, the Caribbean is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to a warm­ing lim­it above 1.5OC.  There is re­al dan­ger that many of its ex­ist­ing nat­ur­al won­ders and es­sen­tial ecosys­tems—such as coral reefs—may soon be a thing of the past, with cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences.

“With the Caribbean on the front­lines of the cli­mate cri­sis, the Glob­al Stock­take (GST) presents a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty for coun­tries to im­ple­ment ini­tia­tives to re­duce emis­sions, and for our re­gion and oth­er small is­land de­vel­op­ing states to re­ceive much-need­ed fi­nan­cial and tech­no­log­i­cal sup­port to ad­just and adapt to cli­mate im­pacts,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Guardian Me­dia’s Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist, Kalain Ho­sein, who was one of the pre­sen­ters at the event, paint­ed a grim pic­ture for Trinidad and To­ba­go if cur­rent warm­ing trends con­tin­ued.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, every sin­gle year since 1986 has been warmer than the 1961-1991 cli­ma­to­log­i­cal av­er­age,” he said. “Trinidad and To­ba­go has warmed at a rate of 0.24OC per decade since 1946. The last two decades have been the hottest on record. The trend is clear. We are get­ting hot­ter, faster, with de­creased rain­fall, caus­ing alarm­ing knock-on ef­fects to pub­lic health, agri­cul­ture, en­er­gy con­sump­tion and more. This is not good news for our coun­try.”

Ho­sein was an­nounced as an am­bas­sador for the Is­lands All in for GST 2023 dri­ve, which will ad­vance re­gion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Glob­al Stock­take. He is joined as an am­bas­sador by fel­low mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist and cli­mate cham­pi­on Seigo­nie Mo­hammed, who al­so pre­sent­ed at the event.

L to R – Kalain Hosein, Multimedia Journalist and Founder of the Trinidad and Tobago Weather Center; Rueanna Hayne, Director, Climate Analytics Caribbean; and Kishan Kumarsingh, Head, Multilateral Environmental Agreements at the Ministry of Planning and Development Ministry of Planning and Development, following their presentations at the Climate Analytics Caribbean event, “Islands All In for GST 2023”, as part of Earth Day commemorations in 2023. [Image courtesy Climate Analytics Caribbean]

Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, Head, Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, re­port­ed on progress with this coun­try’s at­tempts to re­duce its emis­sions via its Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) ini­tia­tive.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ND­Cs ad­dress emis­sions in the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion and Trans­porta­tion sec­tors and is per­haps the most am­bi­tious NDC in the re­gion,” Ku­mars­ingh not­ed.

“It al­so con­tains an un­con­di­tion­al com­mit­ment to re­duce emis­sions in the pub­lic trans­porta­tion sec­tor. The ap­proach is to de­vel­op the req­ui­site pol­i­cy, leg­isla­tive, in­sti­tu­tion­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to fa­cil­i­tate am­bi­tious cli­mate ac­tion as a holis­tic ap­proach,” he ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Ku­mars­ingh, T&T is “walk­ing the talk”, with sev­er­al im­por­tant al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing:

●   De­vel­op­ment of a util­i­ty-scale so­lar plant to gen­er­ate ap­prox­i­mate­ly 112 MW of pow­er, with am­bi­tion to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty to 30% by 2030.

●   Pro­cure­ment of 240 elec­tric bus­es to fur­ther re­duce emis­sions from the CNG ini­tia­tive.

●   De­vel­op­ment of a green hy­dro­gen roadmap, with as­sess­ment on the fea­si­bil­i­ty of wind pow­er both on­shore and off­shore to pow­er the green hy­dro­gen econ­o­my.

●   De­vel­op­ment of a net ze­ro plan con­sis­tent with the Paris Agree­ment to iden­ti­fy ad­di­tion­al emis­sions re­duc­tions op­por­tu­ni­ties and ac­tions to raise mit­i­ga­tion am­bi­tion.

●   De­vel­op­ment of a car­bon pric­ing and car­bon trad­ing pol­i­cy.

Mean­while, Di­rec­tor of Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean, Ruean­na Haynes, main­tained there is still hope for the Caribbean.

“We still have time to turn the ship around—the Glob­al Stock­take can help get us there,” she as­sert­ed.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions and know-how al­ready ex­ist to put us on the path­way that will avoid the worst and most dan­ger­ous cli­mate im­pacts,” she point­ed out.  “This glob­al mo­ment is de­signed to help us un­der­stand in more pre­cise terms the gaps that ex­ist.  Show­case the so­lu­tions that are al­ready be­ing de­ployed. Se­cure re­al po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ment for co­op­er­a­tion to go fur­ther, faster. All based on eq­ui­ty and the best avail­able sci­ence.”

The Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean di­rec­tor added:

“In or­der for the promise of this process to be made re­al, whole of so­ci­ety buy in will be re­quired. As a peo­ple, as a re­gion we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute. And in fact, have al­ready done so with a sub­mis­sion in­to the glob­al process that presents the out­come of re­gion­al dis­cus­sions on a Caribbean ap­proach to cli­mate jus­tice. We can con­tin­ue to con­tribute through en­gage­ment with gov­ern­ments on the up­com­ing po­lit­i­cal phase of the process. But crit­i­cal­ly, we should be prepar­ing to help to im­ple­ment the out­come of the Stock­take in the con­text of greater cli­mate ac­tion on the ground.”