Patrick Manning

The DVD The Burning Agenda- The Climate Change Crisis in the Caribbean, notes that coral reefs’ value to the region is between US$1.5 and US3.5 billion a year. Written, produced and directed by Owen Day, it highlights the dangers climate change pose to the Caribbean. The DVD was funded by the British Commonwealth and Foreign Office. The documentary, narrated by Che Rodriquez, stated that corals were extremely sensitive to temperature. And noted that in July and August 2005, when sea-water temperatures rose to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average for that time of the year, the worst mass coral bleaching events in the region were trigged. It stated that by early 2006, one quarter of the corals from Tobago to Florida had died.

“Scientist fear that some of the reefs will die in the coming century because of climate change,” Rodriquez said. And over the last century, according to the documentary, the global average temperature has increased by 0.75 degrees Celsius. The warmer temperatures have led to greater and more intense hurricanes. Last year, for example, the documentary stated, the Caribbean suffered the third most devastating season on record. And three years earlier, floods in Guyana cost the country 60 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, its President Bharat Jagdeo said in the documentary. Global warming is changing the nature of hurricanes which were moving faster. More intense and giving people less time to react.

The documentary quotes the latest report of the United Nation Inter-Government Panel on Climate Change, which stated that it was now beyond reasonable doubt that global warming was caused by man and the enhanced greenhouse effect. The Caribbean Community (Caricom) has its own climate change centre in Belmopan in Belize, the documentary noted. Climate change has also put food security in the region into question as warmer temperatures and unpredictable rain will cause a decrease in the production of rice, peas and corn, scientists have predicted. “Barbados, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda are already considered to be some of the most water-scarce countries in the world,” Rodriquez said.

The documentary also noted that the UN said that the threat of dangerous climate change becomes a real possibility, if temperatures rise more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To avoid this, there needs to be a 50 per cent reduction in global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, the documentary noted. An agreement in the reduction of such emissions is what will be considered at the UN meeting on climate change in Copenhagen next week. Interviewed in the documentary, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said. “What we expect to come out of Copenhagen is a limit on greenhouse gas emissions that are legally binding.

“But we want that done in an equitable basis and it is important that a country like T&T makes that point, because the basis for measuring these emissions which is on a per capita basis is not acceptable to us. “What that does, that shields the countries with large populations who are the biggest transgressors and exposes unduly the countries with small populations like T&T. “We have ten ammonia plants, seven methanol plants, one oil refinery but a population of 1.3 million people so on a per capita basis our greenhouse emissions are very high. But in absolute terms we put less that one per cent of the emissions in the atmosphere. So it is important that as we put limits on these emission, there must be equity in the way it must be done taking into account the requirements of small countries.”

And prominent University of the West Indies lecturer Prof John Agard also noted that negotiations in Copenhagen may not be easy. Interviewed in the documentary, he said, “Developing countries in the UN have a bloc call G77 and China. “So if you could imagine many small-island developing states in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, struggling for survival, are in the same grouping with China and India who are two of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world—they need to arrive at some consensus. It is incumbent upon these developing states to impress upon the larger members like China and Indian they cannot be exempted from emissions reductions.”

E-mail:prior.beharry@guardian.co.tt.

Tomorrow: Environment minister speaks about T&T’s climate change policy.