RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

For much of 50 years, Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) has built a coun­try and its peo­ple on the for­tunes of fos­sil fu­els. And though alarm bells have been sound­ing for some decades now that the world must move to a more sus­tain­able fu­ture, life on the is­land of Trinidad is per­haps dif­fi­cult to imag­ine with­out an econ­o­my that de­pends on oil and gas.

In re­cent years, those alarm bells have got­ten loud­er. This may be due in some part to the dig­i­tal era am­pli­fy­ing the voic­es of con­cern about cli­mate change, but the sta­tis­tics of a warm­ing plan­et are fright­en­ing as they are con­cern­ing.

Just last week, the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) ob­served coral bleach­ing in Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go. This is caused by glob­al warm­ing. Fur­ther to that, the weath­er in T&T has be­come more un­pre­dictable with the two ex­tremes; vi­o­lent trop­i­cal sys­tems or un­bear­able heat.

Yet, in a world that is slow­ly dis­tanc­ing it­self from non-re­new­able sources, mov­ing T&T’s car­bon-in­ten­sive econ­o­my which is large­ly based on oil and gas, petro­chem­i­cals and man­u­fac­tur­ing seem like a Her­culean task. Why? Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), by the end of the first quar­ter of 2022, the pe­tro­le­um and gas in­dus­try, in­clud­ing pro­duc­tion, re­fin­ing and ser­vice con­trac­tors em­ployed 10,600 peo­ple. And while the en­er­gy in­dus­tries tend to make the head­lines in T&T, cli­mate change will af­fect oth­er sec­tors in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture and fish­eries. Those sec­tors em­ploy 24,300 peo­ple ac­cord­ing to the CSO.

“What it could mean for us as we em­bark with the world on the en­er­gy tran­si­tion low car­bon de­vel­op­ment, as we dis­place those car­bon pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries with clean­er tech­nol­o­gy, there may be re­dun­dan­cy, there may be so­cial fall­outs be­cause of the new job re­quire­ments,” Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh ex­plained. He is the head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor for the last 24 years and al­so lead­ing on cli­mate pol­i­cy in T&T.

Ku­mars­ingh fur­ther ex­plained how coastal com­mu­ni­ties which re­ly on the nat­ur­al ameni­ties that they live in like those who catch and sell fish, crabs and conchs will be af­fect­ed and how they fall un­der the pro­tec­tion of the just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy.

He stat­ed, “If the wa­ter regime for conchs and cas­cadoo changes then it af­fects the pop­u­la­tion of these species. What that would mean is that the peo­ple who de­pend on these sources of liveli­hood would be im­pact­ed be­cause then you have few­er re­sources to work with, and there­fore, they would be dis­en­fran­chised from self-em­ploy­ment in this case, and they have to be catered for from a just tran­si­tion per­spec­tive be­cause just tran­si­tion caters for the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty and the cre­ation of de­cent jobs for all.”

To cush­ion such fall­outs, trade union­ists in the 90s coined a phrase called “just tran­si­tion.” It was cre­at­ed to pro­tect the rights of work­ers whose jobs may be im­pact­ed by en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies while al­so cre­at­ing de­cent jobs as economies tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon fu­ture.

Last Sep­tem­ber, the Gov­ern­ment pub­lished a draft just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy for this coun­try which is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net.

Ku­mars­ingh ex­plained to the Sun­day Guardian why, though there will be op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­tool­ing and reschool­ing in the tran­si­tion, it is mov­ing slow­ly.

He said, “What you have to now do is cre­ate the job mar­ket for it and that is where catalysing the tran­si­tion would help in cre­at­ing the de­mand for these jobs and pro­vid­ing the skills that would be nec­es­sary for the fu­ture… Al­so, what needs to hap­pen...there needs to be a recog­ni­tion of the pri­vate sec­tor and its role in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion and clean tech­nol­o­gy tran­si­tion. Every set of ac­tors has a role to play in dif­fer­ent as­pects to catal­yse that tran­si­tion.”

It is a point Mark Lo­quan, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, fur­thered. He be­lieves T&T must cap­i­talise on the re­gion when it comes to green jobs with var­i­ous so­lar and wind projects tak­ing place around the Caribbean.

As the pres­i­dent of an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Lo­quan is all too fa­mil­iar with com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments’ virtue sig­nalling with­out any re­al in­ten­tion to low­er their car­bon foot­print, but he feels this will not last.

He told the Sun­day Guardian, “To avoid this sit­u­a­tion where I say I’m do­ing some­thing but you don’t ac­tu­al­ly see, you re­al­ly need to have the mea­sure­ment and re­port­ing com­ing in on an ag­gre­gate ba­sis. T&T will face this is­sue. When you go to COP27, COP28, COP29, etc, it’s not good enough to say you’re pledg­ing or this is your tar­get but it would ac­tu­al­ly mean you would have to have it peer re­viewed and in some cas­es cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Lo­quan ad­mit­ted the path to­ward just tran­si­tion for a coun­try like T&T that is de­pen­dent on the pro­duc­tion and sale of oil and gas is a tricky one.

“The chal­lenges will be not on­ly cul­tur­al change and changes in these ar­eas of poli­cies and frame­works, but I think it is al­so mon­ey,” he said.

“Mon­ey will be re­quired to ef­fect some of these things. In­fra­struc­ture will be re­quired, like if you’re go­ing to elec­tric ve­hi­cles, you may have the pol­i­cy, but you still need the in­fra­struc­ture.

“The chal­lenge will be to align our­selves in dif­fer­ent time frames. You have to work on all of these things at the same time but what is in front of us is en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.”

Pres­i­dent of the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber, Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver feels work­ers who have to tran­si­tion from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor to green­er jobs will find that their skill set is not out­dat­ed. He stat­ed, “I think a lot of changes we’ve been talk­ing about to de­vel­op a dif­fer­ent type of en­er­gy sys­tem cre­ates jobs in it­self.

“There’s a huge num­ber of jobs that I think can be gen­er­at­ed in things like the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pan­els in homes, in­stal­la­tion of so­lar wa­ter heaters, and retro­fitting build­ings to make them more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient. These are all ar­eas where I think there are a lot of jobs, and we have a lot of trans­fer­able skills in that area.”

The NGC pres­i­dent is of the view that T&T needs an en­er­gy roadmap be­cause the changes that are re­quired will not be achieved “next week or next year.”

In­stead, Lo­quan said, in the short-to-medi­um term, the fo­cus ar­eas that need to be looked at like pow­er and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy can be pri­ori­tised while oth­er as­pects which are longer term will al­so be on the radar.

Change is al­ways dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly when chang­ing from a for­mu­la that has brought so much wealth and for­tune to this coun­try down the decades but Ku­mars­ingh is adamant that it is im­per­a­tive, op­ti­misti­cal­ly say­ing, “The en­er­gy tran­si­tion is a glob­al par­a­digm shift and T&T as part of the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty has to be on board oth­er­wise, we risk be­ing left be­hind. It will be chal­leng­ing, but it’s noth­ing to be afraid of.”