The Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP28), which wrapped up ear­li­er this week in Dubai, was sup­posed to mark the be­gin­ning of the end of the fos­sil era.

That alone has ma­jor im­pli­ca­tions for T&T, still an en­er­gy-based econ­o­my that is slow off the mark in mak­ing the switch to re­new­able sources of en­er­gy.

How­ev­er, even more for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges are ahead for this na­tion, made more com­pli­cat­ed by the un­cer­tain­ty, post-COP28, over how the ob­jec­tive of a swift, just and eq­ui­table tran­si­tion, un­der­pinned by deep emis­sions cuts and scaled-up fi­nance, will be ac­com­plished.

These are mat­ters of par­tic­u­lar con­cern for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) like T&T that are par­tic­u­lar­ly at risk of cli­mate change.

The ten­ta­tive agree­ment to tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els—prime dri­vers of cli­mate change—“in a just, or­der­ly and eq­ui­table man­ner” di­rect­ly im­pacts this coun­try, which must now ac­cel­er­ate its shift to green en­er­gy and give more pri­or­i­ty to achiev­ing net-ze­ro emis­sions.

One pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment of COP28 was the his­toric agree­ment to op­er­a­tionalise the loss and dam­age fund. Com­mit­ments to the fund are more than US$700 mil­lion to date.

But this progress is over­shad­owed by lin­ger­ing con­cerns about cli­mate fi­nance, the “great en­abler of cli­mate ac­tion,” which is still far short of the tril­lions of dol­lars need­ed to sup­port de­vel­op­ing coun­tries like ours with clean en­er­gy tran­si­tions, im­ple­men­ta­tion of na­tion­al cli­mate plans and adap­ta­tion ef­forts.

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who head­ed this coun­try’s del­e­ga­tion at the cli­mate talks in Dubai, seems keen­ly aware of the ma­jor hur­dles ahead for T&T.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on the side­lines of COP28, Min­is­ter Beck­les ad­mit­ted that this coun­try will re­quire a lot of help, as tran­si­tion­ing is cost­ly.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter is con­fi­dent that the lev­el of con­scious­ness ex­ists in T&T to ad­dress cli­mate change, and it is now a mat­ter of “look­ing at the cli­mate risks and how do we adapt, how do we en­sure that we ben­e­fit from the fund and how do we en­sure that we ben­e­fit from the ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance that is there from many parts of the world.”

Min­is­ter Beck­les and her team will have to build and main­tain mo­men­tum post-COP28, with ma­jor tasks ahead, such as set­ting def­i­nite cli­mate tar­gets and up­dat­ing poli­cies.

Boost­ing cli­mate change aware­ness in the pop­u­la­tion al­so needs to be high on the agen­da, par­tic­u­lar­ly with some of its ef­fects al­ready be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced.

The year ahead will be chal­leng­ing. The T&T Met Ser­vices, in its dry sea­son out­look, is fore­cast­ing hot­ter than av­er­age con­di­tions in the first three months of 2024, with less rain­fall.

A great deal of work needs to be done, start­ing now, to in­crease pub­lic aware­ness of the need to con­serve, store and man­age wa­ter and to be proac­tive in tak­ing mea­sures to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of bush­fires and oth­er dry sea­son risks.

As a so­ci­ety, we tend to have a short at­ten­tion span with cli­mate mat­ters, but with all that lies ahead, that pre­vail­ing mind­set will have to change.

This year’s hot spells were a warn­ing that God is not a Tri­ni and we can no longer take for grant­ed that we have some spe­cial pro­tec­tion from ma­jor nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

It can’t be cli­mate busi­ness as usu­al in 2024.