The world is cur­rent­ly in the midst of COP26, a glob­al cli­mate con­fer­ence held year­ly by the Unit­ed Na­tions, in which mul­ti­lat­er­al talks are held on the ini­tia­tives and is­sues the world faces due to cli­mate change.

COP stands for ‘Con­fer­ence of Par­ties’, the par­ties here be­ing the na­tions that have been a part of and which had signed on­to the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC). This con­fer­ence is part of sev­er­al cli­mate ini­tia­tives en­act­ed by the UN, in­clud­ing the Ky­oto Pro­to­col of 1997 and the Paris Agree­ment of 2015, of which T&T is a par­ty.

This year, COP26 has a very dif­fer­ent tone to it, a graver tone than pre­vi­ous years. The re­cent In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) re­port on glob­al ef­forts at emis­sions mit­i­ga­tion and the ef­fects of cli­mate change not­ed that rather than meet­ing the tar­get emis­sions goals set for­ward by the UN­FC­CC and the Paris Agree­ment, the world is ac­tu­al­ly rapid­ly on track to sur­pass warm­ing tar­gets, with cli­mate change be­com­ing even more wide­spread, rapid and in­ten­si­fied.

Green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions are in­creas­ing glob­al­ly. Green­house gas­es trap heat and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has re­alised that over time, man-made gas­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­vel­op­ment of states have caused im­bal­ances and changes in the cli­mate which, if left unchecked, will con­tin­ue to neg­a­tive­ly im­pact hu­man health, as well as the plan­et’s food sup­ply, weath­er, oceans and land mass­es.

As such, the gen­er­al en­vi­ron­ment at the COP26 this year has been one of a more press­ing ur­gency.  Cli­mate ac­tivists and lead­ers of cli­mate-af­fect­ed re­gions (such as the Caribbean) are mak­ing their voic­es heard with re­gards to the grow­ing threat cli­mate change pos­es to the gen­er­al sta­bil­i­ty and sur­vival of their peo­ples.

Where does Trinidad and To­ba­go fall with­in this cli­mate cri­sis? How have we, as a coun­try, con­tributed to the cli­mate cri­sis and what have we done to mit­i­gate our im­pact on the cli­mate, as well as the ef­fect of cli­mate change on us?

Trinidad and To­ba­go is just about 1,981 square miles of land with a pop­u­la­tion of just over 1.3 mil­lion per­sons but our green­house gas emis­sions are high as one of the more in­dus­tri­alised ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean, with our econ­o­my’s main pil­lars be­ing that of oil and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (UN­ECLAC), Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy-based econ­o­my con­tributes an es­ti­mat­ed 40 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 an­nu­al­ly—a sig­nif­i­cant amount with al­most 90% of these CO2 emis­sions at­trib­uted di­rect­ly to the en­er­gy sec­tor through petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion (56%), pow­er gen­er­a­tion (30%) and flar­ing (3%). Cur­rent­ly, we are ranked sev­enth in the world for CO2 emis­sions per capi­ta and are on track to con­tin­ue our emis­sions pro­duc­tion.

So, what are our cur­rent cli­mate agree­ments, and what ob­jec­tives should we be meet­ing un­der them?

Trinidad and To­ba­go has signed on to the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC), The Paris Agree­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion to Com­bat De­ser­ti­fi­ca­tion (UNC­CD), among oth­ers. Un­der the UNC­CD, we are oblig­ed to co­op­er­ate in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in ar­eas of da­ta col­lec­tion; en­gage in the analy­sis and ex­change of in­for­ma­tion; work to­geth­er to pro­mote an in­te­grat­ed ap­proach in de­vel­op­ing na­tion­al strate­gies to com­bat de­ser­ti­fi­ca­tion; and en­sure ad­e­quate fi­nan­cial re­sources are avail­able for pro­grammes.

Sig­na­to­ries to the UNC­CD al­so must de­vel­op a na­tion­al ac­tion pro­gramme based on guid­ance from the Con­ven­tion's sec­re­tari­at and give reg­u­lar re­ports on mea­sures tak­en to im­ple­ment the Con­ven­tion.

Julius Smith, En­vi­ron­men­tal Bi­ol­o­gist at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, not­ed that there is in fact a na­tion­al ac­tion pro­gramme aimed at guid­ing the na­tion through a range of land degra­da­tion and man­age­ment is­sues.

“The na­tion­al ac­tion pro­gramme lists ma­jor stake­hold­ers, their roles, the is­sues in­volved in sus­tain­able land man­age­ment, and out­lines the agreed strat­e­gy for sus­tain­able land man­age­ment as well as degra­da­tion neu­tral­i­ty,” he not­ed.

In his re­cent ad­dress to COP26, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley spoke about T&T’s com­mit­ments and con­cerns with re­gards to cli­mate change dri­ven ini­tia­tives.

“While mit­i­ga­tion am­bi­tion is dri­ven by the 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius goal, the glob­al goal on adap­ta­tion has failed to achieve a com­men­su­rate lev­el of at­ten­tion and ac­tion,” he told world lead­ers.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so not­ed that as a na­tion, T&T’s size and fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ties af­fect our abil­i­ty to meet and stick to cer­tain cli­mate ini­tia­tives and tar­gets.  How­ev­er, he not­ed:

“Even as a small coun­try with lim­it­ed re­sources, we will make every ef­fort to re­port to the re­quired stan­dard, with some as­sis­tance, of course. We ex­pect oth­ers to do the same. This is the deal we made in Paris. We can­not go back on it now.”

Learn more about how this coun­try has com­mit­ted to the glob­al fight against cli­mate change, here...

T&T: Proud sig­na­to­ry to crit­i­cal Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments (MEAs)

There are sev­er­al lo­cal ini­tia­tives aimed at strength­en­ing the re­sponse to cli­mate change in our na­tion.  Un­der the UN­FC­CC, T&T’s oblig­a­tions and achieve­ments in­clude:

●   Cre­at­ing an in­ven­to­ry of Green­house gas emis­sions

●   Cre­at­ing an ac­tion plan to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of cli­mate change

●   Pro­mot­ing and co­op­er­at­ing in the de­vel­op­ment, ap­pli­ca­tion and dif­fu­sion of tech­nolo­gies and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able man­age­ment

●   Prepar­ing for adap­ta­tion to the im­pacts of cli­mate change

●   Con­duct­ing and shar­ing re­search and in­for­ma­tion so as to ed­u­cate, train and in­crease pub­lic aware­ness on the is­sue

As the world pre­pares for fur­ther cli­mate emer­gen­cies, T&T is poised to make an in­creased ef­fort to mit­i­gate its own im­pact on cli­mate change and emis­sions.

For more in­for­ma­tion on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T, please join our fo­cal point net­work by com­plet­ing the Google form found on the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion’s Face­book and In­sta­gram pages.