GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of Am­cham T&T Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine is ad­vis­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to in­vest in more mean­ing­ful En­vi­ron­ment, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) projects, say­ing busi­ness can­not equate to prof­its alone.

Speak­ing at Am­cham’s ESG con­fer­ence 2023 held at Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day, Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine said en­ti­ties al­so need to build mean­ing­ful so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes, mak­ing last­ing changes in their com­mu­ni­ties and coun­try.

“We should not have to wait on reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies to en­sure com­pli­ance, al­though we do need an es­tab­lished frame­work that sets ap­pro­pri­ate guide­lines to as­sist com­pa­nies in man­ag­ing the tran­si­tion to a green­er com­pa­ny,” the Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent ad­vised.

On the gov­er­nance im­pact on ESG in­vest­ing, Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine said trust is a crit­i­cal el­e­ment in this.

“Stake­hold­ers want to know if they can trust our com­pa­nies and the de­ci­sions we make be­hind closed doors,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine, com­pa­nies, there­fore, need to dis­close in­for­ma­tion such as their car­bon foot­print, pay equal­i­ty, and en­sure that there is no cor­rup­tion with­in their op­er­a­tions so that every­one is do­ing things ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and eth­i­cal­ly.

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who al­so spoke at the con­fer­ence, said while much of the fo­cus re­gard­ing ESG is on cor­po­ra­tions and busi­ness en­ti­ties, this al­so has very di­rect im­pli­ca­tions for gov­ern­ments, from which T&T is far from ex­empt.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the weath­er ex­tremes re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced, es­pe­cial­ly in east Trinidad, have mag­ni­fied the ad­di­tion­al per­spec­tives and ur­gency for gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions to con­sid­er the sub­ject of ESG,” Beck­les-Robin­son added.

The con­se­quence of this, she added, is that funds al­lo­cat­ed for oth­er per­ti­nent de­vel­op­ment projects such as schools, in­fra­struc­ture, and pro­grammes have to be re-di­rect­ed for re­cov­ery and re­build­ing ef­forts.

Beck­les-Robin­son said that loss­es suf­fered by in­di­vid­u­als and the dam­age to na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture high­light the need to in­cor­po­rate three main vari­ables in­to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment strate­gies, name­ly ex­po­sure to cli­mate risk, long-term so­cial ef­fects, and gov­er­nance is­sues.