sto­ries by

RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pene­lope Beck­les has called for “trans­for­ma­tion­al im­ple­men­ta­tion.”

She made the call she de­liv­ered an ad­dress at the Unit­ed Na­tions 27th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Tues­day.

Beck­les, who is lead­ing T&T’s del­e­ga­tion at the cli­mate change talks, used her ad­dress to the del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence to call for cli­mate fi­nanc­ing for af­fect­ed small is­lands, while tout­ing T&T’s progress to­wards re­new­able en­er­gy.

“This must be an im­ple­men­ta­tion COP. Even while we en­hance our am­bi­tion, it is im­por­tant that we shift in­to trans­for­ma­tion­al im­ple­men­ta­tion. We must move be­yond pledges to ac­tion,” Beck­les told the con­fer­ence.

She point­ed to the “un­prece­dent­ed rain­fall” T&T ex­pe­ri­enced over the last month and the loss and dam­age in­curred by many cit­i­zens as she made a case for fund­ing for small is­land states.

She added, “This is not a time for low­er­ing ex­pec­ta­tion or for low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor agree­ments, COP27 must de­liv­er on the just de­mand from vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries for fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments on loss and dam­age.”

Beck­les sought to ramp up sup­port for adap­ta­tion to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple and ecosys­tems on the front­line of the cli­mate cri­sis.

“This COP must send a clear sig­nal to peo­ple every­where, es­pe­cial­ly the youth,” she said.

She ad­dressed that the con­fer­ence as COP27 marked the theme of en­er­gy yes­ter­day. With its own car­bon foot­print a con­cern, the min­is­ter as­sured the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that T&T is work­ing to­wards a green­er fu­ture, say­ing the coun­try is un­der­tak­ing “wide­spread pol­i­cy re­form” to sup­port the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Paris Agree­ment.

“Step-by-step, we are cre­at­ing the ar­chi­tec­ture that will guide us to­wards a just and eq­ui­table tran­si­tion to a low car­bon de­vel­op­ment path­way,” Beck­les stat­ed.

She as­sured the del­e­gates be­fore her that T&T re­mains com­mit­ted to mak­ing progress on the loss and dam­age agen­da.

Loss and dam­age fund­ing has emerged as the key point of ne­go­ti­a­tions at the sum­mit, with the is­sue fi­nal­ly be­com­ing an agen­da item af­ter near­ly three decades.

Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to a fur­ther en­hance­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty to 30 per cent by 2030. This, she says, will form the ba­sis of the re­vised Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) and the na­tion­al ap­proval process is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed short­ly.

She con­firmed T&T will sub­mit its re­vised NDC be­fore the end of this year.

The min­is­ter tout­ed sev­er­al pub­lic and pri­vate projects that are mov­ing T&T to­ward more re­new­able sources of en­er­gy. She point­ed out T&T is pro­gress­ing on a green hy­dro­gen fa­cil­i­ty that will be ful­ly fi­nanced by the pri­vate sec­tor.

She added, “At the na­tion­al lev­el, the coun­try has de­vel­oped in­ter alia, a na­tion­al cli­mate pol­i­cy that will guide cli­mate ac­tion which is be­ing up­dat­ed to in­clude the Paris Agree­ment and the de­ci­sions tak­en in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of those pro­vi­sions.”

Beck­les said T&T is on the verge of tripling its re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty by 2030, fol­low­ing the in­stal­la­tion of 112 megawatts of util­i­ty scale su­per­pow­er, the largest in the Caribbean.

How­ev­er, she was cau­tious in be­ing over­ly op­ti­mistic about the tran­si­tion, in­stead ac­knowl­edg­ing that tran­si­tion­ing to a low-car­bon de­vel­op­ment will be sig­nif­i­cant but chal­leng­ing.

“T&T un­der­stands it is im­per­a­tive and not a choice,” Beck­les stat­ed.

The min­is­ter al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to talk about sev­er­al ini­tia­tives un­der­way by the T&T Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing a car­bon re­duc­tion strat­e­gy from which the NDC un­der the Paris Agree­ment was de­rived and a long-term strat­e­gy for re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions by 2050, with de­tailed in­ven­to­ries of green­house gas emis­sions and iden­ti­fied in­ter­ven­tion mea­sures to re­duce these emis­sions. She al­so said a fi­nan­cial man­age­ment re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for green­house gas emis­sions will be man­aged by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.

She hopes to take a cab­i­net note to soon for­malise the sys­tem in­to a leg­isla­tive frame­work to make green­house gas re­port­ing and mit­i­ga­tion ac­tions manda­to­ry.

She ad­mit­ted small is­land states like T&T will need as­sis­tance from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to tran­si­tion.

“A lot has been done, but I ad­mit, we need to go fur­ther. We can­not do this alone. We count on the sup­port of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to help us fur­ther our na­tion­al im­ple­men­ta­tion ef­forts to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis, in par­tic­u­lar, we would wel­come pro­pos­als from an in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form to as­sist coun­tries in their just tran­si­tion plan­ning. Such a plat­form would be a use­ful fo­rum for shar­ing ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons learned on these crit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties,” Beck­les said.

Her state­ment mir­rored that of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s in Glas­gow last year for COP26, when he told the con­fer­ence, “We have em­barked up­on am­bi­tious plans to re­duce emis­sions and build cli­mate re­silience, but we will need help.”

Ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue at the con­fer­ence through­out this week, where the min­is­ter has been part of sev­er­al pan­el dis­cus­sions on cli­mate change and its ef­fects on the Caribbean re­gion, while she has al­so been in­volved in min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ings at the ne­go­ti­at­ing lev­el.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of Cli­mate Track­er.