Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go at a CARI­COM Re­gion­al Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in the Ba­hamas on cli­mate change.

The meet­ing is be­ing host­ed in Nas­sau, with the sup­port of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) Sec­re­tari­at, in prepa­ra­tion for the 2022 Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP27).

It is de­signed to bring to­geth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nance part­ners and rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss mat­ters per­tain­ing to mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion and means of im­ple­men­ta­tion pro­vid­ed for un­der the Paris Agree­ment, with a view to sup­port­ing peo­ple and liveli­hoods of ocean states in the Caribbean Re­gion.

The meet­ing al­so aims to cre­ate a fo­rum to en­cour­age and fos­ter bi­lat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al di­a­logue and net­work­ing, and ad­vance mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships to ad­dress the con­cerns of cli­mate change in a more sus­tain­able man­ner.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine the val­ue of such a Re­gion­al gath­er­ing and the call for it to be placed on the UN­FC­CC an­nu­al cal­en­dar as a re­gion­al cli­mate meet­ing.

The gen­er­al ob­jec­tive is to pro­mote un­der­stand­ing and aware­ness of key is­sues and con­cerns with­in the Re­gion in or­der to forge a path for­ward that nur­tures con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion, re­flects na­tion­al per­spec­tives, ad­dress­es re­gion­al pri­or­i­ties and gen­er­ates cli­mate so­lu­tions on the ground.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the En­vi­ron­ment, and, led by Min­is­ter Beck­les, plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate change agen­da.