Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is MP, has is­sued a scathing re­sponse to com­ments made by the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum broad­cast, con­cern­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the COP26 Cli­mate Sum­mit.

Dur­ing the UNC’s meet­ing on Mon­day night, the Op­po­si­tion Leader had stat­ed:

“So Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has jet­ted off to Scot­land.  I for one would be very in­ter­est­ed to hear what he has to con­tribute at the con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change.  While the oth­er re­spect­ed world lead­ers will be dis­cussing this im­por­tant glob­al is­sue of cli­mate change and try­ing to find a so­lu­tion, what ex­act­ly would Dr. Row­ley con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion?  Is he go­ing to tell them that he dis­man­tled the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry I es­tab­lished?  He doesn't have a Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment.  Is he go­ing to tell them about our un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of flood­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go that he and his gov­ern­ment keep turn­ing a blind eye to?  Is he go­ing to boast to world lead­ers about giv­ing LED bulbs to cit­i­zens as the ex­tent of his plan?  Is he go­ing to men­tion that they have no plan what­so­ev­er to deal with any of the ma­jor is­sues fac­ing our coun­try in­clud­ing cli­mate change? Well, in­ter­est­ing­ly, some­one re­cent­ly told me that Scot­land has over 50 golf cours­es and some of the best in the world are in Glas­gow where the Prime Min­is­ter is, so, if you know you know. Golf­ing in Scot­land? We shall soon find out.”

The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by the Min­is­ter, in re­sponse…

As Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter I would not ex­pect the same inani­ty that Kam­la Per­sad -Bisses­sar dis­plays in Par­lia­ment to rear its flac­cid head un­der the guise of pub­lic con­cern. Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent facile com­ments about Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley “va­ca­tion­ing in Glas­gow” is un­for­tu­nate and out of touch with the re­al­i­ty fac­ing not on­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go but the rest of the world.  

As Min­is­ter en­trust­ed with the sa­cred re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, I ask that the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to stop seek­ing pet­ty points to make up for her re­cent em­bar­rass­ment in Par­lia­ment and ac­cept the fact that cli­mate change is no jok­ing mat­ter, or a mat­ter with which to play pet­ty pol­i­tics but a mat­ter of ur­gent con­cern re­gard­ing the ex­tinc­tion of all man­ner of life as we know it. I would al­so like to re­mind the Mem­ber for Siparia that this Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has noth­ing in com­mon with her gov­ern­ment of yes­ter­year and so when the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ters leave the coun­try on Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness it is for no oth­er pur­pose than that. In­deed, if I am not mis­tak­en, I no­ticed more than a tinge of en­vy in her tone; how­ev­er, I can as­sure the Op­po­si­tion Leader this was not a UNC Par­ty cruise.  This is se­ri­ous busi­ness for se­ri­ous peo­ple.

The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter’s mes­sage was well re­ceived to sig­nif­i­cant ac­claim for his con­tri­bu­tion. Amongst World Lead­ers our Prime Min­is­ter was able to set the con­text for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to date to mit­i­gate against the ef­fects of cli­mate change. In­deed, all of us here in Glas­gow felt tremen­dous pride in the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Lead­ers’ Sum­mit.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley is lead­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s del­e­ga­tion par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 26th Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change called COP26 in Glas­gow, Scot­land as Head of Del­e­ga­tion for the World Lead­ers’ Sum­mit.   In my Ca­pac­i­ty as Min­is­ter, I am the Head of Del­e­ga­tion for the High Lev­el Min­is­te­r­i­al Sum­mit and the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­spect­ed Mr. Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, Head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Min­istry of Plan­ning is the Head of Del­e­ga­tion for Tech­ni­cal Ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, in his ad­dress to the World Lead­ers Sum­mit in Glas­gow Scot­land, which aired on lo­cal news chan­nels in Trinidad and To­ba­go and is avail­able on the UN’s web­site spoke of the need to raise cli­mate change “adap­ta­tion, am­bi­tion and ac­tion” while work­ing for the sur­vival of not just mankind but all species.  Does that sound like some­one out to va­ca­tion and have “a good time” at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense? Just on the off chance that the Op­po­si­tion Leader is as clue­less as she ap­pears for her ed­i­fi­ca­tion as well as the mis­guid­ed souls who be­lieve her fal­lac­i­es, some of the achieve­ments and projects high­light­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter are as fol­lows:

“We are in the process of es­tab­lish­ing the largest util­i­ty-scale so­lar re­new­able en­er­gy project in the Caribbean with a ca­pac­i­ty of 112 megawatts, ac­count­ing for 10% of our pow­er needs, and we plan to in­crease this com­ple­ment to 30% by 2030.

We have de­vel­oped an e-mo­bil­i­ty pol­i­cy and we are al­ready im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to phase-in elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

We rec­og­nize the need to ad­dress the so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the en­er­gy tran­si­tion and have de­vel­oped a Just Tran­si­tion of the Work­force Pol­i­cy aimed at reskilling, re­tool­ing and de­vel­op­ing new ca­pac­i­ty for a low-car­bon econ­o­my;

We are pur­su­ing mea­sures to fa­cil­i­tate in­vest­ment in green hy­dro­gen to pro­vide green feed­stock to our vi­brant petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try. We in­tend to ex­plore the use of in­dus­try-gen­er­at­ed CO₂ in pos­si­ble car­bon se­ques­tra­tion projects.”

As usu­al Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is out of touch with re­al­i­ty.

Madam, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment has been for the last six (6) years, the Min­istry with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the en­vi­ron­ment and this is sup­port­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

As Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, I wish to re­mind the Op­po­si­tion leader that since 1995 Trinidad and To­ba­go took the bold step of es­tab­lish­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) an in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty in its com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing a na­tion­al strat­e­gy of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Fur­ther­more in 2018, the Gov­ern­ment, in ac­cor­dance with the EM Act up­dat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy which was al­so laid in par­lia­ment in No­vem­ber 2018. This Pol­i­cy clear­ly ar­tic­u­lates the pri­or­i­ties de­ter­mined by the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go as crit­i­cal to achiev­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ul­ti­mate­ly sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Vi­sion 2030 which is gov­ern­ment’s over­ar­ch­ing de­vel­op­ment agen­da that builds a path­way to the fu­ture, places the en­vi­ron­ment at the cen­tre of so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and the en­act­ment of the Waste Man­age­ment Rules is con­crete demon­stra­tion of gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment.

Oth­er el­e­ments of gov­ern­ment's en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­da in­clude the 2019 amend­ment to the wa­ter pol­lu­tion rules, des­ig­na­tion of our na­tion­al bird, the scar­let ibis as an en­vi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tive species, es­tab­lish­ment and sup­port of a sea tur­tle task force, the de­vel­op­ment of a mon­i­tor­ing re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion (MRV) sys­tem to pro­duce ac­cu­rate, trans­par­ent, com­pa­ra­ble, com­plete and con­sis­tent in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the emis­sion and mit­i­ga­tion of green­house gas­es.  We are al­so fo­cus­ing on new cool­ing meth­ods through dis­trict cool­ing and the con­tin­ued phas­ing out of ozone gas­es in the re­frig­er­a­tion and air con­di­tion­ing (RAC) sec­tor and train­ing of RAC pro­fes­sion­als is on­go­ing.

Fi­nal­ly, I wish to em­pha­size that cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion is em­bed­ded in the na­tion­al pol­i­cy through the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy (Vi­sion 2030), where Theme 5 is ‘Plac­ing the en­vi­ron­ment at the cen­tre of so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment’.  It is part of the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery through Pri­or­i­ty Area 5: ‘Build­ing cli­mate and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­silience and is a key part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ments to at­tain the glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal #13, Cli­mate Ac­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader’s fee­ble sal­vo re­gard­ing Dr. Row­ley il­lus­trates her lack of even ba­sic re­search skills. The Golf trav­el sea­son is typ­i­cal­ly from April to Oc­to­ber as No­vem­ber tends to be too frigid. A sim­ple google search would re­veal the fact. Per­haps the Mem­ber from Siparia has so­cial­ly dis­tanced her­self from the truth.

As some­one who re­cy­cles un­truths, in­nu­en­does, and in­sin­u­a­tions Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar should ex­pound the same en­er­gy to­wards the plan­et.