Gail Alexan­der

Cari­com seizes the chance.

Cari­com lead­ers at­tend­ing the 9th Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as who are see­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for emerg­ing Sum­mit com­mit­ment and de­c­la­ra­tions to be more close­ly aligned with Cari­com’s pri­or­i­ties were sched­uled to meet on Thurs­day with the US Gov­ern­ment “at the high­est lev­el” to re-em­pha­sise their pri­or­i­ties.

This was in­di­cat­ed by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne who is part of T&T’s Sum­mit del­e­ga­tion head­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

They were among guests at Wednes­day’s in­au­gur­al func­tion at the Los An­ge­les Con­ven­tion Cen­tre where US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden spoke.

Among points of his ad­dress, Biden said, “In the next few days, we’ll be rolling out an­oth­er new ini­tia­tive cre­at­ed in co­op­er­a­tion with many of your coun­tries. It in­cludes the US-Caribbean part­ner­ship to ad­dress the cli­mate cri­sis, which the Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris will lead for our coun­try.

He cit­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion among the Unit­ed States, Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Cana­da, Chile, and Mex­i­co — the hemi­sphere’s largest ex­porters of food — to in­crease food pro­duc­tion for ex­port, as well as in­crease fer­til­iz­er pro­duc­tion for trans­porta­tion. Biden al­so an­nounced an “Amer­i­c­as Part­ner­ship for Eco­nom­ic Pros­per­i­ty,” plan to help economies grow from the bot­tom up and the mid­dle out.

The ma­jor­i­ty of Cari­com’s 15 lead­ers are at­tend­ing the Sum­mit, save for Grena­da’s and St Lu­cia’s.

Cari­com’s sec­re­tari­at stat­ed yes­ter­day both is­lands are in the “throes of elec­tions cam­paigns mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for their lead­ers to at­tend” and Montser­rat can­not at­tend the Sum­mit as it’s still a British colony.

Browne, up­dat­ing Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day stat­ed, “Cari­com heads met in cau­cus on Wednes­day in Los An­ge­les en­er­gized by a recog­ni­tion that there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the com­mit­ments and de­c­la­ra­tions emerg­ing from this 9th Sum­mit to be more close­ly aligned with the pri­or­i­ties of Cari­com.”

He said a ded­i­cat­ed meet­ing was sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed for yes­ter­day be­tween Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean coun­tries “and the US Gov­ern­ment at the high­est lev­el with the ob­jec­tives of us re-em­pha­sis­ing our pri­or­i­ties, shap­ing a joint state­ment and pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­enc­ing the out­comes of the sum­mit.”

Caricom leaders at a meeting with US officials, including US Vice President Kamala Harris in Los Angeles, California yesterday during the 9th Summit of the Americas.

T&T’s del­e­ga­tion con­firmed Wednes­day’s pro­gramme in­clud­ed ad­dress by T&T’s civ­il so­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ry D Ince, con­venor of the Con­ven­tion for Elim­i­na­tion of All Forms of Dis­crim­i­na­tion Against Women (CEDAW).

This is a Unit­ed Na­tions con­ven­tion. T&T’s com­mit­tee is vol­un­teer non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cus­ing on aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion in that cause. A num­ber of Cari­com Heads in­di­cat­ed they were very im­pressed with Ince’s pre­sen­ta­tion

Sum­mit ple­nary ses­sion ac­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ue Fri­day be­fore Sum­mit con­clu­sion.

On an­oth­er front for T&T, on Wednes­day an of­fer to have US help on the tech­ni­cal side of T&T’s plans for re­new­able en­er­gy came when T&T del­e­ga­tion mem­ber En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with US Spe­cial Pres­i­den­tial En­voy for Cli­mate, John Ker­ry (for­mer Sec­re­tary of State, USA).

Young’s min­istry stat­ed they dis­cussed T&T’s agree­ment to sign the Glob­al Methane Pledge as well as this coun­try’s plans to iden­ti­fy methane emis­sions and re­duc­tion.

Young al­so dis­cussed plans to utilise re­new­able en­er­gy in T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty grid, start­ing with Project Lara and the 112.2 MW to be pro­duced via so­lar and the in­ten­tion to pur­sue more so­lar and stud­ies be­ing done to as­cer­tain the fea­si­bil­i­ty of wind gen­er­at­ed pow­er.

Ker­ry of­fered to have fur­ther dis­cus­sion through his of­fice with Young and the Gov­ern­ment to as­cer­tain what help could be pro­vid­ed start­ing on the tech­ni­cal side.

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