Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty is un­der fo­cus at the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS4), which opened yes­ter­day in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

One of the biggest sto­ries to emerge on the open­ing morn­ing was the news that the Mar­shall Is­lands an­nounced it would be­come a sig­na­to­ry to the treaty, mak­ing it the 13th na­tion to do so.

The move­ment is on­ly four years old and, recog­nis­ably, on­ly one Caribbean na­tion has signed on, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. How­ev­er, over 2,500 civ­il so­ci­ety groups and in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing two from T&T, have en­dorsed the Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty. Those two in­clude Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse Foun­da­tion for Plan­e­tary Health and PCC En­vi­ron­men­tal Club.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, founder and chair of the treaty, Tzepo­rah Berman, said there has been in­ter­est from oth­er Caribbean na­tions to join the treaty.

“They are very in­ter­est­ed in the con­cept of more in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion to en­sure eq­ui­ty in pro­duc­tion (of fos­sil fu­els),” Berman said.

Quizzed on whether they have had or are plan­ning to en­gage with T&T of­fi­cials on sign­ing the treaty, Berman said she couldn’t com­ment on dis­cus­sions hap­pen­ing with na­tion-states un­til they make their own de­ci­sions.

“One of the is­sues the treaty seeks to ad­dress is in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween coun­tries to en­sure eq­ui­ty and fair­ness in who gets to pro­duce what fos­sil fu­els and how much,” Berman said.

When pushed fur­ther on whether oil-pro­duc­ing Caribbean na­tions such as T&T, Suri­name and Guyana will be en­cour­aged to join such an ini­tia­tive, as it could po­ten­tial­ly lim­it their abil­i­ty to pro­duce oil and gas, Berman ex­plained, “What many of the na­tions I have been speak­ing to un­der­stand is that con­tin­u­ing to grow fos­sil fu­el in­fra­struc­ture is not on­ly a chal­lenge in terms of meet­ing their cli­mate goals but it al­so is an eco­nom­ic chal­lenge and a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be­cause we are in­creas­ing­ly see­ing the po­ten­tial for new fos­sil fu­el de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture to cre­ate lock-in.

“De­mand is pro­ject­ed to go down as the world starts to put in place poli­cies to ban the fos­sil fu­el car and to shift to­wards elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and re­new­ables and that makes coun­tries which are in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in new fos­sil fu­els quite vul­ner­a­ble.”

Berman as­sured the treaty does not seek to “turn off the tap overnight” on the oil and gas in­dus­try. In­stead, she said it wants to stop the ex­pan­sion of fos­sil fu­el use, the ma­jor­i­ty of which is hap­pen­ing in wealthy coun­tries. “Col­lec­tive­ly, na­tion-states need to man­age a de­cline in pro­duc­tion that en­sures we are not blow­ing the car­bon bud­get,” she added.

As the con­fer­ence opened yes­ter­day, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne asked, “Shouldn’t a glob­al car­bon tax be levied on these oil com­pa­nies that are con­sis­tent­ly en­joy­ing prof­its to pro­vide much-need­ed cli­mate fi­nanc­ing?”

He said the ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change have failed to meet the oblig­a­tions to mit­i­gate its ef­fects.

UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res backed up that state­ment in his ad­dress, say­ing, “Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States have every right and rea­son to in­sist that de­vel­oped economies ful­fil their pledge to dou­ble adap­ta­tion fi­nanc­ing by 2025. And we must hold them to this com­mit­ment as a bare min­i­mum.”

Guter­res said they are work­ing on “deep re­forms to the out­dat­ed, dys­func­tion­al and un­just glob­al fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture.”

Mean­while, the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly pres­i­dent, Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis, said, “If we do not un­der­take sub­stan­tive re­form of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial frame­work and mul­ti­lat­er­al ar­chi­tec­ture and their gov­er­nance, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries – in­clud­ing the SIDS – can­not un­leash their full po­ten­tial to mo­bilise much-need­ed re­sources to achieve the 2030 Agen­da and its SDGs.”