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Monday, May 5, 2025

Long, patient climb to a fossil fuel treaty

by

Ryan Bachoo
147 days ago
20241207

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Car­bon emis­sions are go­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion. This is de­spite ef­forts by COP af­ter COP to find a path away from fos­sil fu­els. Ac­cord­ing to cli­mate.gov, in 2023, the glob­al av­er­age car­bon diox­ide lev­el reached a new record high of 419.3 parts per mil­lion.

This is 50 per cent high­er than the lev­el be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Glob­al Car­bon Project, emis­sions from fos­sil fu­els and ce­ment will rise around 0.8 per cent this year.

The re­sults have been record tem­per­a­ture lev­els across the world, trig­ger­ing vi­o­lent storms and heat­waves in oth­er in­stances. In the shad­ows of such star­tling fig­ures, there is a Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty Ini­tia­tive (FFNPTI) un­der­way across the world.

On­ly 14 coun­tries have so far signed on, but the ten­ta­cles of the cam­paign are far-reach­ing, en­gag­ing gov­ern­ments, civ­il so­ci­ety, and the pri­vate sec­tor. An­tigua and Bar­bu­da is the on­ly Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean na­tion to have signed.

Alex Rafalow­icz, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the FFNPTI, told the Sun­day Guardian this past week that the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) sets a high-lev­el goal such as the 1.5-de­gree warm­ing lim­it or the $300 bil­lion an­nu­al cli­mate fi­nance tar­get.

How­ev­er, Rafalow­icz said it doesn’t get in­to spe­cif­ic de­tails of how coun­tries and gov­ern­ments are go­ing to col­lab­o­rate on spe­cif­ic parts of the tran­si­tion. Fur­ther to that, he added that oth­er pro­to­cols, such as the Ky­oto Pro­to­col and the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col, don’t fo­cus on fos­sil fu­els.

“There isn’t ac­tu­al­ly a space where coun­tries are ne­go­ti­at­ing on the pro­duc­tion of fos­sil fu­els and then the con­nec­tion of that pro­duc­tion to dif­fer­ent coun­tries’ en­er­gy needs,” Rafalow­icz stat­ed.

This is the gap the FFNPTI is seek­ing to fill. He fur­ther ex­plained, “The pro­pos­al of the Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty is to cre­ate a slight­ly small­er, more fo­cused con­ver­sa­tion with the coun­tries that are in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing a high­er cli­mate am­bi­tion and a high­er jus­tice vi­sion for ad­dress­ing the cli­mate cri­sis.”

Get­ting coun­tries to join that “slight­ly small­er, more fo­cused” group is eas­i­er said than done. Gillian Coop­er, who is the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tor of the FFNPTI, al­so spoke to the Sun­day Guardian, ad­mit­ting she un­der­stands the fear of some na­tions and groups to de­vel­op such a treaty.

How­ev­er, she said it must be un­der­stood that the block of coun­tries that sign on will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­sign the terms so they can have more say and con­trol over the mech­a­nisms of the treaty. The dilem­ma of sign­ing on to such a treaty ini­tia­tive is as com­plex for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries as it is for de­vel­oped coun­tries. Oil and gas-based economies such as T&T, Suri­name, and Guyana de­pend on rev­enue from fos­sil fu­els to bol­ster their economies.

Com­mit­ting to re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions could ham­per their growth. Coop­er said fos­sil fu­el pro­duc­ers in the Glob­al South are at “a re­al­ly chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult point,” but she added it is al­so a ma­jor part of why the FFNPTI was start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

She fur­ther ex­plained, “Many coun­tries—their fis­cal needs and their economies are de­pen­dent on the rev­enues that come from fos­sil fu­els—Trinidad isn’t alone. But there is a need for greater in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion for coun­tries like T&T to be able to tran­si­tion fair­ly and have a man­aged tran­si­tion from fos­sil fu­els in­to oth­er en­er­gy sources.”

Con­ver­sa­tions are on­go­ing with var­i­ous sec­tors of so­ci­ety, both pub­lic and pri­vate, to get more Caribbean na­tions to sit at the ta­ble and de­vel­op a Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty as it per­tains to fos­sil fu­els. De­spite mak­ing slow in­roads, both Coop­er and Rafalow­icz are con­fi­dent more coun­tries will sign on in the fu­ture.

“We are at a stage where of­fi­cials are open to hear­ing more about what the treaty ini­tia­tive is about. They are very open to speak­ing about what some of the re­quire­ments are that coun­tries like T&T, which are de­pen­dent on their fos­sil fu­el rev­enues, might re­quire in terms of sup­port from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Coop­er added.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with the Sun­day Guardian, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill la­belled the FFNPTI as an “im­por­tant tool in go­ing for­ward.” Enill now serves as T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Guyana, which is reap­ing rev­enue from its oil and gas for­tunes. How­ev­er, he warned the treaty ini­tia­tive has to face the prob­lem head-on.

Enill said, “When I was in en­er­gy and we were look­ing at this is­sue, we found that the Eu­ro­pean Union had a tar­get for the re­duc­tion of car­bon emis­sions, and when we looked at their to­tal re­duc­tion, Chi­na was putting that back in­to the sys­tem in one month, so that’s the scale of the prob­lem, and there­fore, to solve the prob­lem, you re­al­ly have to get the large coun­tries that are the prob­lem to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it.”

He, how­ev­er, said that small is­land states like T&T do have a role to play in such an ini­tia­tive. Enill added, “We have to ac­tu­al­ly com­mit to do­ing bet­ter what we have es­tab­lished. In the case of T&T, we have to move some of our plants that are very much con­tribut­ing to the is­sue be­cause they are based on oil, so we have to move them to gas, and some of the ac­tiv­i­ties we are in­volved in, we have to green it, and that is go­ing to put us in the same space the world is ask­ing coun­tries to go.”

He said this must hap­pen de­spite T&T con­tribut­ing less than one per cent to glob­al green­house gas emis­sions, en­sur­ing the coun­try “does not add to the prob­lem, but at the same time we don’t in­ter­fere with our eco­nom­ic fu­ture.”

Enill in­sists T&T is in an ad­vanced state in its prepa­ra­tion for the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, hav­ing moved from oil to nat­ur­al gas over the last six decades.

As the FFNPTI gains mo­men­tum across the world, it will al­so en­counter hur­dles in its cam­paign to move to­wards a treaty that is in black and white and holds sig­na­to­ries to ac­count. The or­gan­is­ers are con­fi­dent more coun­tries will come to the ta­ble in the fu­ture, even while some re­quire more co­erc­ing than oth­ers.


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