CHARLES KONG SOO

Head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit (MEAU) of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh says that var­i­ous gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies are op­er­at­ing in si­los and have been not shar­ing in­for­ma­tion.

He said lack of co­or­di­na­tion, man­pow­er is­sues and fi­nan­cial con­straints are con­tribut­ing to the al­le­vi­a­tion of flood­ing, bad roads and cli­mate change in T&T.

He was speak­ing on Wednes­day at the 19th Meet­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture: An in­quiry in­to the var­i­ous mea­sures in place to ad­dress the chal­lenges of cli­mate change in T&T.

Re­spond­ing to JSC mem­ber Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian's ques­tions about what can be done to help com­mu­ni­ties in vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas that were prone to flood­ing, road dam­age and the ef­fects of cli­mate change from a plan­ning per­spec­tive, Ku­mars­ingh said, "One of the chal­lenges is that we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in si­los where­as cli­mate change has been recog­nised as a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment is­sue."

He added: "In or­der to build cli­mate re­silien­cy go­ing for­ward, then all of Gov­ern­ment and na­tion ap­proach is re­quired where every en­ti­ty that has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cli­mate change re­silien­cy needs to now in­te­grate all the rel­e­vant plans, poli­cies, stud­ies that we would have con­duct­ed."

"We can't have one su­per min­istry to im­ple­ment is­sues re­lat­ed to wa­ter and agri­cul­tur­al re­silien­cy as ex­am­ples, the chal­lenge is in­te­grat­ing and in­cor­po­rat­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions and poli­cies in the var­i­ous min­istries and agen­cies.

"The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of min­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the MEAU is to de­vel­op poli­cies, and plans to co­or­di­nate im­ple­men­ta­tion, but the ac­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to ad­dress on the ground cli­mate change im­pacts lie with var­i­ous oth­er min­istries and agen­cies that have that core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," he al­so said.

He said that was one of the chal­lenges he al­lud­ed to; a lack of co­or­di­na­tion, and the siloed ap­proach.

Ku­mars­ingh replied that one of the ways the min­istry hoped to tran­scend and over­come those bar­ri­ers was by the in­te­gra­tion of these poli­cies and plans in­to the re­spec­tive man­dates of the var­i­ous agen­cies and min­istries.

He added that these or­gan­i­sa­tions had to take own­er­ship of these plans and poli­cies, be­cause the stud­ies were com­plet­ed and it was on­ly to im­ple­ment.

Ku­mars­ingh said the is­sue of de­vel­op­ing cli­mate risk pro­files for com­mu­ni­ties es­pe­cial­ly will re­quire very gran­u­lar de­tail and the min­istry start­ed that with the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to cli­mate risk as­sess­ment.

He replied that the min­istry had the in­ten­tion of rolling out the rec­om­men­da­tions that came out of that study.

Ku­mars­ingh said the min­istry had de­vel­oped an im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for the study as well as a fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment plan; how­ev­er, it re­quired fi­nan­cial re­sources.

He said it was card­ed to take place this year, but be­cause of a lack of hu­man re­sources, as well as a heavy meet­ing agen­da, it will be post­poned to the first half of next year when they hoped to en­gage the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, min­istries, agen­cies, and di­vi­sions in look­ing at their rec­om­men­da­tions re­gard­ing cli­mate risk as­sess­ments.