Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) be­gan im­ple­ment­ing its Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM) last Oc­to­ber, re­search at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) has re­vealed this coun­try's ex­ports to the EU that would be af­fect­ed by CBAM amounts to US$ 1.9 bil­lion.

Fur­ther, it makes up 14.4 per cent of the coun­try’s to­tal ex­ports or 6.81 per cent of GDP in 2022. The Eu­ro­pean Union is T&T's sec­ond-largest trade part­ner af­ter the Unit­ed States.

This coun­try is among the largest ex­porters of am­mo­nia, methanol and fer­tilis­ers in the world and the pro­duc­tion process of these ex­ports is car­bon-in­ten­sive, mean­ing the lo­cal com­pa­nies ex­port­ing such prod­ucts to the EU face a hefty car­bon tax.

At yes­ter­day's 'First Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Stake­hold­er Di­a­logue for T&T' host­ed by the UWI, con­cerns were raised that the Bor­der Car­bon Ad­just­ment (BCA) mech­a­nisms such as CBAM could make the coun­try’s ex­ports less com­pet­i­tive as ex­porters take in­to ac­count the car­bon-ad­just­ed price. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, if the EU were to ex­tend CBAM fur­ther to oth­er pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts, more of T&T’s ex­ports would be af­fect­ed. Sim­i­lar­ly, if more coun­tries such as Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom, the Unit­ed States and Japan were to im­pose their own BCA poli­cies, this coun­try would be fur­ther im­pact­ed.

The di­a­logue brought to­geth­er in­dus­try ex­perts, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Gov­ern­ment Min­istries and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, re­searchers, mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety and mem­bers of the me­dia in­volved in the cli­mate move­ment. UWI St Au­gus­tine is work­ing with the In­ter­na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment (IISD) on a glob­al project on the im­pact of the BCA on coun­tries.

T&T has been iden­ti­fied as a 'con­cerned case study' ac­cord­ing to lead re­searcher on the project, Dr Preeya Mo­han, Se­nior Fel­low at the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies (SALIS­ES), UWI. "This meet­ing is where we would have sought feed­back from stake­hold­ers on po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of BCAs and how we can cope go­ing for­ward in terms of deal­ing with the im­pacts," she told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the event.

Among those in the au­di­ence was Philip Julien, founder and chair­man of Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed, and some­one who has been push­ing the green hy­dro­gen move­ment in T&T. When asked about the need for bod­ies like the EU to be flex­i­ble with its mea­sures for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States, while al­so push­ing the green agen­da, he told Guardian Me­dia, "I think T&T can be very well rep­re­sent­ed in those spheres with mul­ti­lat­er­als and multi­na­tion­als in that whole just tran­si­tion space that we are not un­fair­ly pe­nalised giv­en our own sta­tus and sit­u­a­tion. On the par­al­lel side of things, we can all move that much faster in the prac­ti­cal as­pect of things, re­gard­less of the CBAM, that just as in the in­dus­try we con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly to­wards ways of de­car­bon­is­ing our­selves."

Al­so present at the di­a­logue was Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, Head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment. He says the likes of Cana­da, Japan, the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries adopt­ing CBAM mea­sures "is like­ly to be­come the norm." He added such a cir­cum­stance will de­pend on how well it is im­ple­ment­ed, the ef­fi­ca­cy of it, and whether it makes sense in the long term.

"Notwith­stand­ing there may be more and more coun­tries do­ing this, what is im­por­tant is from the sup­ply side. If you put your house in or­der and you are able to meet some of the cri­te­ria or all of the cri­te­ria on which the car­bon tax is cal­cu­lat­ed, then you should not have too much of a wor­ry in com­ply­ing with oth­er Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment tax­es in oth­er coun­tries."

Ku­mars­ingh, who is T&T's lead cli­mate change ne­go­tia­tor at the glob­al lev­el, said this coun­try needs to think about it in an ac­tive way to start the tran­si­tion. "We don't want to mis­take the cliff's edge for the hori­zon," he said.