Dr C James Hospedales,

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse

When flood­wa­ters en­ter our homes, when ex­treme heat makes it dif­fi­cult to work or sleep, and when dis­as­ters dis­rupt ac­cess to health­care, cli­mate change is no longer an ab­stract en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cern. It be­comes a ques­tion of pub­lic health, house­hold fi­nances, and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s TT$63.4 bil­lion 2027 Bud­get presents an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­front these grow­ing risks. But be­yond head­line al­lo­ca­tions and promis­es of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment lies a ques­tion every cit­i­zen should be ask­ing: how much of our na­tion­al spend­ing is pro­tect­ing our health from cli­mate change, and how will we know whether it is work­ing?

Viewed through cli­mate and health lens­es, the bud­get con­tains wel­come in­vest­ments, but it al­so high­lights the need for clear­er pri­or­i­ties, mea­sur­able out­comes and sus­tained fi­nanc­ing to pro­tect the peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties most at risk.

Adap­ta­tion: Prepar­ing for what is al­ready hap­pen­ing

Flood­ing is among our most vis­i­ble cli­mate im­pacts. Fam­i­lies in Ca­roni, Pe­nal-Debe and oth­er flood-prone com­mu­ni­ties know the dev­as­ta­tion: dam­aged homes, lost ve­hi­cles and crops, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter, dis­rupt­ed school­ing and liveli­hoods, and enor­mous psy­cho­log­i­cal stress.

The bud­get’s $30 mil­lion Flood Mit­i­ga­tion and Ero­sion Con­trol Pro­gramme is wel­come, along­side on­go­ing drainage and dis­as­ter-pre­pared­ness in­vest­ments.

But are these suf­fi­cient, sus­tained and reach­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties? We need com­pre­hen­sive wa­ter­shed man­age­ment, func­tion­ing drains, and bet­ter land-use plan­ning and pro­tect­ed wet­lands, de­signed to meet an area’s needs. Cit­i­zens must al­so dis­pose of sol­id waste ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in­stead of in ways which clog wa­ter­ways and wors­en flood­ing.

There is en­cour­ag­ing news for To­ba­go in the mix: $100 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing for coastal pro­tec­tion, re­for­esta­tion and Sar­gas­sum re­sponse.

But what of Trinidad’s de­grad­ed forests, re­cur­ring bush­fires which cause res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, and dis­ap­pear­ing green spaces? Re­for­esta­tion, for­est-fire pre­ven­tion and wa­ter­shed restora­tion need iden­ti­fi­able fund­ing and mea­sur­able tar­gets, but do not make head­lines in the same way.

Heat: The emerg­ing health emer­gency

Per­haps the most strik­ing ques­tion con­cerns ex­treme heat.

Hot­ter days and nights, com­bined with high hu­mid­i­ty, threat­en out­door work­ers, school­child­ren, old­er adults and those with health con­di­tions like di­a­betes and heart dis­ease. Heat in­creas­es de­hy­dra­tion, ex­haus­tion and po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal heat­stroke. It al­so af­fects sleep, learn­ing, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and men­tal health.

Yet no clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able na­tion­al heat-ac­tion pro­gramme emerges from the head­line bud­get mea­sures.

We need heat-health warn­ings, shad­ed schools and pub­lic spaces, at­ten­tion to homes for old­er adults, ur­ban trees, cool­er build­ings, drink­ing-wa­ter ac­cess and pro­tec­tion for out­door work­ers.

Imag­ine Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do with ur­ban heat pri­ori­tis­ing vul­ner­a­ble neigh­bour­hoods.

Are our health fa­cil­i­ties cli­mate-ready?

Health re­ceives ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8.1 bil­lion, among the largest sec­toral al­lo­ca­tions. But how much specif­i­cal­ly strength­ens health sys­tems against in­creas­ing cli­mate im­pacts, which dam­age in­fra­struc­ture and dis­rupt health­care ser­vice de­liv­ery?

PA­HO’s SMART Hos­pi­tals ap­proach pro­motes fa­cil­i­ties that with­stand dis­as­ters while con­serv­ing en­er­gy and wa­ter, re­duc­ing emis­sions, and main­tain­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices – good for pa­tients and good for health staff.

We need ded­i­cat­ed in­vest­ment in re­silient fa­cil­i­ties, re­li­able elec­tric­i­ty, cool­ing, wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty and staff train­ing. Hos­pi­tals must re­main op­er­a­tional dur­ing floods, ex­treme heat and pow­er fail­ures.

Mit­i­ga­tion: In­vest­ing

in our fu­ture

Adap­ta­tion helps us cope with cli­mate change; mit­i­ga­tion tack­les its caus­es.

Here, T&T faces a dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act. Oil and gas rev­enues sup­port em­ploy­ment, pub­lic ser­vices and our econ­o­my. But con­tin­ued fos­sil-fu­el de­pen­dence con­tributes to glob­al warm­ing, with in­creas­ing­ly se­ri­ous con­se­quences for health, agri­cul­ture, fish­eries, tourism and our en­vi­ron­ment.

The an­swer is nei­ther to aban­don our en­er­gy work­ers nor ig­nore the chang­ing glob­al en­er­gy land­scape. We need a care­ful­ly planned just tran­si­tion, pro­tect­ing liveli­hoods while cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and lead­er­ship in re­new­able en­er­gy, green con­struc­tion, sus­tain­able trans­port and emerg­ing in­dus­tries.

The Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty Ini­tia­tive of­fers a use­ful frame­work: ad­dress­ing fur­ther fos­sil-fu­el ex­pan­sion, pro­gres­sive­ly re­duc­ing de­pen­dence and sup­port­ing a fair tran­si­tion for work­ers, com­mu­ni­ties and coun­tries.

Our up­dat­ed Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion (NDC) com­mits to re­duc­ing cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions from the trans­porta­tion, pow­er gen­er­a­tion and in­dus­try by 15 per cent rel­a­tive to a busi­ness-as-usu­al base­line by 2035, con­di­tion­al on in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port. The chal­lenge is trans­lat­ing com­mit­ments in­to fi­nanced ac­tion.

Are we in­vest­ing enough of to­day’s en­er­gy rev­enues in to­mor­row’s clean­er, health­i­er econ­o­my?

From promis­es to mea­sur­able ac­tion

The Caribbean Ac­tion Plan on Health and Cli­mate Change, ap­proved by Min­is­ters of Health in Sep­tem­ber, em­pha­sis­es ed­u­ca­tion, pro­fes­sion­al train­ing, re­search, col­lab­o­ra­tion and ded­i­cat­ed cli­mate-health fi­nanc­ing.

These must be­come rou­tine re­spon­si­bil­i­ties across cen­tral gov­ern­ment, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, uni­ver­si­ties, busi­ness, schools and com­mu­ni­ties. We al­so need sus­tained pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on how com­mu­ni­ties can re­duce cli­mate im­pacts on health.

We should pub­lish an an­nu­al cli­mate-and-health bud­get score­card com­par­ing com­mit­ments, fund­ing and re­sults. For every in­vest­ment, ask: Whose health ben­e­fits? How many peo­ple are pro­tect­ed? What emis­sions are avoid­ed? How will suc­cess be mea­sured? Fu­ture ar­ti­cles will ex­plore these ques­tions in greater depth.

The bud­get con­tains wel­come mea­sures, along­side gaps re­quir­ing at­ten­tion. Our cli­mate re­sponse needs to move to­wards co­or­di­nat­ed, ad­e­quate­ly fi­nanced na­tion­al ac­tion.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the mea­sure of a suc­cess­ful bud­get is not sim­ply dol­lars al­lo­cat­ed, but lives pro­tect­ed, liveli­hoods sus­tained and a health­i­er, more cli­mate-re­silient fu­ture se­cured.

Key re­source: PA­HOD­HECE260005_eng.pdf

The fore­go­ing is a week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to help read­ers un­der­stand and ad­dress the cli­mate and health cri­sis.