For over forty weeks now, this Guardian mul­ti me­dia se­ries, Clean­ing Up The Mess has been cre­at­ing aware­ness about our ne­glect­ed en­vi­ron­ment which has wors­ened in the past decade due to the ab­sence of waste man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion.This week we are heart­ened as the Min­is­ter of hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Dr ROODAL MOONI­LAL be­gins a guest col­umn se­ries in this space start­ing with the press­ing is­sue of T&T's plans to re­duce its car­bon foot­print.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has no le­gal bind­ing com­mit­ment to re­duce emis­sions but we are com­mit­ted to pur­su­ing de­vel­op­ment path­ways that will fol­low a low car­bon par­a­digm as far as is pos­si­ble.Cli­mate change pro­jec­tions­for Trinidad and To­ba­go in­clude­for high­er tem­per­a­tures and low­er rain­fall.The mean an­nu­al tem­per­a­ture is pro­ject­ed to in­crease by 0.7 to 2.6 de­grees Cel­sius by the 2060s, and 1.1 to 4.3 de­grees Cel­sius by the 2090s.

Sea-lev­el in this re­gion is pro­ject­ed to rise by be­tween 0.13 and 0.56m by 2100 rel­a­tive to 1980-1999.As a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state, Trinidad and To­ba­go is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the ad­verse im­pacts of cli­mate change.Sec­tors that are like­ly to be im­pact­ed are agri­cul­ture, hu­man health, hu­man set­tle­ments, coastal zones, and wa­ter re­sources as well as cross sec­toral so­cio-eco­nom­ic sys­tems.Ac­cord­ing­ly we will pur­sue adap­ta­tion ac­tions or those re­lat­ed to cop­ing with the ex­pect­ed changes.

Green­house gas emis­sions for the pe­ri­od 1990 to 2006 in­di­cate that the en­er­gy, trans­porta­tion and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors ac­count for the bulk of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, ac­count­ing for an es­ti­mat­ed in­crease of 278 per­cent, 100 pe rcent, 86.7 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. Al­though Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­counts for less than 1 per cent of ab­solute glob­al green­house gas emis­sions, the Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the need to ad­dress these emis­sions in ac­cor­dance with the de­ci­sions un­der the UN­FC­CC.Ac­cord­ing­ly we will take mit­i­ga­tion ac­tions or those re­lat­ed to the avoid­ance or re­duc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions .The Gov­ern­ment has iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing rea­sons for pol­i­cy and ac­tion on cli­mate change:

1. In­te­gra­tion of adap­ta­tion in­to na­tion­al plan­ning

Im­pacts of cli­mate change are ex­pect­ed to be cross sec­toral, tran­scend­ing the bio­phys­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic sys­tems.Pre­pared­ness through adap­ta­tion plan­ning is crit­i­cal to achiev­ing the ob­jec­tive of sus­tain­able low car­bon growth to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of a green econ­o­my and in ac­cor­dance with the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals (MDGs).

2. Co-ben­e­fits of mit­i­ga­tion ac­tion

In­creased use of al­ter­na­tive fu­els, re­new­able en­er­gy and clean­er pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy will in­crease the qual­i­ty of the am­bi­ent air and im­prove the qual­i­ty of lives of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.The con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al car­bon sinks such as forests and coastal ecosys­tems will al­so en­sure con­tin­u­ous pro­vi­sion of food and sus­tain­able liveli­hoods for com­mu­ni­ties.

3. Eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties and cost sav­ings

Eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties are avail­able for the de­vel­op­ment and de­ploy­ment of cli­mate tech­nolo­gies, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Clean De­vel­op­ment Mech­a­nism (CDM) of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col, as well as re­alise cost sav­ings in re­spect of re­duced waste man­age­ment costs through clean­er pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Such op­por­tu­ni­ties will be ful­ly ex­plored across all so­cio-eco­nom­ic sec­tors.

4. En­hanced en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty

En­hanc­ing the use of re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy will aug­ment pow­er gen­er­a­tion and de­mand and pro­vide greater en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. Cli­mate change is glob­al­ly recog­nised as the sin­gle en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue of the 21st cen­tu­ry that pos­es un­prece­dent­ed threats to mankind.

The most re­cent sci­ence sug­gests that the prospect of lim­it­ing the glob­al tem­per­a­ture in­crease to 2 de­grees Cel­sius above pre-in­dus­tri­al times, as agreed in Copen­hagen in 2009 and Can­cun in 2010, is get­ting bleak­er with car­bon diox­ide emis­sions reach­ing a record high in 2010 ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency's World En­er­gy Out­look, and con­tin­u­ing to rise. Al­though a nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non, build­ing ev­i­dence sug­gests that there is an ac­cel­er­at­ed rate of cli­mate change as a re­sult of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty, pri­mar­i­ly the in­creas­es in con­cen­tra­tion of green­house gas­es in the at­mos­phere as a re­sult of fos­sil fu­el com­bus­tion, in­dus­tri­al process­es and waste man­age­ment.Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be left be­hind in the fight to save the plan­et.

To be con­tin­ued...