Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Projects are im­por­tant, but poli­cies are need­ed. This was the view of the Ger­man am­bas­sador to T&T, Dr Christophe Eick, who was speak­ing at the launch of Ger­man-Caribbean Cli­mate Talks, which cen­tred around Just Tran­si­tion in the Caribbean. The Ger­man Em­bassy, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean, is spon­sor­ing this lec­ture se­ries.

Ac­cord­ing to the Eu­ro­pean Bank for Re­con­struc­tion and De­vel­op­ment, “A just tran­si­tion seeks to en­sure that the sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits of a green econ­o­my tran­si­tion are shared wide­ly while al­so sup­port­ing those who stand to lose eco­nom­i­cal­ly, be they coun­tries, re­gions, in­dus­tries, com­mu­ni­ties, work­ers, or con­sumers.”

While T&T has a just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy, it is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net.

Dr Eick cit­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Re­new­able En­er­gy Agency in say­ing that green en­er­gy cre­ates more jobs than the fos­sil fu­el in­dus­try. How­ev­er, he added, “One of the lessons we are hav­ing in Eu­rope is that you need poli­cies. You need a clear di­rec­tion. It’s not a hap­haz­ard thing here and there. You re­al­ly need to have a na­tion­al or Eu­ro­pean, or re­gion­al ap­proach, not on­ly projects. Projects are a good thing, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause they show the ben­e­fits that tran­si­tion has on a coun­try and a re­gion, but you need clear poli­cies at all lev­els.”

Mean­while, Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean Di­rec­tor Ruean­na Haynes, who was al­so part of the pan­el dis­cus­sion near the end of the event, said, “When we deal with the ques­tion of the just tran­si­tion, it is key that we main­tain that bot­tom-up as­pect of things in or­der to en­sure that it is eq­ui­table be­cause it is re­al­ly the peo­ple at the lev­el clos­est to where things are hap­pen­ing that have the best ideas as to how things should hap­pen in the fu­ture.”

Ear­li­er on, Dr Eick tout­ed the po­ten­tial of wind en­er­gy in his ad­dress. The Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) has fund­ed the Pi­ar­co So­lar Project as well as a dozen small­er so­lar projects in T&T. The Ger­man am­bas­sador said, “The EU stands ready in lever­ag­ing the po­ten­tial for off­shore wind, which could be a game-chang­er in par­tic­u­lar for the pro­duc­tion of green hy­dro­gen in this coun­try.”

He fur­ther ar­gued for an en­er­gy tran­si­tion in the Caribbean, stat­ing that not on­ly does this re­gion “bear the brunt of cli­mate change,” but most coun­tries are de­pen­dent on im­ports of fos­sil fu­els. It is es­ti­mat­ed that Caribbean coun­tries spend an av­er­age of 13 per cent of their GDP on fu­el im­ports.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing at Mille Fleurs was Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor. Un­der his lead­er­ship, the Gov­ern­ment has de­vel­oped a draft just tran­si­tion pol­i­cy, but he said it was now time to take it a step fur­ther.

“To this end, prin­ci­pled ap­proach­es re­lat­ing to re­tool­ing and reskilling. Reschool­ing, up­skilling, and re­de­ploy­ment or skill trans­fer­abil­i­ty, are un­der­tak­en. Our next area of en­deav­our is to as­sess green job skills in the tran­si­tion and so in­form train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives as we al­so have to pre­pare the fu­ture work­force for the new econ­o­my,” Ku­mars­ingh said.

The head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment al­so de­liv­ered a warn­ing that if just tran­si­tion isn’t ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ed, there are reper­cus­sions.

He added, “Any de­vel­op­ment path that is aligned with cli­mate-re­silient de­vel­op­ment that in­cludes eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion must al­so in­cor­po­rate as­pects of just tran­si­tion for those whose liveli­hoods will be af­fect­ed. The ad­verse ef­fect of cli­mate change on those lives and liveli­hoods al­so has im­pli­ca­tions for un­em­ploy­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues such as crime. More un­em­ploy­ment cor­re­lates with more crime.” 

Al­so pre­sent­ing at the event were Di­ane Quar­less, Di­rec­tor, Sub­re­gion­al Head­quar­ters for the Caribbean, UN Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, and Dr James Fletch­er, for­mer Min­is­ter for Pub­lic Ser­vice, In­for­ma­tion, Broad­cast­ing, Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, En­er­gy, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in St Lu­cia.