PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The British High Com­mis­sion and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) launched the As­sess­ment of Na­tion­al Car­bon Pric­ing Poli­cies in Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day.

In an event re­veal­ing the re­port at the BHC's res­i­dence in Mar­aval, High Com­mi­sion­er Jon Dean said, "This re­port takes the con­ver­sa­tion a step fur­ther. It sets out a blue­print to tran­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go from be­ing vul­ner­a­ble to in­ter­na­tion­al car­bon ad­just­ments to hav­ing its own re­silient do­mes­tic car­bon pric­ing frame­work. As Trinidad and To­ba­go be­gins ex­plor­ing its own car­bon-re­lat­ed poli­cies, this re­port pro­vides an im­por­tant ev­i­dence base to in­form dis­cus­sion and de­ci­sion mak­ing."

The re­port built on pre­vi­ous re­search re­port done by Pro­fes­sor Preeya Mo­han con­cern­ing Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nisms (CBAM).

She not­ed there were sig­nif­i­cant le­gal and tech­ni­cal de­fi­cien­cies to be ad­dressed to make pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion ef­fec­tive as she point­ed out cur­rent laws do not reg­u­late green­house gas­es, land laws lack pro­vi­sions for car­bon rights and pe­tro­le­um laws do not ac­count for un­der­ground car­bon stor­age.

"We are sus­cep­ti­ble to cli­mate change im­pacts and re­duc­ing our green­house gas emis­sions is how we can help com­bat against those im­pacts. I think the news re­al­ly should be that the re­port stress­es that these ex­ter­nal cli­mate poli­cies like the EU and the UK CBAM are re­al­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us here in Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op our own do­mes­tic car­bon price. It gives us that im­pe­tus to go for­ward, " said Mo­han.

She said that this time in T&T there are "bits and pieces hap­pen­ing" in terms of how we go about de­vel­op­ing the do­mes­tic car­bon price with the gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ing its ini­tia­tives and the pri­vate sec­tor im­ple­ment­ing theirs.

"You even have our civ­il so­ci­ety play­ers. But re­al­ly this presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all play­ers to come to­geth­er and go for­ward us­ing the re­port as that roadmap," she said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion it high­light­ed there is a bit of dis­con­nect on the top­ic across var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies with over­sight for the en­er­gy sec­tor in­clud­ing the min­istries of Plan­ning, En­er­gy, and Fi­nance.

"We have the tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have the agen­cies that are able to take up the man­tle to get us prop­er­ly em­bed­ded in­to a prop­er frame­work that al­lows us to nav­i­gate these wa­ters. It just needs us to come to­geth­er now and I think the re­port has iden­ti­fied agen­cies that will be­come what we call a des­ig­nat­ed na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty lead­ing the way on CBAM in Trinidad," said en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tant Frank Teelucks­ingh.

"I think the re­port has in­di­cat­ed the Min­istry of Plan­ning could be that des­ig­nat­ed na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty work­ing with very im­por­tant stake­hold­ers, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Min­istry of En­er­gy, and the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers that col­lect the da­ta on car­bon man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So the key thing is to get them all in the same room and have them talk­ing to each oth­er and start­ing to get MoUs signed be­tween the var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions that al­low the chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to start so that this DNA can take root and go for­ward."

Re­search on the lat­est study was done by Kereen Olivi­er of the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies.