Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long­stand­ing cli­mate change ne­go­tia­tor, Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, has re­signed from the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment fol­low­ing what he de­scribed as “pol­i­cy changes.”

Ku­mars­ingh made the an­nounce­ment via so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, stat­ing: “It has re­cent­ly be­come very chal­leng­ing to per­form my job func­tions giv­en changes in pol­i­cy di­rec­tion as of May 2025.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ku­mars­ingh said re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions was re­moved from his port­fo­lio, prompt­ing what he de­scribed as a “prin­ci­pled” de­ci­sion to re­sign.

“I de­cid­ed that I had to take a prin­ci­pled stand be­cause the chal­lenges that I ex­pe­ri­enced over the past year stemmed from cli­mate change ne­go­ti­a­tions be­ing re­moved from my port­fo­lio and large­ly be­ing side­lined in re­spect of cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions,” he said.

“Hav­ing done this for 20 to 30 years, and I dare say hav­ing done a good job from all the feed­back that I’ve got­ten, it was some­thing that I had to as­sess, di­gest and re­flect on in terms of my next steps in my ca­reer and my rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the broad­er sense.”

“I took the prin­ci­pled de­ci­sion to demit of­fice, to leave the min­istry, be­cause I thought that af­ter do­ing so much over the past 20 or 30 years, I was not pre­pared at this age and with this lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence to sub­ject my­self to any in­dig­ni­ty and to keep my in­tegri­ty in­tact.”

Ku­mars­ingh said he sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the min­istry re­gard­ing the changes but re­ceived none.

“I was not of­fered the cour­tesy of a con­sul­ta­tion or pri­or dis­cus­sion as to why it was be­ing re­moved, whether I had done some­thing wrong, whether I had mis­rep­re­sent­ed the Gov­ern­ment or any­thing like that,” he said. “It was quite a mys­tery to me, and at the same time, ef­forts to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion were al­so fu­tile.”

He added that it was the first time in his ca­reer that he felt he “did not have the trust and con­fi­dence of the ad­min­is­tra­tion” to ex­e­cute his du­ties on be­half of the coun­try. When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh said Ku­mars­ingh fell un­der the re­mit of Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary San­jay Singh.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Singh re­gard­ing why Ku­mars­ingh’s port­fo­lio had changed and whether there were con­cerns over the res­ig­na­tion of one of the coun­try’s most se­nior cli­mate ex­perts. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.

Ku­mars­ingh spent 18 years as head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit with­in the Min­istry of Plan­ning. Pri­or to that, he rep­re­sent­ed the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty in cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He was al­so part of the ne­go­ti­a­tions that led to the land­mark Paris Agree­ment in 2015.

Ku­mars­ingh ad­di­tion­al­ly cham­pi­oned sev­er­al ma­jor de­ci­sions af­fect­ing Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), in­clud­ing the in­clu­sion of car­bon cap­ture and stor­age in the Clean De­vel­op­ment Mech­a­nism un­der the Ky­oto Pro­to­col.

He al­so helped shape the glob­al adap­ta­tion frame­work un­der the Can­cun Adap­ta­tion Frame­work, ne­go­ti­a­tions which he chaired.