Unhealthy levels of Saharan dust in the atmosphere yesterday, as the world observed Earth Day, were a very visible reminder of the environmental issues affecting the quality of life in this country.
Ready or not, climate change is here. Unfortunately, Earth Day, an occasion to raise awareness of the need to protect our natural resources for future generations, passed with very little fanfare in T&T.
On paper but not yet in full practice, the Government has been prioritising climate resilience through conservation, technological innovation, policy and legislation and has signed onto several Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) on climate change.
These include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed and ratified in 1994, which made this country one of the first in the Caribbean to commit to stabilising and reducing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. T&T also signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, committing to an overall cumulative emissions reduction of 15 per cent from its three major emitting sectors — power generation, transport and industry — by 2030.
However, in terms of progress in building climate resilience, T&T, as the most industrialised country in the English-speaking Caribbean with a fossils-based economy, has very little to show, even with increasing signs of climate change.
The near-record high temperatures over the past few days are in keeping with the consistent warming trends that have seen the country’s average annual temperature warming at a rate of 0.28 °C per decade, or approximately two and a half times the global average.
Then there are those spikes in Saharan dust events, which climate experts have linked to drought conditions and desertification in other parts of the world associated with global warming.
The forecast is for these episodes, where high-speed winds lift the dust and transport it thousands of miles to the Caribbean, to become more intense.
Another concern is that Saharan dust may be causing diseases on Caribbean coral reefs, which are already being devastated by episodes of bleaching and other extreme weather incidents.
The heat and the dust experienced in several parts of the country yesterday were teachable moments that the Planning and Development Ministry, which is supposed to be at the forefront of T&T’s climate fight, could have used to raise public awareness and promote environmental activism.
Putting greater focus on Earth Day is necessary to encourage more support for the measures T&T is already behind on in implementing, such as the transition to renewable energy.
Under the National Development Strategy, the Government committed to adding ten per cent of renewable energy to the national power supply by 2021. Three years past that deadline, T&T remains highly dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation. Then there is the long-promised Beverage Containers Deposit Refund Policy, which will divert a considerable amount of waste from the country’s overburdened landfills to recycling plants once successfully implemented. These are just two measures aimed at reducing overall emissions set out in T&T’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. These should be urgent climate objectives but there is very little in the public domain to suggest they are.
Earth Day was a chance to put climate issues front and centre. However, there is another opportunity coming up — World Environment Day on June 5.
It's time for an update on T&T’s climate resilience status.
