Dur­ing COP26 coun­tries were asked to re­flect on the agree­ments they might have signed on­to for cli­mate ac­tion, such as the Paris Agree­ment, the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change among oth­ers. As a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty we are asked to self-eval­u­ate and as­sess how our own ef­forts have ei­ther mit­i­gat­ed or con­tributed to the cli­mate “cri­sis”.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, many coun­tries are not on track to achieve their mit­i­ga­tion goals. The UN notes that even when you com­bine all the cur­rent cli­mate com­mit­ments from dif­fer­ent coun­tries, they will put us on track for 2.7°C of warm­ing by the end of the cen­tu­ry, even as the Paris Agree­ment of 2015 aimed to lim­it warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees. Look­ing at the fig­ures them­selves it might seem like a minis­cule dif­fer­ence, but it holds ma­jor cli­mat­ic ef­fects for the world.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change’s 2021 re­port, cur­rent trends have us bar­relling to­ward en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, with wors­en­ing weath­er anom­alies and ecosys­tem col­lapse. The cli­mate cri­sis af­fects every cor­ner of our plan­et – from the poles to the trop­ics, from the rain­forests to the glac­i­ers, the deserts to the great lakes. Peo­ple all across the world have al­ready start­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the cli­mate cri­sis, it is in fact not a dis­tant re­al­i­ty but a present grow­ing threat.

The glob­al south, of which Trinidad and To­ba­go is a part, and by ex­ten­sion the en­tire re­gion of the Caribbean, is at an in­creased risk of cli­mate cri­sis and re­lat­ed dis­as­ters, with some of our is­land neigh­bours al­ready fac­ing the more dra­mat­ic and dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of the weath­er, with Hur­ri­canes Maria, Ir­ma and Do­ri­an dev­as­tat­ing the north­ern Caribbean. The strength and fre­quen­cy of these hur­ri­canes are un­prece­dent­ed for the re­gion, and demon­strate how high a risk the cli­mate cri­sis pos­es for the Caribbean, with mil­lions in dam­age and loss and thou­sands of lives be­ing de­stroyed in the process.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ex­empt from the ef­fects of cli­mate change so what have we put in place to mit­i­gate our en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as a na­tion? We have tak­en quite a few steps.

Since 2013 we’ve cat­a­logued the lev­els and sources of our green­house gas emis­sions. We strate­gize ways to re­duce car­bon emis­sions from in­dus­try, trans­port and pow­er gen­er­a­tion, the three main sources. We’ve re­viewed our poli­cies and laws and made them stronger, more ef­fec­tive in pro­tect­ing the coun­try and the plan­et. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to the Paris Agree­ment is to re­duce our Green­house gas emis­sions from these three main sources by 15% by 2030 and by 30% dur­ing the same time frame where pub­lic trans­porta­tion is con­cerned. Trinidad and To­ba­go has tak­en var­i­ous pol­i­cy steps, in con­junc­tion with var­i­ous ex­perts in the field of en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence to as­sess and project the im­pact of cli­mate change on vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, take ac­tion to mit­i­gate prob­lems and make com­mu­ni­ties more re­silient. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we’ve de­vel­oped a green­house gas mea­sure­ment, re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion (MRV) sys­tem, built ca­pac­i­ty at the EMA, trained emit­ters, de­signed a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme for in­ven­to­ry­ing green­house gas­es and de­vel­oped a fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment plan to lever­age fi­nanc­ing for the Na­tion­al De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions or ND­Cs which is a key com­po­nent of the Paris Agree­ment. As such, the pol­i­cy frame­work for mit­i­ga­tion is ac­tu­al­ly in place. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, these ND­Cs rep­re­sent each coun­try’s pub­lic com­mit­ments to re­duce green­house gas­es in the con­text of their own na­tion­al cir­cum­stances, ca­pa­bil­i­ties and pri­or­i­ties for the post 2020 pe­ri­od.

Trinidad has al­so en­sured gen­der sen­si­tiv­i­ty in the NDC con­sid­er­a­tions, as gen­der jus­tice should be tak­en in­to ac­count, as cli­mate change af­fects spe­cif­ic gen­ders very dif­fer­ent­ly. Per­sons’ vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to cli­mate change de­pends in part on gen­der roles and re­la­tions with rur­al women in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are one of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups ac­cord­ing to the IPCC 2007 re­port. They are of­ten de­pen­dent on nat­ur­al re­sources for their liveli­hoods.

As for land degra­da­tion, we now have a na­tion­al ac­tion pro­gramme. The NAP has an in­ven­to­ry of land use, iden­ti­fies crit­i­cal is­sues and prob­lems and a pro­gramme for cor­rect­ing, mit­i­gat­ing and pre­vent­ing caus­es of land degra­da­tion. These mit­i­gat­ing ac­tions in­clude sus­tain­able land man­age­ment and risk re­duc­tion in­clud­ing ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems. We are al­so on tar­get to achieve land degra­da­tion neu­tral­i­ty through a vol­un­tary tar­get set­ting pro­gramme where trans­for­ma­tive projects to dri­ve land degra­da­tion neu­tral­i­ty are iden­ti­fied. We can see these ini­tia­tives to­wards de­creas­ing land degra­da­tion with­in re­cent times, where po­lice have car­ried out var­i­ous ex­er­cis­es to cur­tail il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in pro­tect­ed ar­eas of the coun­try.

T&T has al­so em­pow­ered the pub­lic, pri­vate and NGO sec­tors to build their ca­pac­i­ty to bet­ter man­age these glob­al en­vi­ron­men­tal pri­or­i­ties and is­sues, as in or­der to make a dif­fer­ence, a holis­tic, cross-sec­toral ap­proach is need­ed.

It will, for a while at least, take a lot of ef­fort both on an in­di­vid­ual and col­lab­o­ra­tive scale for us to reach our goals. Let us do our part to­wards a green­er, more cli­mate re­silient T&T.