The main goal of the Paris agree­ment when it was first opened for sig­na­ture in 2015 was keep­ing glob­al warm­ing to well un­der 2 de­grees Cel­sius with ef­forts to fur­ther lim­it tem­per­a­tures to 1.5 de­grees com­pared to pre in­dus­tri­al lev­els. This was an am­bi­tious goal, but a goal nonethe­less that na­tions at the time, were com­mit­ted to.

The re­cent events of the Glob­al Cli­mate Con­fer­ence COP26 in Glas­gow, and the new In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) re­port on cli­mate change have shown that these ini­tial goals are not be­ing met at our cur­rent rates of emis­sion. It is worth look­ing at ex­act­ly what the Paris Agree­ment is, and what it aims to achieve holis­ti­cal­ly, when we aim to un­der­stand how we as a na­tion can bet­ter meet our goals and oblig­a­tions un­der the treaty. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, un­der­stand­ing our own lo­cal frame­works and how they are in­te­grat­ed in­to the larg­er glob­al goals that we aim to meet is crit­i­cal in un­der­stand­ing what can be done to com­bat cli­mate change lo­cal­ly.

Forged in 2015, this in­ter­na­tion­al pact em­bod­ies the am­bi­tion of 200 na­tions to halt the ad­vance of in­creas­ing tem­per­a­tures that cause se­ri­ous im­pacts for the en­tire plan­et. Sci­en­tists ac­cept that the cur­rent lev­els of warm­ing, ris­ing tem­per­a­tures that can lead to cat­a­stroph­ic ef­fects are man-made, trig­gered by the re­lease of green­house gas­es.

As a sig­na­to­ry to that agree­ment in 2018, Trinidad and To­ba­go agreed to help the world meet that rather am­bi­tious goal of re­strain­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures when it rat­i­fied the Paris Agree­ment. Un­der the agree­ment, T&T has com­mit­ted to cut­ting our green­house gas emis­sion in the ma­jor emit­ting sec­tors. This com­mit­ment is known as our Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion or NDC. Our NDC has two parts. First a 15% cut in col­lec­tive cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions from the ma­jor con­tribut­ing sec­tors, in­dus­try, pow­er gen­er­a­tion and trans­port. This comes at a price tag of rough­ly two bil­lion US dol­lars. That cost in­cludes fund­ing to be sourced from in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing. The sec­ond goal is an un­con­di­tion­al 30% re­duc­tion in emis­sions from pub­lic trans­porta­tion to be fund­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly, pri­mar­i­ly through the fu­el switch­ing pro­gramme to CNG. As you can imag­ine, we first had to find out how to de­ter­mine these emis­sions as we can­not man­age what we can­not mea­sure. That was done through sur­veys of con­trib­u­tors from petro­chem­i­cal proces­sors and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers to man­u­fac­tur­ers. The year 2013 was cho­sen as the start of the busi­ness as usu­al base­line, or where we would start mea­sur­ing our out­put. This mea­sure­ment con­sid­ers that emis­sions will con­tin­ue to grow as the econ­o­my and de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues even as we be­gin de­cou­pling eco­nom­ic growth from green­house gas emis­sions. All cuts are mea­sured against emis­sions es­ti­mat­ed rel­a­tive to the busi­ness as usu­al base­line. Once we had a base­line for our emis­sions, we had to se­cure a way of en­sur­ing that coun­tries around the world are re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions as they say they will. All na­tions' re­duc­tions must be mea­sured, re­port­ed and ver­i­fied. This is be­ing done in Trinidad and To­ba­go through a sys­tem known as the Na­tion­al Cli­mate Mit­i­ga­tion, Mon­i­tor­ing, Re­port­ing and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem or MRV which is quite a mouth­ful but nonethe­less, im­por­tant in the pol­i­cy frame­work re­quired to meet our tar­gets.

In T&T, the MRV is a struc­tur­al mech­a­nism to keep us on track with our Paris Agree­ment cli­mate com­mit­ments and is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly for­malised in the le­gal frame­work to make emis­sions re­port­ing manda­to­ry. So how will this ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nism work once ful­ly for­malised? Well, at the top of the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart is the MRV co­or­di­nat­ing body - The Min­istry with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cli­mate change, cur­rent­ly the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment. The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) is an­oth­er im­por­tant or­gan­i­sa­tion as they host the knowl­edge man­age­ment sys­tem data­base which is the back­bone or da­ta repos­i­to­ry of the MRV sys­tem. It is where all the cru­cial in­for­ma­tion is stored. The Au­thor­i­ty gath­ers re­ports on emis­sions from all emit­ters across mul­ti­ple sec­tors in­clud­ing pow­er gen­er­a­tion, air, sea and road trans­porta­tion, in­dus­tri­al process­es, agri­cul­ture and waste man­age­ment. Every emit­ter must sub­mit in­for­ma­tion about its progress to­wards re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions. Es­ti­mat­ed emis­sions are sub­mit­ted on a tem­plate de­signed to cap­ture rel­e­vant da­ta for easy re­trieval.

The knowl­edge man­age­ment sys­tem or KMS is an in­te­gral com­po­nent of the EMA's da­ta col­lec­tion. It is where da­ta is ver­i­fied be­fore emis­sion fig­ures are sent up the chain to the rel­e­vant min­istry with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cli­mate change. From there, the Min­istry's cli­mate ex­perts com­pile that da­ta in­to re­ports that go to the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, the Paris Agree­ment's mon­i­tor­ing body and that is how the re­port­ing loop is made com­plete. T&T has sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al re­port­ing com­mit­ments that must be ful­filled every two years un­der the Paris Agree­ment. In time, the MRV sys­tem will be en­hanced to track cli­mate re­silience and adap­ta­tion ef­forts by in­cor­po­rat­ing new re­port­ing re­quire­ments un­der the Paris Agree­ment. This is known as the 'en­hanced trans­paren­cy frame­work'. Those green­house gas re­port­ing com­mit­ments ob­vi­ous­ly de­pend on the co­op­er­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing of emit­ters. In Jan­u­ary 2020, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the EMA con­vened 15 stake­hold­ers to vol­un­tar­i­ly par­tic­i­pate in a pi­lot project of the MRV. Each was re­spon­si­ble for test­ing the KMS by sub­mit­ting da­ta through a se­cure por­tal. The MRV sys­tem al­so mon­i­tors the fund­ing pro­vid­ed for get­ting those plan­et warm­ing gas­es down. Much of that fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to be sourced from mul­ti­lat­er­al donors and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al sources, how­ev­er some fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to be lo­cal­ly sourced in­clud­ing through pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships, com­mer­cial banks and gov­ern­ment fund­ing mech­a­nisms.

The MRV sys­tem is a cru­cial part of the larg­er frame­work for cli­mate ac­tion and ac­count­ing for emis­sions and achieve­ment of the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion. The MRV sys­tem is the method by which the stat­ed am­bi­tions of the Paris Cli­mate pact go from hope to re­al­i­ty. This tool will help to keep us on track with our cli­mate change com­mit­ments, both for re­duc­ing emis­sions as well as track­ing cli­mate re­silience and adap­ta­tion. In the Caribbean and T&T the out­look for gen­er­a­tions to come de­pends on the ac­tions be­ing tak­en to­day.