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Saturday, July 5, 2025

The National Climate Mitigation Monitoring, Reporting and Verification System

by

Bavina Sookdeo
1270 days ago
20220111

You can­not man­age what you do not mea­sure. This is es­pe­cial­ly true in the case of mit­i­ga­tion and re­duc­tion of green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions. We want to en­sure that our youth have a healthy earth to grow up in.

So we have a way to make sure we know what kinds of GHGs are be­ing emit­ted, how much emis­sions and, as time pass­es, we have a way to know for sure we've re­duced our emis­sions pro­duc­tion. There is a way to do this - The Na­tion­al Cli­mate Mit­i­ga­tion Mon­i­tor­ing, Re­port­ing and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (MRV). The MRV sys­tem was launched in 2019 and is the first of its kind in the re­gion. It helps to make laws per­tain­ing to en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy. It al­so tells you who does what, and a Knowl­edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem will record all the sources of GHG emis­sions, how we’re go­ing to deal with it and what we’ve ac­tu­al­ly done about it. The Knowl­edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem or (KMS) is the cen­tral data­base of the MRV. The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment notes that as the back­bone of the MRV Sys­tem, the KMS fa­cil­i­tates the col­lec­tion, analy­sis and trans­par­ent re­port­ing of qual­i­ty-checked da­ta on GHG emis­sions, ef­forts to mit­i­gate them and the re­sources de­vot­ed to these ef­forts.

The KMS is vi­tal to the coun­try’s ef­forts to meet its oblig­a­tions un­der the Paris Agree­ment. Us­ing the MRV sys­tem will help to track progress in achiev­ing the goals of our Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion (NDC).

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) is re­spon­si­ble for the op­er­a­tions of the KMS and as such, is re­spon­si­ble for:

Es­tab­lish­ing emis­sion re­port­ing re­quire­ments and qual­i­ty con­trol pro­ce­dures

Ex­tract­ing da­ta from en­ti­ties in­volved in mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts for en­try in­to the sys­tem

En­sur­ing that the da­ta fed in­to the KMS is ac­cu­rate and re­li­able un­der the stan­dards set by the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) 2006 guide­lines for qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and con­trol

Col­lat­ing emis­sions da­ta and in­for­ma­tion for analy­sis and ver­i­fi­ca­tion

Ver­i­fy­ing claims that mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts have achieved their tar­gets and sub­mit­ting ver­i­fied re­sults of car­bon re­duc­tion mea­sures in­to the re­port­ing process­es at the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

Co­or­di­nat­ing the mon­i­tor­ing, re­port­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of all in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial sup­port for na­tion­al mit­i­ga­tion ac­tions. (Source: Plan­ning.gov.tt)

The KMS in­cludes a mit­i­ga­tion com­po­nent, aimed at in­form­ing poli­cies and in­form­ing stake­hold­ers of their progress, and has been in op­er­a­tion since its launch in 2019.

If you are in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing more about our coun­try’s cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts and our mon­i­tor­ing ca­pac­i­ties, it is rather easy. First­ly, go to the Knowl­edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem page on the EMA’s web­site and you will see each of the ar­eas per­tain­ing to the MRV ef­fort. These in­clude:

1. Da­ta and in­for­ma­tion, where you in­put da­ta on emis­sions, mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts and sup­port re­ceived and ver­i­fi­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion.

2. Method­olo­gies, where you find the rules on how to mon­i­tor, re­port and ver­i­fy emis­sion and sources.

3. Pro­ce­dures or one way for every­one to make their re­port.

Al­most 200 coun­tries in the world made a promise to work to­geth­er and do what they can to re­duce emis­sions, through the Paris Agree­ment. It is crit­i­cal for us to con­tin­ue to ground out fu­ture en­deav­ours with re­gards to emis­sions pro­duc­tion. Each coun­try has a list of bench­marks to reach or con­tri­bu­tions to make to the ini­tia­tive. Our con­tri­bu­tion, or Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion is: to re­port on our GHG emis­sions and re­duce them by 15% by 2030 in com­par­i­son to what they would have been if we had done noth­ing.

With all poli­cies it is mere­ly a frame­work that we are to work with, a sort of scaf­fold­ing up­on which we must build our con­crete plans. It is ad­mit­ted­ly very dif­fi­cult to fol­low along with these frame­works, as we are a hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­ing, high emis­sions pro­duc­ing so­ci­ety, with eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests in non-re­new­able en­er­gy, how­ev­er there is op­por­tu­ni­ty to tran­si­tion away from these prac­tices while safe­guard­ing eco­nom­ic growth and we should en­deav­our to do so. This is why ini­tia­tives such as the MRV ef­fort are so im­por­tant for guide­line track­ing, but al­so why civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, youth ac­tivists and con­sul­ta­tions, and prop­er pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty are all pieces of the cli­mate puz­zle. With prop­er mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tives in place, and pub­lic in­cen­tivised ac­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty, fea­si­ble cli­mate change re­lat­ed emis­sions tar­gets can be reached.


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