Trinidad and To­ba­go is ul­ti­mate­ly in a vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion with re­spect to cli­mate change. Our Twin Is­land state, due to our ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, gen­er­al size and our cli­mat­ic zone, is sus­cep­ti­ble to all sorts of cli­mate re­lat­ed is­sues.

Sur­round­ed by bod­ies of wa­ter, sub­ject­ed to trop­i­cal waves, and with in­fra­struc­ture that was not built with cli­mate re­silience in mind, our state is in no re­al po­si­tion to tru­ly weath­er the storms of cli­mate change. Re­cent years have been the warmest on record, clear ev­i­dence of world­wide man­i­fes­ta­tions of cli­mate change. In T&T we aren’t im­mune to glob­al shifts to­wards hot­ter cli­mates ei­ther, our tem­per­ate records show that since the 1960's, Trinidad's av­er­age tem­per­a­ture has inched up by about 0.8 de­grees Cel­sius and To­ba­go's by 0.5 de­grees. Rain­fall pat­terns have changed too. Over­all, there has been a de­creas­ing trend in rain­fall in T&T. At the same time, pound­ing, seem­ing­ly ran­dom show­ers that trig­ger flash floods hap­pen more of­ten. Sci­en­tif­ic cli­mate mod­el pro­jec­tions are show­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures and their se­ri­ous im­pacts are on­ly go­ing to get worse, pos­ing ma­jor threats to coun­tries around the world, but es­pe­cial­ly is­lands and re­gions like ours. This is an in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue, re­quir­ing more than any­thing, a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort. No coun­try is tru­ly ex­empt from the ef­fects of the phe­nom­e­non nor con­tribut­ing to the fac­tors that cause its pro­lif­er­a­tion, as most of the globe’s en­er­gy comes from non-re­new­able and fos­sil fu­el sources that pro­duce green­house gas­es like car­bon diox­ide, methane and ni­trous ox­ide.

The glob­al com­mu­ni­ty has recog­nised this grave threat and has put cer­tain ini­tia­tives in place to counter it. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from al­most every coun­try on Earth gath­ered in Paris in 2015 to forge an in­ter­na­tion­al treaty to do some­thing about cli­mate change, re­sult­ing in the now well known ‘Paris Agree­ment’. The Paris agree­ment is an at­tempt by the Unit­ed Na­tions and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty to hold it­self ac­count­able with re­gards to its ef­forts to com­bat cli­mate change. Adopt­ed by near­ly 200 coun­tries, the Paris Agree­ment unites the world's na­tions in a sin­gle agree­ment on tack­ling glob­al warm­ing, re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions and keep­ing glob­al tem­per­a­ture in­creas­es to two de­grees Cel­sius and ide­al­ly 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius. Re­cent­ly at the COP26 con­ven­tion in Glas­gow, these tar­gets were ad­just­ed, as many coun­tries have failed to stick to their com­mit­ments, how­ev­er, the agree­ments and its rec­om­men­da­tions and guide­lines re­main in place. The Paris Agree­ment re­quires all sig­na­to­ry coun­tries to com­mit to re­duc­ing emis­sions from the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly ad­vanced coun­try to the least de­vel­oped states. These com­mit­ments for bring­ing down green­house gas out­puts are called 'Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions' or ND­Cs. They are de­signed to in­crease in am­bi­tion every five years with each sig­na­to­ry to the Paris Agree­ment hav­ing an NDC and must ac­count for its achieve­ment or non-achieve­ment through an open, trans­par­ent re­view process. The Paris Agree­ment al­so re­quires coun­tries to pre­pare for the tran­si­tion to a low car­bon econ­o­my, al­so called de­car­boniza­tion of the econ­o­my, re­port on loss­es and dam­age caused by cli­mate change im­pacts, de­vel­op long term, low car­bon plans and re­port on mea­sures to adapt to the im­pacts of cli­mate change. De­vel­op­ing na­tions must al­so re­port on fi­nanc­ing sup­port re­ceived to con­front cli­mate change. While mak­ing the cru­cial tran­si­tion to low car­bon economies, sig­na­to­ry coun­tries must recog­nise hu­man rights; such as the right to health, the rights of in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, mi­grants, the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety as well as those with dis­abil­i­ties. A key com­po­nent of this shift is the preser­va­tion of the right to de­vel­op­ment, in­ter-gen­er­a­tional eq­ui­ty and the em­pow­er­ment of women.

To fight cli­mate change, and to stick to the stip­u­la­tions of the Paris Agree­ment, na­tions adopt­ing de­car­boniza­tion poli­cies are ex­pect­ed to ush­er in a re­duced re­liance on the burn­ing of fos­sil fu­els while safe­guard­ing the liveli­hoods of those em­ployed in the sec­tors cur­rent­ly re­liant on these fos­sil fu­els. This is called the ‘Just Tran­si­tion’ of the work­force. The Just Tran­si­tion, is a term re­lat­ing to the shift away from non-re­new­able en­er­gy con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tion, in all sec­tors of the work­force, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for work­ers to tran­si­tion in­to new jobs, min­i­miz­ing any fi­nan­cial hard­ships that may come with this tran­si­tion. For larg­er, more di­ver­si­fied economies, just tran­si­tion­ing might be an eas­i­er, less painful shift, but for ones like ours, the tran­si­tion to re­duced car­bon emis­sions and fos­sil fu­el free op­er­a­tions might be a bit more chal­leng­ing. It is vi­tal in the shift that the hu­man fac­tor is tak­en in­to ac­count, with the cre­ation of sus­tain­able, qual­i­ty jobs to en­sure no one is left be­hind as na­tions move to­wards their low car­bon econ­o­my ob­jec­tives.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ready de­vel­oped an NDC im­ple­men­ta­tion frame­work and a fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment plan, which means that we know what it will take to achieve our tar­gets and have laid the foun­da­tion to get there. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, T&T is al­so de­vel­op­ing its own Just Tran­si­tion Pol­i­cy as part of its com­mit­ments un­der the Paris Agree­ment in the glob­al ef­fort to move to­wards de­car­boniza­tion of economies. In fact, Trinidad and To­ba­go played an im­por­tant lead­er­ship role in de­vel­op­ing the agree­ment by co-chair­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween 2013 and 2014 with Ger­many. Like all oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, our job is to en­sure we live up to our com­mit­ments to re­duce green­house gas out­put by 2030.

To lim­it glob­al warm­ing, we must keep on mov­ing away from fos­sil fu­els and to­wards re­new­able en­er­gies. While Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tributes less than one per­cent of glob­al green­house gas emis­sions, we are ul­ti­mate­ly a car­bon based econ­o­my, and un­fet­tered con­tin­u­a­tion of our cur­rent habits of en­er­gy pro­duc­tion will even­tu­al­ly, in the long term, spell our demise. We must re­main com­mit­ted to con­tribut­ing to the glob­al cli­mate so­lu­tion by re­duc­ing our emis­sions. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Paris Agree­ment is one of our best chances of keep­ing in­creas­es of glob­al tem­per­a­tures with­in safe lim­its. T&T is pitch­ing in to be part of the so­lu­tion.