Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Green Fund con­tin­ued to grow in the fi­nan­cial year 2025, with the bal­ance reach­ing TT$12.86 bil­lion as of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on the Pub­lic Ac­counts for 2025.

In 2025, the Green Fund in­creased by $1.09 bil­lion, or 9.2 per cent, over the pre­vi­ous year. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port shows that the Fund opened the fi­nan­cial year with a bal­ance of $11.78 bil­lion. It re­ceived $1.06 bil­lion in Green Fund levy col­lec­tions and $48.2 mil­lion in in­ter­est on the cash bal­ance.

Af­ter ad­just­ments, dis­hon­oured cheques, and pay­ments of $21.8 mil­lion by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the clos­ing bal­ance stood at $12.86 bil­lion.

The Green Fund was es­tab­lished un­der the Fi­nance Act, 2000. Oth­er leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions that ap­ply to the Fund in­clude the Mis­cel­la­neous Tax­es Act; the Green Fund Reg­u­la­tions, 2007; and the Fi­nance Act, 2010. Its ob­jec­tive is to fund en­vi­ron­men­tal projects im­ple­ment­ed by NGOs and sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ty groups.

The Fund is fi­nanced through the Green Fund Levy. Com­pa­nies and part­ner­ships in T&T pay 0.3 per cent of their gross in­come in­to the Fund. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port states that the Board of In­land Rev­enue col­lects the levy, while the Min­istry with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the en­vi­ron­ment man­ages ac­tiv­i­ties fi­nanced by the Fund.

De­spite the growth of the fund, dis­burse­ments have been rel­a­tive­ly small over time com­pared with the to­tal bal­ance.

A re­cent ex­am­ple of Green Fund-sup­port­ed ac­tiv­i­ty is the Fu­ture Fish­ers ini­tia­tive along Trinidad’s North­east coast. In Sep­tem­ber 2025, the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment high­light­ed achieve­ments from the project, which was sup­port­ed by a Green Fund grant of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8 mil­lion award­ed in 2020. The project, ti­tled Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing of Fish­ers Ini­tia­tive for Sus­tain­able Har­vest, Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search, fo­cuss­es on sus­tain­able fish­eries, ma­rine re­source con­ser­va­tion, train­ing and liveli­hood de­vel­op­ment.

The 2025 mile­stones high­light­ed by the Min­istry in­clud­ed smoked fish prod­uct de­vel­op­ment; train­ing in small en­gine re­pair, first aid, safe­ty at sea, and lead­er­ship and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment; as well as the map­ping of sen­si­tive fish habi­tats and the cre­ation of a fish­eries base­line dataset. The Min­istry al­so re­port­ed that 96 peo­ple from fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties re­ceived first aid train­ing, 69 fish­ers were trained in safe­ty at sea, 22 fish­ers were trained in en­gine re­pair, and 18 fish­ers were trained in lead­er­ship and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

At the time the Green Fund was de­vel­oped, the fo­cus was main­ly on lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal work, in­clud­ing habi­tat pro­tec­tion, re­for­esta­tion, and con­ser­va­tion.

Since then, T&T’s en­vi­ron­men­tal pri­or­i­ties have ex­pand­ed. Cli­mate adap­ta­tion, emis­sions re­duc­tion, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, and re­new­able en­er­gy have al­so be­come im­por­tant ar­eas of in­ter­est.

While the fund has cer­tain­ly per­formed well over time, the cur­rent use case is fair­ly nar­row. There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­so ex­pand the fund to in­clude cli­mate change, green­house gas re­duc­tion, and cli­mate adap­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties. These types of ac­tiv­i­ties are not cov­ered un­der the ex­ist­ing rules of the fund.