Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has de­fend­ed her re­cent par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA), amid ques­tions over her role and the pur­pose of her trip.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at her Charles Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice, Beck­les said she has been at­tend­ing UN meet­ings for more than three decades in var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ties, in­clud­ing as a for­mer am­bas­sador, and was in­vit­ed this year to speak and mod­er­ate at sev­er­al side events.

“I have served as an am­bas­sador, and I have been go­ing to the UN for over three decades. If you are there and your Prime Min­is­ter is speak­ing, yes, the op­tion is you may be some­where else. But I think the op­por­tu­ni­ty for me, as the Op­po­si­tion Leader, to be there at that time—I was there per­son­al­ly, I heard it for my­self, and I didn’t have to read it any­where,” she said.

Beck­les stressed that the is­sues she en­gaged on were di­rect­ly rel­e­vant to T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly cli­mate change, which she linked to wors­en­ing flood­ing and threats to food se­cu­ri­ty.

“We are see­ing flood­ing tak­ing place in parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go that tra­di­tion­al­ly we did not ex­pect. We are see­ing that with­in 15 to 20 min­utes, Port-of-Spain is lit­er­al­ly un­der­wa­ter. I am sure every sin­gle one of you here has been pay­ing at­ten­tion that it is at­trib­uted to cli­mate change,” she not­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so ques­tioned gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the Paris Agree­ment, the land­mark legal­ly bind­ing in­ter­na­tion­al treaty on cli­mate change that re­quires coun­tries to set and up­date na­tion­al cli­mate ac­tion plans.

“What is our po­si­tion as it re­lates to the Paris Agree­ment? We know that the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States does not sup­port it, and if I re­call cor­rect­ly, he made it clear they are go­ing to with­draw.

“When I hear the Prime Min­is­ter speak, the ques­tion I ask my­self is if we are go­ing to with­draw from the Paris Agree­ment. Its cen­tral aim is to strength­en the glob­al re­sponse to cli­mate change by keep­ing glob­al tem­per­a­ture in­creas­es well be­low two de­grees Cel­sius,” she said.

In ad­di­tion to her cli­mate dis­cus­sions, Beck­les said she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra. She re­port­ed that many ex­pressed deep con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion in T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly the coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, and sought clar­i­ty on re­cent state­ments by the Prime Min­is­ter.

“They are gen­uine­ly fear­ful about what can hap­pen,” she said.

Beck­les al­so pressed the gov­ern­ment on do­mes­tic is­sues, in­clud­ing re­ports of pen­sion­ers not re­ceiv­ing their pay­ments. She called on the ad­min­is­tra­tion to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion, while al­so rais­ing con­cerns about re­port­ed job ter­mi­na­tions at the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. She linked these to wider cut­backs in pro­grammes such as CEPEP and re­for­esta­tion.