Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy has been sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net for ap­proval, the Cab­i­net is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing strength­en­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act for manda­to­ry green­house gas emis­sions re­port­ing and there are rules man­ag­ing the de­vel­op­ment of large brand ho­tels.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son out­lined sev­er­al steps by the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing cli­mate change. She was re­ply­ing to a mo­tion by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, who cit­ed the need to up­date en­vi­ron­men­tal laws and process­es and re­con­sid­er the pre­sumed ben­e­fits of large brand ho­tels to Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) in the con­text of the glob­al cli­mate change cri­sis.

Not­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s sup­port for the Rocky Point ho­tel project, Vieira said whether large brand ho­tels would ben­e­fit T&T was a ques­tion that re­quired care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion, as there was a shift to more sus­tain­able op­tions.

Vieira not­ed earn­ings from such ho­tels re­turned to in­ter­na­tion­al own­ers rather than stay­ing with­in the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty and that build­ing ho­tels in en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive ar­eas could en­dan­ger the en­vi­ron­ment, es­pe­cial­ly at places like Rocky Point “which is so spe­cial and his­toric.”

Vieira said, “It’s time to pan­ic—we’re in deep trou­ble—pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment is the most im­por­tant thing our lead­ers can do for our peo­ple. Gov­ern­ment must recog­nise we’re em­bed­ded in na­ture and de­pend on it for sur­vival,” he said.

Beck­les said many Caribbean states were SIDS shar­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to cli­mate change, in­clud­ing warm­ing ocean tem­per­a­tures and sea-lev­el rise. She said, how­ev­er, “De­spite these chal­lenges, SIDS must utilise nat­ur­al re­sources to sup­port eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, of­ten re­ly­ing on tourism. Large brand ho­tels, by virtue of their char­ac­ter­is­tics, can there­fore of­fer eco­nom­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal, and so­cial ben­e­fits.”

Beck­les said coastal area projects sought ad­vice from rel­e­vant agen­cies to mit­i­gate sea lev­el rise im­pacts. She de­tailed en­vi­ron­men­tal law gov­ern­ing large-brand ho­tels, not­ing they were sub­ject to the in­de­pen­dent EMA re­view.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions are as­sessed to mit­i­gate en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, in­clud­ing cli­mate change con­sid­er­a­tions. If sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts are iden­ti­fied, an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) may be re­quired. Thus, there are ro­bust en­vi­ron­men­tal laws en­sur­ing large-brand­ed ho­tels meet sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment stan­dards,” she said.

“The prin­ci­ple of mea­sure­ment, re­port­ing, and ver­i­fi­ca­tion (MRV) was in­tro­duced. While progress has been made, re­port­ing re­mains vol­un­tary. Draft rules for manda­to­ry green­house gas emis­sions re­port­ing are un­der Cab­i­net con­sid­er­a­tion.”