KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will not be at­tend­ing the 2023 Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence or Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties of the UN­FC­CC, more com­mon­ly re­ferred to as COP28.

The event, which is card­ed for No­vem­ber 30 to De­cem­ber 12, will be held at the Ex­po City in Dubai this year.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said the T&T del­e­ga­tion will in­stead be led by Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son.

While he ini­tial­ly planned to at­tend the con­fer­ence, Row­ley said it would have cost as much $250,000 to ac­com­mo­date trav­el for he and his del­e­ga­tion if they had to trav­el from Sau­di Ara­bia to Dubai in the com­ing weeks.

This, he said, was as a re­sult of him hav­ing at­tend­ed the in­au­gur­al Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia Sum­mit on No­vem­ber 16 in Riyadh, Sau­di Ara­bia.

Row­ley said due to the prox­im­i­ty in the dates of both con­fer­ences, he would have had to stay on in Dubai for al­most two ad­di­tion­al weeks be­fore head­ing over to Dubai.

In­stead, he chose to re­turn home and al­low Beck­les-Robin­son to lead the team to COP 28.