CHARLES KONG SOO
Head of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit (MEAU) of the Ministry of Planning and Development Kishan Kumarsingh says that various government ministries and agencies are operating in silos and have been not sharing information.
He said lack of coordination, manpower issues and financial constraints are contributing to the alleviation of flooding, bad roads and climate change in T&T.
He was speaking on Wednesday at the 19th Meeting of the Joint Select Committee on Land and Physical Infrastructure: An inquiry into the various measures in place to address the challenges of climate change in T&T.
Responding to JSC member Lisa Morris-Julian's questions about what can be done to help communities in vulnerable areas that were prone to flooding, road damage and the effects of climate change from a planning perspective, Kumarsingh said, "One of the challenges is that we continue to operate in silos whereas climate change has been recognised as a national development issue."
He added: "In order to build climate resiliency going forward, then all of Government and nation approach is required where every entity that has the responsibility for climate change resiliency needs to now integrate all the relevant plans, policies, studies that we would have conducted."
"We can't have one super ministry to implement issues related to water and agricultural resiliency as examples, the challenge is integrating and incorporating the recommendations and policies in the various ministries and agencies.
"The responsibility of ministry, particularly the MEAU is to develop policies, and plans to coordinate implementation, but the actual implementation of measures to address on the ground climate change impacts lie with various other ministries and agencies that have that core responsibility," he also said.
He said that was one of the challenges he alluded to; a lack of coordination, and the siloed approach.
Kumarsingh replied that one of the ways the ministry hoped to transcend and overcome those barriers was by the integration of these policies and plans into the respective mandates of the various agencies and ministries.
He added that these organisations had to take ownership of these plans and policies, because the studies were completed and it was only to implement.
Kumarsingh said the issue of developing climate risk profiles for communities especially will require very granular detail and the ministry started that with the vulnerability to climate risk assessment.
He replied that the ministry had the intention of rolling out the recommendations that came out of that study.
Kumarsingh said the ministry had developed an implementation plan for the study as well as a financial investment plan; however, it required financial resources.
He said it was carded to take place this year, but because of a lack of human resources, as well as a heavy meeting agenda, it will be postponed to the first half of next year when they hoped to engage the regional corporations, ministries, agencies, and divisions in looking at their recommendations regarding climate risk assessments.