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Monday, July 28, 2025

T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor:

Much work to be done at COP29

by

404 days ago
20240620
Co-chairs for the Just Transition Work Programme Kishan Kumarsingh, of T&T, left, and Marianne Karlsen, of Norway, at the Bonn Climate Change Conference last week.

Co-chairs for the Just Transition Work Programme Kishan Kumarsingh, of T&T, left, and Marianne Karlsen, of Norway, at the Bonn Climate Change Conference last week.

Kiara Worth

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh says Caribbean lead­ers will have to lob­by strong­ly in the com­ing months to get the out­comes they de­sire at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP29).

He made the com­ments as the Bonn Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence wrapped up a week ago in Ger­many. Ku­mars­ingh, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the con­fer­ence, said COP29 is shap­ing up to be a high­ly po­lit­i­cal af­fair where de­ci­sions on many is­sues and their in­ter­link­ages will have to be re­solved “at a very high lev­el.”

Some of the is­sues Caribbean lead­ers will need to strong­ly look at in­clude strong am­bi­tions in the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) to be sub­mit­ted in 2025, an in­crease in am­bi­tion for cli­mate fi­nance which will en­able cli­mate ac­tion in Caribbean coun­tries and press­ing for progress in ar­eas such as adap­ta­tion and just tran­si­tion.

In an in­ter­view on his re­turn from the Bonn meet­ings, Ku­mars­ingh said, “What is re­quired is high po­lit­i­cal will and ne­go­ti­a­tions in good faith to have those out­comes re­alised.”

Ac­cess to cli­mate fi­nance re­mains a key as­pect of ne­go­ti­a­tions for small is­land states in the Caribbean and it was a ma­jor talk­ing point in Bonn, he said. While de­vel­op­ing na­tions sought to hold de­vel­oped na­tions to ac­count on the $100 bil­lion pledge made in 2009, there was a dif­fer­ence in opin­ion in Bonn over whether that has been re­alised, which en­trenched dis­trust in the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Ku­mars­ingh, who heads the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, said de­vel­oped coun­tries have ar­gued they have not on­ly met the pledge but over­shot it.

How­ev­er, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries re­butted by say­ing this hasn’t hap­pened, par­tic­u­lar­ly due to the lack of a uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of what cli­mate fi­nance is, as this has al­so been un­der­stood to be fi­nanced by some de­vel­oped coun­tries in the form of loans (which have to be re­paid with in­ter­est) and of­fi­cial de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance (ODA).

Ku­mars­ingh ex­plained, “The main di­vid­ing is­sue was the oblig­a­tion to pro­vide by de­vel­oped coun­tries and who is to re­ceive and in what form and who can ac­cess.”

What re­mains to be de­ter­mined is the de­sign, quan­tum and con­trib­u­tors to this col­lec­tive goal. Some de­vel­oped coun­tries have ar­gued it should in­clude ma­jor emit­ters and emerg­ing economies.

“In all like­li­hood, the cli­mate fi­nance dis­cus­sion is head­ed for a po­lit­i­cal res­o­lu­tion at COP29, even though the dis­cus­sions crept along, and in some in­stances were frus­trat­ing, in the Bonn ses­sions,” Ku­mars­ingh said.

He said sim­i­lar dif­fer­ences emerged in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing adap­ta­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and just tran­si­tion, all of which will have to be worked out at COP29, which takes place in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, from No­vem­ber 11 to 22.

COP29 pres­i­dent Mukhtar Babayev, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of Ecol­o­gy and Nat­ur­al Re­sources in Azer­bai­jan, has al­ready iden­ti­fied cli­mate fi­nance and ND­Cs as key ar­eas from which he wants to see an agree­ment emerge at the con­fer­ence lat­er this year.

Ku­mars­ingh in­sist­ed that the out­look for Caribbean coun­tries is op­ti­mistic as they push for out­comes in their favour ahead of COP29.


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