Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, who al­so over­sees en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters, has held dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) that could lead to cli­mate fi­nanc­ing for sev­er­al lo­cal projects.

Swarats­ingh re­vealed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day in an in­ter­view at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, where he de­liv­ered Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al state­ment a day ear­li­er.

He ex­plained that the UAE has a glob­al ini­tia­tive pro­vid­ing coun­ter­part fi­nanc­ing for projects, as well as tech­ni­cal sup­port for their de­sign and de­vel­op­ment.

“They heard about some of the things we dis­cussed in our na­tion­al state­ment, for ex­am­ple the use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles across the pub­lic sec­tor and so­lar pan­els for hous­es, and they are very keen to send us an agree­ment that we will take to Cab­i­net,” Swarats­ingh said. “Once we get Cab­i­net’s ap­proval, we don’t have any le­gal or fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, but it could be an­oth­er source of po­ten­tial co-fi­nanc­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for projects in the pri­vate sec­tor.”

The min­is­ter said the Prime Min­is­ter has tasked her min­is­ters with im­ple­ment­ing projects, adding, “My fo­cus here at COP30 has been to see what sup­port sys­tems we can ac­cess to help us.”

When asked which types of projects could ben­e­fit from this fund in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Swarats­ingh high­light­ed hous­ing, elec­tric ve­hi­cles, and wa­ter-sec­tor de­vel­op­ment. “The is­sue is not the projects; the is­sue is de­sign­ing them in a way that qual­i­fies for these fi­nanc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he said.

Min­is­ter on ND­Cs

Swarats­ingh al­so ad­dressed why the coun­try has not yet sub­mit­ted its Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs)—the na­tion­al cli­mate ac­tion plans re­quired un­der the Paris Agree­ment. Of the 198 par­ties to the agree­ment, 118 have sub­mit­ted up­dat­ed ND­Cs, but Trinidad and To­ba­go has not.

“We have sub­mit­ted an in­ter­im re­port be­cause, as you know, we’ve on­ly been here a few months,” Swarats­ingh said. “One of the things I’m try­ing to as­cer­tain is how far along we are. The aca­d­e­mics have asked for more time, which is why we sub­mit­ted an in­ter­im re­port. I need to know, for ex­am­ple, re­gard­ing the 15 per cent tar­get, are we at 10 per cent? Eight per cent?

“An­oth­er fac­tor is the cu­mu­la­tive im­pact of new pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives, like elec­tric ve­hi­cles and greater use of so­lar pan­els on res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial sides. The aca­d­e­mics have to mea­sure this and pro­vide feed­back so we can un­der­stand where we are. It’s one thing to talk about num­bers, but an­oth­er to know our ac­tu­al po­si­tion.”

He added that this ap­proach en­sures the coun­try ful­ly un­der­stands its com­mit­ments and pro­motes a prac­ti­cal strat­e­gy for ad­dress­ing cli­mate change.

Swarats­ingh ar­rived at COP30 on Tues­day as most coun­tries pushed for a phase-out of fos­sil fu­els, a pro­pos­al op­posed by pe­tro­le­um-pro­duc­ing na­tions. Asked about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion, he said: “We are tak­ing a bal­anced ap­proach to equate de­vel­op­ment with our cli­mate con­sid­er­a­tions be­cause we are a hy­dro­car­bon econ­o­my, and we will re­main a hy­dro­car­bon econ­o­my for the fore­see­able fu­ture.”

How­ev­er, he stressed that the coun­try must take its en­vi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ments se­ri­ous­ly. In his na­tion­al state­ment on Tues­day, he said am­bi­tion alone is not enough in the cli­mate fight, and the world must now fo­cus on im­ple­men­ta­tion.