Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

T&T can­not hide its emis­sions. The coun­try will be sub­ject to scruti­ny and ques­tion, in­clud­ing what it is do­ing to re­duce emis­sions.

This was the un­der­ly­ing mes­sage as Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and T&T’s Lead Cli­mate Ne­go­tia­tor Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, faced the 15th Fa­cil­i­ta­tive Shar­ing of Views (FSV) work­shop un­der the in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion and analy­sis (ICA) process here on Mon­day at COP28 in Dubai.

T&T sub­mit­ted its Bi­en­ni­al Up­date Re­port in 2021 and had to an­swer ques­tions and pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tions on what the re­port con­tains.

Ku­mars­ingh said it is part of the over­all trans­paren­cy process with­in the re­port­ing oblig­a­tions un­der the con­ven­tion and will be repli­cat­ed un­der the Paris Agree­ment’s En­hanced Trans­paren­cy Frame­work (ETF). In con­trast to the cur­rent re­view process, which has a dif­fer­ent process for de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, all coun­tries will be sub­ject to the same re­view process un­der the ETF.

Some of the ques­tions asked by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er na­tions in­clud­ed what is be­ing put in place in T&T pol­i­cy-wise and what ef­forts are be­ing made to re­duce emis­sions un­der the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions.

Ku­mars­ingh re­spond­ed by say­ing, “We have in­di­cat­ed where we are go­ing. In sub­se­quent NDC’s we hope to go econ­o­my-wise. The cur­rent NDC on­ly cov­ers pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­porta­tion, and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors. We hope to go econ­o­my-wise in­clud­ing forestry and agri­cul­ture and the waste sec­tors as well.”

How­ev­er, Ku­mars­ingh said while the coun­try was seek­ing to get there, there is a pauci­ty of da­ta, in­for­ma­tion and the da­ta col­lec­tion pro­to­cols that are re­quired to sat­is­fy ad­e­quate and trans­par­ent re­port­ing un­der those sec­tors.

He is hop­ing that by train­ing peo­ple in the rel­e­vant sec­tors on how to col­lect da­ta and how to re­port, it can tight­en up on the gaps they have en­coun­tered.

In her ad­dress to the work­shop, Beck­les said T&T will hold it­self to ac­count when it comes to its car­bon emis­sions.

She said, “Our com­mit­ment to the glob­al cli­mate agen­da is un­wa­ver­ing. We have es­tab­lished a func­tion­al mon­i­tor­ing, re­port­ing, and ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem to track our na­tion­al green­house gas emis­sions and progress to­wards our NDC goals. Our state-fund­ed com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) pro­gramme in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor is al­ready con­tribut­ing to sig­nif­i­cant green­house gas re­duc­tions, and we are al­ready in the process of elec­tri­fy­ing the pub­lic bus sys­tem.”

She said the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a con­ducive pol­i­cy, leg­isla­tive, in­sti­tu­tion­al, and ad­min­is­tra­tive en­vi­ron­ment to sup­port the cli­mate ac­tion agen­da.

It in­cludes up­dat­ing the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy in line with the Paris Agree­ment, fos­ter­ing re­new­able en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, de­vel­op­ing e-mo­bil­i­ty and just tran­si­tion poli­cies, and es­tab­lish­ing a le­gal frame­work for manda­to­ry green­house gas emis­sions re­port­ing and mit­i­ga­tion plans.