Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle of March 2022, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment. Al­though the ti­tle does not say it, her min­istry is re­spon­si­ble for the en­vi­ron­ment, which in­cludes, in this re­gard, cli­mate change.

Giv­en the glob­al de­vel­op­ments on cli­mate change that car­ry di­rect im­pli­ca­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Beck­les has been thrust in­to the lime­light here at COP28 in Dubai, where a large num­ber of T&T cit­i­zens have been in at­ten­dance.

Af­ter a week of side events, speech­es and min­is­te­r­i­al ses­sions, Beck­les sat down for an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“I think we are go­ing to re­quire a lot of help,” she said when asked about T&T’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion from an oil and gas-based econ­o­my to re­new­ables. That tran­si­tion, she said, will be cost­ly.

“We have to see how oth­er coun­tries have been deal­ing with it (en­er­gy tran­si­tion). Here in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, they are in­volved in nu­clear and so­lar en­er­gy. Tran­si­tion­ing is cost­ly. Fi­nanc­ing is cost­ly.”

Beck­les point­ed out the num­ber of years it took for loss and dam­age fund­ing to fi­nal­ly be ap­proved at this COP, and al­though there is US$790 mil­lion in pledges, the world awaits the cri­te­ria to ac­cess the fund.

“We need to see if those pledges are ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to con­vert in re­al­i­ty to the kind of funds that we can start to see the kind of de­ci­sions that we need to take. That is crit­i­cal for us as a coun­try,” Beck­les said.

Once the text is com­plet­ed and adopt­ed by the COP, she will take it back to the Cab­i­net.

From its in­cep­tion, there has been strong lan­guage about the phas­ing out - rather than phas­ing down - of fos­sil fu­els at COP28. On the eve of COP, the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary, Si­mon Stiell, called for world lead­ers to come to an agree­ment for the com­plete phas­ing out of fos­sil fu­els.

That call was re­it­er­at­ed by UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res, who told the me­dia the phas­ing out of fos­sil fu­els does not mean every coun­try will do it at the same time.

Beck­les backed that state­ment by Guter­res, say­ing: “I think it was im­por­tant for him to say that be­cause you have seen a ramp­ing up of per­sons in a very ag­gres­sive way about the end­ing of fos­sil fu­els, but we have been a coun­try that, over the years, we have seen our de­vel­op­ment needs, our rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and our GDP based on oil and gas. What we are re­al­ly talk­ing about is an en­er­gy tran­si­tion. That’s where our na­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) come from and our just tran­si­tion.”

The min­is­ter said such a tran­si­tion can­not be done overnight be­cause the is­sue of eq­ui­ty will arise for coun­tries that re­quire not just the time and ex­per­tise, but fair­ness in the process.

Beck­les said in the en­er­gy tran­si­tion thrust, it’s im­por­tant to lean on the ex­per­tise of T&T na­tion­als the world over, while al­so ex­plor­ing the tech­ni­cal sup­port that can be pro­vid­ed by in­sti­tu­tions such as the the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB).

She added: “The lev­el of con­scious­ness that is need­ed to ad­dress cli­mate change, I be­lieve that it is there. It is now a ques­tion of look­ing at the cli­mate risks and how do we adapt, how do we en­sure that we ben­e­fit from the fund and how do we en­sure that we ben­e­fit from the ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance that is there from many parts of the world?”

Al­though COP28 is head­ed to a fi­nal day show­down to­day, the min­is­ter praised the work achieved at the con­fer­ence.

It ap­pears as though we have made a lot of head­way,” she said.

T&T gain­ing ac­cess to the loss and dam­age fund will be ben­e­fi­cial to this coun­try, she ex­plained, “be­cause you al­ways think about the im­por­tance of your de­vel­op­men­tal needs and your bal­ance in how you ad­dress cli­mate change.”

While at COP28, Beck­les met with Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) lead­ers who are work­ing on their Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM), which is be­ing rolled out to put a fair price on the car­bon emit­ted dur­ing pro­duc­tion of car­bon in­ten­sive goods en­ter­ing Eu­rope. CBAM will en­cour­age clean­er in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion in non-EU coun­tries. T&T is the fourth largest ex­porter of fer­tilis­ers to the EU.

Min­is­ter Beck­les said the meet­ing was a good one and the EU is work­ing with lo­cal com­pa­nies to make car­bon-in­ten­sive prod­ucts green­er.

“There have been we­bi­na­rs where they have met with sev­er­al com­pa­nies in T&T. The main is­sue for them is to be able to ed­u­cate, in­form, analyse, and they have in­di­cat­ed there are a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that op­er­ate in T&T, so it’s not just our coun­try but sev­er­al coun­tries around the world,” she said.

As T&T looks in­to the next year post-COP28, the min­is­ter said some mea­sures the coun­try ought to look at to ad­dress its cli­mate tar­gets in­clude its cli­mate poli­cies, while al­so re­vis­it­ing the ND­Cs.

“The fo­cus must be on en­sur­ing there is ed­u­ca­tion across every area so peo­ple have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing,” she said.

Beck­les is look­ing for­ward to a post-ses­sion af­ter COP28 with all the ma­jor stake­hold­ers to deal with cli­mate change.