By LINCOLN MYERS Tuesday, November 24 2009

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NEWSDAY STARS AT CHOGM: Jeffery Davis, of the Association of Commonwealth Literature, left, is presented with a copy of Newsday's Monday edition and a...

With the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week and the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in December, Caribbean politicians have been busy paying lip service to all important issue of climate change.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning in a recent address to secondary school students debating the issue pointed out, as he had earlier done at the United Nations, that climate change “had to do with the configuration of the entire globe in years to come: who is going to survive and who not going to.” His Foreign Affairs Minister, Paula Gopee-Scoon, has also recently stated that complacence on the issue of climate change is not an option. Comments also came from Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde, minister with responsibility for the environment.

At a recent launch of the government’s Climate Change Forum, designed to engage the public in environmental dialogue, the Minister indicated that this programme was a part of government’s initiative to promote social education, awareness and understanding of how climate change has affected the Caribbean particularly with respect to sea level rise and intensified storms and hurricanes. Indeed, in April 2008 Secretary-General of Caricom, Edwin Carrington, lamented to a specially convened meeting of ministers with responsibility for the environment that the said meeting was long overdue.

Despite numerous efforts over many years, he said, to convene such a meeting with a view of having a comprehensive discussion on a number of key issues and to establish critical policies relevant to the sustainable development of our Community, we have consistently failed. So the government has a huge credibility deficit on this, as well as many other issues. Not one of these high government officials speaks with any conviction and awareness of the rich record of Trinidad and Tobago on this issue.

The record I speak of is neither private nor confidential; it is public even if ignored by present day policymakers. In 1989, the government of Trinidad and Tobago convened the First Caricom Ministerial Conference on the Environment. That meeting issued the Port-of-Spain Accord on the Management and Conservation of the Caribbean Environment which identified priority issues and made policy recommendations for the region’s governments to implement.

The document identified public education and awareness as one of the strategic approaches to be used in treating with Caribbean environmental challenges. It also called for the establishment of a standing committee of ministers with responsibility for the environment as well as a consultative forum of agencies working on environmental programmes in the region. Further, at the 1990 Second World Climate Conference, held in Geneva, Trinidad and Tobago played a key role in the defence of the interest of small island states and in the end was principal organiser of the grouping of small islands states that came to be called the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

And, in 1991 the Port-of-Spain Consensus was issued at the conclusion of the Caribbean Regional Economic Conference. That document explicitly stated that urgent attention should be directed towards action on the priority issues identified in the Port-of-Spain Accord. In 1992, there was the Report of the West Indian Commission which also spoke to the issue of environment and development.

To all of this we must now add the UN Conference on Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) held in Barbados in 1994 which identified climate change and sea levels as being amongst its highest priorities.

The sad fact is that the government has shown no appreciation or understanding of the critical linkage between climate change and sea level rise or between ecology and economy.

The Government has shown no interest in identifying with the issues critical to AOSIS/SIDS, no interest in the fundamental issues identified in the West Indian Commission Report (1992), the Barbados Programme of Action (1994), the Port-of-Spain Consensus (1991) or the Port-of- Spain Accord (1989). As a matter of fact Government’s focus is in the opposite direction given its preoccupation with steel mills and aluminium smelters. So when ministers speak of climate change, or any other matter, we are to avoid endowing those words with the quality of integrity normally attached to those words. Rather, we will be better served to treat their words as a verbal expression of doublethink. That is, a simultaneous belief in two contradictory ideas.

Citizens deserve better.