A Caricom primer

So, who/what is this “Caricom” about which everybody seems to know so much nowadays?

The Caribbean Community (Caricom) was inaugurated on July 4, 1973, at a signing ceremony in Chaguaramas, T&T. The Treaty of Chaguaramas (as revised in 2001) is a legally binding international agreement.

There are 15 full member states and 6 associate members. In 1973 there were just four members – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and T&T. The effort to establish Caricom is widely credited to the convening of several meetings of Caribbean leaders in 1963 and initiated by late T&T PM, Dr Eric Williams.

This was only one year following the dissolution of the West Indies Federation that was launched in 1958 and included Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent, and T&T.

On December 15, 1965, the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA) was launched in Antigua and Barbuda as largely a free trade grouping, but including issues associated with industrialisation and agricultural production.

CARIFTA eventually morphed into Caricom with a much wider scope of objectives and engagement and often overlapping agendas. The four main pillars of this new mandate include economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development, and security cooperation.

Over the years, each pillar has confronted its fair share of difficulties – foreign policy coordination being among the more prominent, but not sole area of concern and occasional conflict.

There have been differences in policy positions related to everything from Cold War posturing in the early Caricom years – the 1970s through to the end of the 1980s – to issues associated with intra-regional trade and overall economic integration.

For these and other purposes, the principal organs of the Community pay close attention to the setting of policy – which is the role of the Conference of Heads of Government – and include the important and second highest body, the Community Council of Ministers, followed by the Councils for Finance and Planning (COFAP), Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), Human and Social Development (COHSOD), Trade and Economic Development (COTED), the National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE).

For satisfaction of its extensive and diverse mandates, the Community also relies on close to 30 specialised and complementary autonomous and semi-autonomous institutions.

These include the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) headquartered in Port of Spain for the resolution of disputes related to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, but which currently serves as the court of final appeal for five member states.

The Court, in its Original Jurisdiction (resolution of Treaty disputes) has responsibility for all 12 participants in the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), including T&T, and has ruled in several such matters. So, yes, T&T is “in the CCJ.”

There is also the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) which played a leading role in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) which is currently quite active in Jamaica and works closely with our Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) located in T&T.

There are others that play leading roles in important areas such as climate change, telecommunications, renewable energy, regional standards and quality setting, tourism, meteorology, and regional security.

On issues of regional security there is the Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) which was established in 2006 and is headquartered in T&T. It is responsible for convening regional meetings through standing committees of police commissioners, military heads, immigration chiefs, customs heads and officials of intelligence and financial investigative agencies and units.

Recent promotion of the upcoming (finally) of a T&T online E/D travel card, for example, involves employment of a platform that has long been in use in several Caricom countries and is hosted by IMPACS.

T&T meanwhile has Caricom “portfolio responsibility” for regional security and energy.

My "CSME Certificate" issued in 2006

Among the key provisions of the Revised Treaty is provision for the “movement of skilled community nationals” (Article. 46). This became implementable in our instance through our Immigration (Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals) Act - amended in 2022 to include new categories.

I am the holder of “Certificate of Recognition of Caribbean Community Skills Qualification” No. 783 granted on February 23, 2006, which I have used for work permit-free employment in the region. My old friend, now Minister of Planning, Kennedy Swaratsingh, most likely received his Caricom skilled nationals certificate for work in Barbados long after I did.

There is much more to this basic introduction to Caricom, but I do not have a full newspaper to continue the story. At some point we will also need to explore the Caricom Secretariat.

 

Big and little things

Nothing like the rim-bending, tyre-slashing, suspension re-arranging, radio station changing  thud of wheel in pothole to remind you that while big things are in train, some of the smaller things can suck you into reality more urgently than the stuff of compelling newspaper headline.

Your country can be stumbling mindlessly into a violent, seemingly bottomless, geo-political pit, but all that concerns you at that precise moment is the trench of deeply excavated asphalt that took masterly aim at rolling rubber.

Up to a few months ago, we nicknamed such rascals “Sinny” or “Row Hand”, but today we encounter “Johnny” or “Jewel Een” - in all their best-performing omnipresence.

There is one – a “Johnny” - along the Eastern Main Road at the traffic lights in Champs Fleurs that wins first prize. It recently claimed my left front tyre and rim, and the radio skipped channels from BBC World to the endless chatter of a local talk show discussing raisins and pastelles.

There is another beauty near T&TEC in Curepe. Nearby stands a strategically positioned tyre shop and three places of worship walking distance away. Beat that!

I invite readers to enter their own examples in the award for most outrageous neighbourhood or work location pothole. Give it a name.

You can also have the most energetic debates on the ability of guns to silence guns and the value of eliminating bothersome judicial time – both at your home or out at sea – and not match a cloudy night under an eternally expired streetlight – particularly within dangerous range of a “Johnny”.

True, T&TEC has come a long way since the blackout years, but faulty streetlights now more regularly join with criminals, potholes, and uneven pavements to make life just that more uncomfortable.

There can be sophisticated discussions regarding world economic outlook and investment grade national rankings. Who or what is to be blamed or credited. What caused all of this. Where in the dynamics of macro-economic circumstance reside small, brittle states.

Yet, uncut grass in the neighbourhood and unattended drains can produce a solitary mosquito equipped with arboviruses to make you seriously ill or kill you. Dengue, my friends, can blunt dramatic news on world commodity markets and render irrelevant the negative interface between domestic mismanagement and global financial credibility.

It can end careers and prematurely terminate elaborate criminal investigations. It can defy geography, advanced technology, and clever sleuthing via microscopic proboscises.

There is one theological view that mosquitoes were created as vegetarians but because of “The Fall of Man” began sucking the blood of animals and humans. That’s pretty big, important stuff - sufficient to silence Sunday pulpits on the question of modern-day genocide.

For now, Mosquitoes 2.0 is all that matters. An audit probably needs to be conducted to calculate the numbers. Just one small factor against the backdrop of major things … such as climate change.

Fresh from the failures of COP30 and the bother of climate science scepticism, emerge concerns about things such as “climate justice” and the “just transition” to a more limited fossil-free future.

Yes, T&T’s final version of our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement – hifalutin stuff! – is moving us in the direction of biofuels and the renewables. Big things these.

Yet, WASA must move much faster to achieve “Water for All by 2000” (it’s not a typo, check your files). Much, much faster. Not for the neighbour to use more for “hosing down” the yard or for sweet men to wash their cars every single day of their lives.

But for the simple things like flushing the toilet, having a shower, cooking food, doing the dishes, washing clothes, and having a cold glass of water while sitting back tuned into a sport channel on cable …

Now, about cable television and internet … At one time, modern day “outages” were referred to as “blackouts.” Today, we have posh “outages” for “planned maintenance” and internet “outages” checked and double-checked in neighbourhood WhatsApp groups.

Don’t start on “noise pollution”, please. Not as in Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine. But as in every single night in some areas where there are no fireworks, but lots and lots of, well, harmful noise pollution. This is “Silence for All in 2025” done “Water for All” style.

Oh. Meanwhile, Brent crude oil futures hovered around $61.1 per barrel on Monday, near the lowest level in almost two months amid persistent concerns about oversupply, while investors monitored developments surrounding a new round of Ukraine peace negotiations.

 

Elections, Melissa, and Escazú

The Caribbean region is emerging slowly and painfully from a torrid season of elections, and an equally intense hurricane season – whether or not some believed they were affected by either.

It’s now evident there remain open wounds associated with combative politics, negative instincts related to transparency and social cohesion, and the consequential collective ability/inability to efficiently confront seemingly overwhelming challenges.

Westmoreland, Jamaica (Dec 2025)

For guidance on unravelling such connections we should spend time examining things such as institutional environment, political culture, and the impacts of an indisputable culture of official secrecy.

For this reason, today’s thoughts invoke the requirements of an international treaty – the Escazú Agreement which mandates public rights to access environmental information, participation in decisions, and social justice in environmental matters.

Escazú does not stand alone. There is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16:10 which calls for “ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms.” In many of our countries, today, there are also access to information laws, and other legislative provisions.

The impact of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica on October 28 provides us with an example of seasoned hands, on all fronts – politics, crisis, and nominal commitment to the free flow of official information – attempting to come to terms with the urgency of one of the biggest disasters in Caribbean history.

This is a country considered to provide the rest of us with a gold standard when it comes to institutional arrangements addressing perils, emergencies, and disasters – both natural and human-originated.

Post-hurricane fish prep at Border, St Elizabeth/Westmoreland

However, depending on whom you question today, including those directly exposed to catastrophic damage in the country’s southwestern areas since October, there are mixed reviews regarding overall performance.

Attorney, Debbie-Ann Gordon (a Westmoreland native) surmised in a December 7 Jamaica Gleaner column: “Recovery must address long-standing vulnerabilities: irregular land tenure, inadequate infrastructure, fragile housing, and limited economic options. Hurricane Melissa did not create these issues; it exposed them.”

Meanwhile, there is hardly a comparative regional example of the island’s extensive planning and ameliorative institutional landscape. Its Disaster Risk Management Act, for example, prescribes a multipartite Disaster Risk Management Council.

This mechanism impressively coalesces a wide variety of sectoral and inter-sectoral interests. This results not only from the good sense of bringing all hands on deck, but from past experiences in which multipartite arrangements supported by state financial, administrative, functional, and regulatory assets were systemically absent.

As is currently unfolding, there appear to be gaps between the existence of well-designed, well-intended, thoughtful state mechanisms, and timely, tangible requirements on the ground.

Contrastingly, private sector involvement in recovery among island businesses of all categories, has generally met the standards of urgency, data-focused, and strategically targeted. Civil society organisations are also significantly chipping in from at home and abroad.

“We are nowhere near the end … but we are doing the right things, taking an all of society approach and smashing the silos together when we confront them,” says Lisa Soares Lewis, who is leading the private sector Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

What's left of the sprawling Black River Market

Journalist Dionne Jackson-Miller has meanwhile diligently applied extensive scrutiny to a mandated Disaster Risk Management Council which, as everyone concedes, provides the best opportunity to bring an extensive selection of voices to the table … but which last met in June!

Follow Dionne Jackson-Miller on YouTube

However, I think it would be wrong to assume the worst intentions on the part of anyone involved – whatever the political finger-pointing. There are, in fact, important sub-committees and agencies of the state actively and diligently engaged.

However, someone I met in Kingston – with September third’s general election as a persistent backdrop – advised, sadly, that I encounter Westmoreland from neither side of “both fences.”

Think now of recovery efforts in countries such as Dominica and The Bahamas hit by Category 5 hurricanes in 2017 and 2019 respectively; and others such as Antigua and Barbuda, and the Grenadines that have witnessed serious impacts over recent years.

There had been precautions regarding “both sides of the fence” in all of these. Here, in T&T, there is every indication that we can fall prey to such a vulnerability (as we are), even as we do not quite boast anything near Jamaica’s organisational, regulatory, or administrative capacity in such matters.

The margins of the Belém Conference of Parties (COP30) on climate change considered the role of greater official transparency and social cohesion when confronting phenomena associated with the climate crisis. More than once, Melissa was identified by name and location.

At the CARICOM Pavilion at COP30, Belém

In Latin America and the Caribbean, relevant attention in this area of interest turned to the Escazú Agreement which entered into force in 2021.

T&T is yet to sign. Jamaica has signed but not yet ratified. Maybe there are lessons yet unlearned.

Pan and the outsourcing of development

The recent, poorly timed, unilateral withdrawal of multiple steelband sponsorships (better described as “investments”) by state companies drew the regret-laden attention of Pan Trinbago President, Beverly Ramsey-Moore, at the start of last Saturday’s Single Pan Finals at the Queen’s Park Savannah.

By then, Ms Ramsey-Moore must have already heard the term “dependency syndrome” applied to the condition purportedly being addressed by some newcomers to official, corporate leadership. Such a conclusion is clearly representative of appalling ignorance.

I have heard the unfortunate term more than once myself and wondered about the extent to which some key decision-makers have been aware of several longstanding, well-established facts about the relationship between steelbands and national life.

Look carefully and you will witness a situation in which both the corporate and state sectors have essentially been outsourcing key socio-cultural functions via sponsorships (investments) in steelbands.

Steelbands and their panyards – in instances where they represent legitimate, cohesive organisations (some do not) - have become important instruments through which key services, other than the clearly musical, are being delivered.

Add to this (and I repeat this for the umpteenth time) the value of pan as music, a platform for economic growth, socio-cultural development, the generation of creative capital, and the panyard as a model for social mobilisation and change.

I have employed the word “investment” at the very top of this, because anyone with even the slightest clue about the role of bands and their panyards to the development process must know that the links are inalienable.

For example, just days after the discontinuation of financial support for Skiffle Bunch Steel Orchestra (and curiously instructive notice to refrain from all branding associated with Heritage Petroleum), there was a break-in at the band’s homework centre. Yes, “homework centre.”

Junia Regrello would proudly submit for consideration the involvement of children between the ages of 5 and 15 in the band’s activities. At Supernovas, teens and young people are regularly in charge. (Unsponsored) birdsong remains a beacon in music education among the young.

Panyards, you see, are not the single-purpose facilities for performance of a single song at the Panorama competition some people still think they are.

Supernovas Panyard (watercolour 2023 by WG)

The folks at Siparia Deltones would also tell you that there is much more to not only what their organisation does, but almost all other large and medium bands. Stageside ensembles boast extensive repertoires in a wide variety of genres, keep people rewardingly busy, and generate alternative sources of band and player revenue.

Panyards are also not simply designed “to keep young people busy and out of trouble.” Clinging to this point as a standalone is almost as bad as subscribing to the “dependency syndrome” question. There is a built-in presumption in this that the cohort that gravitates toward panyards has “trouble” as default behaviour.

The reality is that the panyard has emerged as a singularly egalitarian environment where a construction worker section leader can instruct a medical professional on matters of timing and musical treatment.

As we learn from Skiffle and many others, general education and academic instruction have also become routine features of the panyard environment. People learn specific skills and are introduced to different perspectives on entrepreneurship.

Birdsong has for some years not competed in Panorama at the senior level and is paying greater attention to the junior band and the creation of a new generation of musicians. Its vacation camp experience includes academic, vocational, and music education covering a wide variety of musical instruments.

Speak with Exodus manager, Ainsworth Mohammed, and he will tell you about his “relay” theory of planning and the extent to which his band focuses on nurturing the abilities of the young to enrich prospects for the future.

I recently encountered young Niko Brewster whose university dissertation in the UK was entitled “The Emergence of the Panyard: Music, Cultural Production, and Spatial Contention.”

Brewster is clear that the “flexible space” within which the panyard operates enables near limitless options to deliver expanded services and to generate revenue. Look out for more on this in a subsequent dispatch.

It is meanwhile true, as birdsong’s Dennis Phillips suggests, that there is scope for changing the terms of reference of the steelband establishment to bring it more in line with some realities such as the fiction of over 100 registered conventional steelbands.

There is also a need for the steelband community to better tell its stories beyond involvement/success in annual competitions.

Had this been effectively done, there would be less of the prevailing nonsense that appears to be fuelling serious decision-making on investments in pan and their consequential contribution to national development.

Noise and culture questions

Right from the start, let’s get things clear. We have a problem with harmful noise in T&T. Bad habits and reckless behaviour are not admirable features of cultural practice. And it’s not only celebratory events. The question is how we propose to address such a challenge in all its manifestations.

Saying this in no way diminishes the value of our festivals and different forms of expression and does not suggest that to address misbehaviour you need to endanger the viability of valuable creative assets.

Most people who organise Carnival and other public events understand this challenge, seem prepared to openly acknowledge some measure of culpability, and very well know how to address the problem through technology and self-regulation.

Let’s also not forget; nationally, no other single event generates as much economic activity, creative output, and socio-cultural value as does Carnival. We can argue over Xmas another time.

Over the years, the occasion has also moved away from a past characterised by what can only be described as recreational apartheid. Choice of venue is today a carefully assessed factor in determining competitive edge and not a matter of mere privileged access.

There is a prevailing view that current arbitrary, selective interventions, ostensibly to address noise pollution, may seriously damage this industry and turn the cultural clock back.

If it is indeed noise pollution being prosecuted, we need to understand that we already have a legal framework, awaiting serious application, which captures scientific knowledge of the harmful nature of excessive noise. This prescribes actions to minimise the risk of injury to people, animals, and the natural environment.

There are misunderstandings, in part, because the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) has not done a very good job explaining what is involved, including the multiplicity of existing remedies at law.

Politicians and other thought leaders have also, over the years, done more harm than good when proposing to address what is an undeniable problem by being selective about what is acceptable and what is not, and by acting out of pique or hypocritical vaps.

In the process, official actions have tended to be slap-dash, whimsical, discriminatory, and thus subject to the worst possible interpretations. Against such a backdrop, multi-disciplinary creative Wendell Manwarren has been moved to correctly declare that creative expression should not be degraded to the level of mere “noise.”

The concept of “noise pollution” is broadly described as any sound that has the potential to cause harm to human health and well-being and disrupt the natural environment.

It is also identified, at law, through permissible and impermissible sound levels. We instinctively know and feel it at election time, religious services, celebratory events, neighbourhood bar activities, private parties, and public events.

In our case, and though there are other forms of legal redress, Noise Pollution Control Rules under the Environmental Management Act, set out specific decibel levels in three specific “noise zones” – industrial areas, environmentally sensitive areas, and “the general area.”

These environmentally sensitive areas are not the stuff of knee-jerk concoction. There is room for debate and action, but there was some science behind these guidelines, however haphazardly enforced.

The last time I wrote about noise pollution, there was some (thankfully limited) social media attention to the misplaced view that my reference to “de culture”, in this context, constituted part of an orchestrated assault on our collective creative attributes.

What in part accounts for this confusion has been very loose public usage of the term “noise pollution.”

To the protectionists, there is little doubt that other longstanding traditional cultural practices in other areas of concern have proven to be harmful and have had to be addressed. For example, I have railed against the absence of protective gear for our stick-fighters and will not attend any such activity until that is dealt with.

Other issues include child marriage, and things such as the environmentally sensitive disposal of religious artefacts. Tradition is not intrinsically sacrosanct.

That said, I do not include Carnival among the chronically harmful practices – even as we need to admit that excessive noise (which was not always been the case, by the way) has become a problem associated with it.

Nowhere in these Rules, nor in other associated regulations (read my past columns on this), is decision-making by decree prescribed. Even as there is room for regulatory improvement, there is anticipated a level of orderly compliance and enforcement. Proper, sensible discussion and judgment required here. Not hubris and vaps.

Belém's climate justice paradox

Even a full week in Belém, Brazil at the 30^th Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can leave you ambivalent on questions of specific value and impact, outside of staid official communication suspiciously evidentiary of pre-determined bureaucratic outcomes.

You need not look far to understand that regional and international public servants are fully in charge, with process chronically accorded prominence over output.

It’s just how it is. Until they meet the guy who suggests that there isn’t 100 percent official adherence to the Latam/Caribbean Escazú Agreement on open environmental information, because the tabulation requires nuanced inclusion of Caribbean hesitancy.

It was also important that the story of Caribbean children embrace common cause with the condition of children everywhere. Yes, I needed to speak with the “others” too, whatever the presumed editorial leadership of UNICEF officialdom.

So, yes, with COP17 hosted in Durban, South Africa providing fading personal contrast, the Belem chapter inspired multiple levels of déjà vu.

Security at the gate

There were the usual hordes of UN officials, leaders and/or their supporting casts, public servants, development entrepreneurs, construction workers, engineers on active duty, journalists, civil society activists/advocates/protesters, daredevil attention seekers, volunteers, and sundry hybrid, conference human varieties.

Fears that the jungle city hugging the mighty Amazon with mango trees lining the major promenades was not up to scratch can only be judged alongside personal experience, expectations, and ambitions.

Belém provides the lived metaphor of human encroachment up against natural and civilisational persistence. The lively river-front Ver-o-Peso market serving food, fruit and clothing is a 20-minute bus ride from the Basilica of Our Lady of Nazareth which is the focal point for October’s Círio de Nazaré festival annually attracting over a million people.

With COP30 focused on the slowed advance of anthropogenically-induced climate change, the overwhelming imperatives of development co-exist alongside the Amazonian eco-system in Belém as lived testimony.

Inside the sweltering conference centre – the Blue Zone assigned to “official” business and the Green for everything and everybody else – there appeared distance from conditions past the security perimeters - other than when indigenous folk advanced rowdily to claim what they considered to be their sovereign space and conversations.

However multi-tiered and multi-dimensional the negotiations, discussions, workshops, panels and networking sessions, it was difficult to encounter, at official levels, too many essential threads that enjoined one week at COP30 to some key points of concurrent reality.

For Caribbean folk there were numerous such entry points via the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the financial arrangements to facilitate adaptation and compensation, a concern for the vulnerable, and other imperatives common to a concern for social justice.

There is no social justice without “climate justice” declared one panellist - though my own feelings assert the converse. That a country’s social, political, cultural, and economic arrangements need first to be suitably aligned in order to envisage “just” transitions, and the ability to survive both effects of and actions on climate change.

My friend, scientist Steve Maximay, cleverly asserts that the “just” in the process of transitioning to new low carbon circumstances is more adjective than adverb. When put this way, there is cause for greater focus on vulnerable people and places.

It also takes more than tales of national woe to get to the bottom of these heavily sloganeered principles. Caribbean experts, for the most part, alongside their Small Island Developing States (SIDS) counterparts, seemed much more prepared to mesh diagnosis with multi-course prescription – however compelling the case for pre-emptive and reparative financing as a discrete ingredient.

The CARICOM Pavilion has been, in that sense, a source of nuanced discourse. Under the heat of heartlessly bright lights and even more merciless air conditioning failure, for instance, we heard of Anguilla’s innovative use of revenue generated through ownership of the “.ai” country code top-level domain (ccTLD), for funding climate related actions.

But the highlight that came at the end for me – and about which I plan to say more in due course – are the actions of youth advocates to occupy space along the internal COP perimeter. There is a lot to say about the principles to which their attention is being attracted that lie at the heart of the process of adaptation in situations of high vulnerability.

An informal session arranged by the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) made the climate change/social justice points in ways other platforms failed or refused to address. That was my COP30. It continues this week. But I am over and out.

 

Caribbean Stakes at Belem

The largest regularly scheduled global event to review progress on actions related to climate change (the climate crisis) has convened in the city of Belem, Brazil in the presence of some of the more vocally sceptical states - albeit through relatively low-level representation.

Nobody - whatever the public bluster - seems willing to risk being too far away from decision-making on and the coordination of efforts to combat what has been recognised by the world’s leading scientists as an existential challenge of our time.

Countries like the United States, China, India, and more recently Argentina, have assigned low priority to the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP) – the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). And they are all already in or en route to Brazil’s “City of Mango Trees” along the bank of the Amazon River.

COP 30 - Belem

T&T’s Planning Minister Kennedy Swaratsingh is also due to arrive soon to lead a team of experts from within his ministry. This country’s role has in the past been among the more vibrant within Caricom and some of our officials are highly regarded in the region and beyond.

Any slippage in active, influential involvement by any of us in the Caribbean will undoubtedly send wrong signals. This applies not only to our regional and hemispheric partners but to global benefactors who have accepted a role in assisting the more vulnerable states come to terms with the symptoms of this phenomenon.

This has been particularly recognised by countries that know most about the potentially devastating effects of changing climate conditions.

True, commitments of support have not always materialised. But there is general recognition of the requirement of the wealthy and powerful … the most complicit … to acknowledge a level of responsibility.

Whatever the geo-political adventures and fantasies being engaged by some, the small island and low-lying coastal territories of our region cannot drift, geographically, away from where we are currently located. We cannot just get up and retreat from any of this.

Grenadian engineer Simon Stiell serves as UN Climate Change Executive Secretary and provides proof of our region’s entrenched presence and engagement of the process. T&T scientist Prof. John Agard shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside other experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

T&T was also a founding member of the 39-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and our own Annette Des Iles occupied the chair between 1995 and 1997. In 2002, Caricom established the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

Additionally, whether we decide to re-engage the already settled question of an anthropogenic (man-made) contribution to what the world is currently witnessing or delegate divine or other mystical responsibility, warnings of more intense and more frequent weather events are hardly dismissible. This is so, whatever politicians, powerbrokers, and amateur scientists with internet connections contend.

And even if we do concede that something – whatever its origins - is happening that is causing harm and elevating fear there is no waving away, by social media post or political declaration, the fact that our small highly exposed island and low-lying coastal states will have to find a way to cope/adapt/mitigate much better than we have in the past.

The people of western Jamaica are at this time uninterested in what either the climate sceptics or scientists have to say. There is also no imminent magical rescue by way of international political posturing. The current overriding concerns include recovery from grief, physical injury, infrastructural devastation, and a hope that in rebuilding there will be a capacity to rebuild better.

Host President Lula da Silva has meanwhile described the Belem Conference as the “COP of truth” and inserted strong elements of humanitarian concern. UN Secretary General, António Guterres correspondingly insists the world has “never been better equipped to fight back” against climate change.

Such exclamations however lose their sting when both the wealthy and powerful, together with some of the poor and vulnerable take concerted eyes off the climate challenge.

Stiell said yesterday that the 2015 Paris Agreement - a legally binding international treaty on climate change – “is delivering real progress, but we must accelerate in the Amazon.”

There also appears to be a need to accelerate decision-making and action in the major capitals of the world, as in the Caribbean Sea and everywhere else the subject of climate change is being recognised and experienced as an urgent condition.

It is hoped that Belem will bring Lula’s “truth” and Guterres’ “fight” to the table in ways not previously witnessed. There is room for both hope and concern.