Wild Tobago

Not just a conversation piece to distract us, the topic of diversification is real in Dr Anjani Ganase’s mind. Here’s what we should be doing to ensure that we can protect land and marine resources and communities.     The main purpose of diversifying our economic resources is to be able to withstand the shocks of external disturbances. Since the Government of Trinidad and Tobago first started talking about the need to diversify our economy the threat of climate change seemed more like a future retirement plan. Today, climate change is on the doorstep, the world is committed to leaving fossil fuels behind and Covid has thrown us a curve ball.   But diversifying isn’t simply trying to get profit from elsewhere, more holistically it is to build a system of socio-economic resilience, and this doesn’t mean gaining profits for something but making sure we’re also not losing it somewhere else. For small island developing states, the impact of climate change...

The tide is turning from fossil fuels to renewables. Will we catch the wave at the crest, or be caught in the undertow. Dr Anjani Ganase makes the case for Trinidad and Tobago to be in the forefront of renewables. Trinidad and Tobago, like many countries around the world, is largely dependent on fossil fuels as its source of energy; but unlike many countries, we also rely on fossil fuels to drive our economy. For two generations, about 50 years, oil and gas supported our economy and this source of energy also seeded employment and innovation in the fossil fuel technology that has resulted in the successful liquid natural gas (LNG) driven economy over the recent 20 years. Today, LNG is still the biggest earner for Trinidad and Tobago. T&T is, therefore, in an especially vulnerable position, as the world is forced to consider a future of alternative energy sources to save our planet and us from the devastation of climate change. The true cost of burning gr...