T&T leads Caribbean in Ozone protection

Trinidad and To­ba­go has emerged as a re­gion­al leader in en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, achiev­ing a 78 per cent phase-out of Hy­drochlo­ro­flu­o­ro­car­bons (HCFCs) as of 2025.

The coun­try is on track to meet its am­bi­tious tar­get of a 97.5 per­cent re­duc­tion by 2027 un­der the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col, a glob­al treaty de­signed to safe­guard the ozone lay­er.

Since join­ing the Pro­to­col in 1989, Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­sis­tent­ly set the pace in the Caribbean, be­com­ing the first na­tion in the re­gion to sign on to every amend­ment.

The coun­try suc­cess­ful­ly elim­i­nat­ed Chlo­ro­flu­o­ro­car­bons (CFCs) in 2008, a mile­stone that re­quired sweep­ing changes in in­dus­tri­al stan­dards, new leg­is­la­tion, and ex­ten­sive re­train­ing of tech­ni­cians. This ef­fort was spear­head­ed by the Na­tion­al Ozone Unit of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, work­ing along­side agen­cies such as the Bu­reau of Stan­dards, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, and in­dus­try part­ners.

The fo­cus has now ex­pand­ed to Hy­dro­flu­o­ro­car­bons (HFCs), po­tent green­house gas­es with thou­sands of times the warm­ing po­ten­tial of car­bon diox­ide. Through the Ki­gali Amend­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go is tran­si­tion­ing to “Green Cool­ing” tech­nolo­gies and en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient ap­pli­ances, en­sur­ing its cli­mate com­mit­ments ex­tend be­yond ozone pro­tec­tion.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh high­light­ed the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor, and cit­i­zens in pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty and ecosys­tems.

Min­is­ter Swarats­ingh em­pha­sized that these ef­forts not on­ly safe­guard the en­vi­ron­ment but al­so re­duce health risks such as skin can­cer and cataracts linked to ex­ces­sive UV ex­po­sure.