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Climate Change Brings Warmer, Wetter Weather to Trinidad

Imtiaz Khan remembers that the rains of his childhood were light, and they helped him with the summer heat. He said heavy rains only occur once a month during the rainy season.

Khan, now 48 and president of the Kali Gulf Fisheries Association, said the rain was terrifying. Storms are so regular that they cause severe flooding every year, he said. Heavy rains bring sediment into the bay, turning the sea murky and brown. The mangrove nursery was washed away. Clams, oysters, mussels and many types of fish are declining.

“Fish go where they have more food and where they can breed,” Khan said. “It’s no longer here.”

Trinidad and Tobago faces a familiar challenge. Its leaders believe that oil and gas production is essential to the economy, but exploitation of those resources is causing climate change and is particularly damaging to people and the environment.

Like other Trinidadians, Khan has a middle-of-the-road approach to climate change and fossil fuels, which he says he doesn’t want to end because they have helped improve the country’s standard of living. “We can’t stop oil and gas supplies, but we need a better balance,” he said.

He said fishermen have to sail farther across the Gulf to get their catch, resulting in increasing competition from fishermen from neighboring Venezuela.

To the south, along the coast of the fishing village of L’Anse Mitan, erosion is so severe that a large statue of St. Peter is on the verge of collapse. The storms and currents are so strong on the shore that fishermen are starting to park their boats in the tall grass.

“People are staying home on boats,” said Bernard Hospedales, a local fisherman.

The government of Trinidad highlighted the country’s climate challenges in its 2021 report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Trinidad and Tobago is already experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels, rising ambient temperatures and extreme weather events,” Camille Robinson Regis, then Minister for Planning and now Minister for Social Development, said in the introduction. rice field. to the report. He said climate change could undermine efforts to alleviate poverty and improve health care.

The climate of this island nation has historically been highly variable. Climate change is exacerbating this trend. And, according to a government report to the United Nations, average temperatures in Trinidad rose 2.5 times above the global average from 1946 to 2019. Over the past 40 years, heavy rains lasting several days have also become more frequent.

Watermelon farmers complain that they have to water more often during the dry season because they are drier. And when the rainy season comes, heavy rains damage the plants and reduce the watermelon yield.

“Watermelon can’t compete with oil and gas,” said Thielkulam Kemlag, who sold his produce by the roadside at the southern tip of Trinidad.

Other businesses have also been hit. Bally’s by the Sea Hotel and Resort, a 17-room beachside motel in Mayaro, had no guests on his recent April afternoon. Hotel supervisor Nisha Churay blamed clumps of rotting seaweed (known as sargassum) covering the beach and a weak economy in the country.

“It smells weird,” she said. “I don’t want to be there either.”

Sargassum, which grows in warming waters and agricultural runoff, is gathering on coasts across the Caribbean. Seaweed entangles fishing nets and interferes with turtle nesting.

Dave Ali, an oil and gas platform worker who lives down the street, said the amount of heavy brown seaweed accumulating on the beach has increased every year since around 2014.

“I love the idea of ​​solar and wind, but oil and gas won’t last forever,” he said over a beer on the balcony. “We are a small country. We are limited in what we can do.”

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