Just Transition Considerations: Views from the Caribbean
Approx. 12 min read
Globally, if we are to successfully transition to net zero, we must ensure that the ecological, economic and societal transition is fair for everyone.
To better understand the challenges associated with making sure that there is a Just Transition in the Caribbean, we spoke to two Seafielders who are from the region: Tremaine Bowman who lives in Trinidad and Adam Gravel who lives on the island of Saint Vincent.
Before we chat to them, let’s clear up what we mean when we say a “Just Transition”. We follow the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition of the Just Transition:
A Just Transition means greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.
A Just Transition involves maximizing the social and economic opportunities of climate action, while minimizing and carefully managing any challenges – including through effective social dialogue among all groups impacted, and respect for fundamental labour principles and rights.
Ensuring a Just Transition is important for all countries at all levels of development. It is also important for all economic sectors – by no means limited to energy supply – and in urban and rural areas alike.
In other words, as we shift to a low-carbon global economy, employment should be protected and any changes that could affect local and indigenous communities should be discussed and agreed upon with relevant representatives.
Seafields is fully aware that:
We have an international workforce
We currently have on-the-ground operations in the Caribbean, Mexico and the UK
We will operate in, and bring employment to, many different jurisdictions in the long term
Now we’ve cleared that up, let’s hear what Tremaine and Adam had to say about the Just Transition:
![TBowman Headshot[35].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/63316a7d89502f48827ac4c7/1691769875409-33ITH4RF5J86EXRYN4I1/TBowman+Headshot%5B35%5D.jpg)
Tremaine (left) and Adam (right)
Seafields:
Please give us a brief intro of who you are and what your role is with Seafields.
Tremaine:
I’m Tremaine and I am the programme support officer with Seafields. My job spec is pretty wide but essentially I help with strategic management of the science, ensuring that all the processes and logistics are in place so that the science team is able to perform their tasks as best they can.
Adam:
Hello, I'm Adam Gravel from St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), and I work in Seafields' marine engineering department. My responsibilities include watercraft operations, drone piloting, managing seaweed farms, and leading our local team.
Seafields:
Obviously Seafields’ solution is all based around Sargassum, and we’re aware that Sargassum is also a huge issue throughout the Caribbean region and Mexico as well. How has Sargassum affected your life, particularly living in the Caribbean?
Adam:
The abundance of Sargassum here is what brought Seafields to St. Vincent to conduct their vital research and development, which allowed me the opportunity to do some of the most meaningful work of my life.
However, for the country as a whole, the overwhelming accumulation of Sargassum along our shores has negatively affected tourism, leading to economic downturn, downsizing of businesses, and unemployment. Additionally, Sargassum interferes with fishing activities due to navigation issues, gear entanglement, and oxygen depletion.
Tremaine:
Well, particularly in Trinidad I must admit that I don't go to the beach often, but I do stay in the loop on what's happening within the islands. So, I know it's affecting the fisherfolk a lot, they’re very affected by the Sargassum issue. It's tangling up their nets and it's messing up their propellers.
It’s also an ongoing issue when it beaches, because it smells, you know? It’s a huge problem – it's not like it just washes up and it's all fine. It smells very bad. So they have to try to find a way to gather it up and dump it elsewhere.
I saw recently that some fisherfolk are looking at using it as fertiliser. It's not as simple as just using it as a fertiliser because you have to be sure of the content of the Sargassum. Sargassum filters out a lot of the nutrients from the Atlantic and with biomagnification and bioaccumulation it could take up different types of heavy metals. So what it takes in could then seep into the soil and go into our foods. That’s why we need to analyse the Sargassum before using it for anything.
Seafields:
One issue that we’re aware of is around potential arsenic accumulation in Sargassum. Has that been a problem?
Tremaine:
That's what Fran (Dr Franziska Elmer, Seafields Scientific Project Manager) has mentioned. I personally haven’t done any chemical analysis on it, but definitely I know that Fran is up to date on the science regarding this. So that's a potential issue that they have, the arsenic content of the Sargassum being fairly high. It would be especially bad if it absorbed and then goes into any food you grow. So we would advise against using Sargassum as fertiliser in its raw form, you know, without any processing.
Seafields:
And so Sargassum doesn't affect you personally too much but across the region it has two main impacts: firstly, on people who are fishing and the fishing industry and secondly on tourism because of the way it affects the beaches?
Tremaine:
Definitely. I think for a lot of locals, especially if you're not living nearby to the beach and you're not necessarily smelling it, then it doesn't really affect you. But if you're a tourist or you're living or working nearby the beach, then it definitely affects you a lot more.
Seafields:
And so what made you want to work with a company like Seafields?
Adam:
My passion for mariculture drew me to Seafields, and when I saw their recruitment announcement on social media, I made sure to apply through multiple channels to maximize consideration.
Tremaine:
For me, it is very important to work with international organisations. That is one of the main things when I'm looking for a job, because it's important for me to be able to interact with people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different nationalities, because I feel like that's how I learn.
Even when I was at university, I was able to interact with many persons and like my supervisor, who is Scottish, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. So that was one of the things I looked at.
I also realised that Seafields looks at and contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and that was super important because any company that operates out of the Caribbean region should demonstrate how they are intentionally looking for ways to positively influence the region.
When they [Seafields] talk about job creation for communities within the region, that is something that is extremely important to me. Overall, as it pertains to sustainability and solutions focusing (on some level) on renewable energy, that is extremely important to me as an environmentalist myself.
Seafields:
That’s great to hear and is very much tied into the next question: What benefits do you think Seafields could bring if it had permanent operations in, say, Trinidad, SVG or across the Caribbean?
Adam:
Scaling up Seafields' operations in SVG would bring significant benefits such as job creation, economic growth, and potential educational programs.
Tremaine:
Setting up across the region, as I said, could provide employment and good sustainable jobs for a lot of persons. As an environmentalist myself, I know people in the field of marine research or marine science sometimes struggle to find jobs because, apart from the sections of government that focus on the marine environment or other aspects of the environment, it's not necessarily a very wide field, especially in Trinidad.
We have Shell, we have BP. We have a lot of companies and that can provide employment on a large scale. But in terms of environmental jobs, there aren't many companies that could provide employment on that large scale. I think it’s very important that companies who can provide opportunities to many marine scientists or environmental researchers are able to set up anywhere in the region.
Seafields:
Do you feel that the employment that large companies offer is provided in a fair way or does it seem that the kind of profits and the proceeds they make aren't actually filtering down into the local economy?
Tremaine:
I can't say for sure. What I can say is that I know people who work for oil companies and I think they have provided great opportunities for geologists and engineers, especially within Trinidad and Tobago. They have provided a good opportunity for them. I know they provide considerable numbers of research opportunities, summer camps and outreach to the community. My friends who work for them they seem happy, and they hire locals. As it pertains to holding the profits, I can't speak to that, but I would say that I think they do provide the opportunity for good employment within the islands.
Seafields:
That's one of the key concerns of the Just Transition. You might look at the likes of the oil majors or companies that derive their profits from generally environmentally damaging practices, but fundamentally they do have kind of a good track record in providing strong local employment. And now obviously if you remove that employment, you need to replace it with something else, which is why it's great that there are organisations like Seafields.
But do you have concerns that with the transition to net zero, there might be jobs lost that aren't replaced or if new companies come in, they might potentially not have the kind of resources or mechanisms to fairly provide the local employment that larger corporations historically have?
Tremaine:
That would definitely be a concern. A colleague of mine who works at a large corporation, I hear that they're very well compensated. I think it might be a bit of a challenge for a company like us to be able to match those types of salaries provided by the likes of Shell. You wouldn't get that type of salary from the government. So when you go to work with these large private companies, you are generally very well compensated.
But in the transition, especially for a country like Trinidad that has oil and natural gas reserves, it's inevitable that if we try to boot out those companies then we will feel the pinch. We will feel the brunt of it. That’s because major parts of our economy are derived from the oil and gas. The reason why they say Trinidad does well economically is because we have oil.
If you look at how the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago spoke at the COP 27, it's a concern for the country . It's important to transition to little to no carbon emissions, but for countries like us, who have been able to build our economy on oil and natural gas, we are definitely a little more hesitant to transition away from it. Granted, we have the highest GHG emissions in the Caribbean region. So we definitely need to find ways to “greenify” our processes. But as I said, if it comes at the cost of our economy then it will be a hard sell for us.
Adam:
Organizations can achieve a Just Transition by engaging stakeholders, addressing concerns, involving marginalized groups, providing comprehensive re-skilling and retaining programs, and creating new green jobs through investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure projects.
Seafields:
How do you think that might play out? Do you think that government is central to that? It’s seemingly an impossible problem for an island nation where you don't want to lose jobs, you don't want to damage the economy, but you can’t keep fuelling the economy with something that longer term will be very damaging, as climate change leads to increased storm frequency, larger storms and higher sea level…
Tremaine:
I think that's a great way that you put it. We want to think long term but the thing is as a nation we are fairly young. We only became an independent nation in 1962 and then furthermore became a republic in 1976, 14 years later. So we are a very young country and, as I say, sometimes it's easier for larger nations and especially the Global North to smoothly transition. Right now, we are a 60 year old country, so it's harder to focus on 20 years down the line when 20 years down the line will only be 80.
It's hard to think, well what do we want to look like 100 years? Especially when we haven't made our first 100 yet, whereas other countries have multiple hundreds of years of history. That's the thing because even Barbados is only celebrating its second year (this November) of being a Republic and finally out of British rule. So for island nations in the Caribbean, the net zero transition is especially hard to navigate.
We are still trying to figure out how to navigate as a country. It's easy to say we should make all these changes but, even for myself, I had to change my perspective recently, because we complain about our nation, we complain about where we are, we hope to be more advanced, but that is hard because we have only been able to establish some level of independence in completely running our own affairs for a relatively short amount of time. We’re not fully independent from the Global North and we still sometimes depend heavily on them.
All this said, it’s still extremely important to our region that globally we reach net zero because we are feeling it, trust me, we are feeling it in terms of the heat, the hurricanes, the storms. Some countries like Dominica are still trying to recover from hurricanes a few years ago. Also, take Barbuda for example. I believe everyone who lived on Barbuda had to vacate Barbuda during the hurricane.
So we are still trying to figure out ways to manage it. And even though we are feeling the pinch, it sometimes feels like the pressure is on us still. We didn't cause the problem but then we have to make sure that we find a solution.
Adam:
My concerns revolve around potential government overreach in pursuit of net-zero emissions, as excessive regulations and central planning could impinge on personal freedoms and hinder economic growth. Balancing environmental goals with personal liberties is crucial, while also giving due attention to other important social and cultural issues alongside climate change.
Seafields:
And so on that point, do you think that there should be climate-based reparations for the Global North? They've had their chance to develop and grow their economies, through very carbon intensive mechanisms and have caused by far and away the largest amount emissions to date.
When there are losses and damages of (clearly) climate driven events that have been made worse from climate change, do you believe that there should be reparations? Should they be in the form of grants or loans or debt cancellation?
Adam:
Ideally, funding for island nations should come in the form of grants rather than loans. Island nations often have limited resources and face disproportionate vulnerability to climate change despite their minimal contributions to global emissions.
Assigning responsibility for "loss and damages" caused by emissions is a complex issue. Instead of focusing on blame, investing in innovative technology offers a more effective solution to address climate change, fostering long-term sustainability and greenhouse gas mitigation.
Tremaine:
I don’t want to use the word reparations for this, because that opens up a whole other kind of debate. What I would say is that I believe that the “polluter pays” principle should be enacted in this regard. So yes, I would like to see grants from the Global North – nothing necessarily in the form of reparations – but some sort of grants based on the “polluter pays” principle. For example, if there's an oil spill, the people responsible are supposed to pay, they're supposed to figure out a way to clean it up. In the same way, I would like to see grants there from the Global North.
Seafields:
And then, on a very similar note, do you think there should be payments for potential losses from Sargassum influxes from those who are responsible for the root causes? I.e. climate driven changes to weather and ocean current patterns and also pollution coming out of the Amazon and South America.
For example, offering up some funds to cover any losses to like fishermen, the tourism industry and then also help for funding solutions as well?
Tremaine:
They should contribute how much they're able to contribute in relation to their economic growth. Again, I am fully on board with the “polluter pays” principle. In that regard I guess Trinidad would actually have to contribute something considering we have the highest GHG emissions in the region.
But I think we all need to start taking some level of responsibility for what is happening. Even if it's within our own region or in South America we should decide, OK, we are putting mechanisms in place to ensure that there should be no more pollution headed out into the oceans. And in the event that there is pollution, we should be penalised to some extent or fined to some extent. I have no issue with that. I think that would help to incentivize all countries to ensure that they maintain as clean processes as possible.
Seafields:
Finally, what role should local authorities play in a Just Transition?
Adam:
Local public authorities should require corporations to prioritize hiring and training locals, as well as engage with community leaders to safeguard their interests during the transition to net zero.
Tremaine:
In terms of shipments and goods coming into the region? We need a lot less carbon intensive equipment for example, like electric vehicles, electric boats, solar panels, wind turbines. From what I understand, I know that there are some levels of tax break on bringing in electric vehicles but then again electric vehicles aren't exactly the cheapest.
However, removing customs duties, automotive tax and VAT on battery-powered electric vehicles is a step in the direction of lowering emissions. However, there's also got to be a significant amount of time dedicated to planning the sequencing of those solutions as well. Because let's say you bring in loads of electric vehicles for the island. If you're still generating all your electricity through like a fossil fuel intensive method, be that burning oil, gas, whatever it is, and then you're using that electricity to charge the cars you may as well just put petrol in it because you're still burning like gas or oil to make the electricity to charge it, to use it.
Another problem is that fossil fuels are still subsidised. To convince someone to add cost to their current electric bill instead of just using gas, it is difficult. So with the more sustainable option, like electric vehicles or solar panels, it just needs to be cheaper to get them in.
