Averting global climate crisis

Pat Ganase speaks with Caroline Mair-Toby, director of Institute for Small Islands, who attended COP 28 (UN Climate Change Conference) in Dubai from November 30-December 13, 2023.

Caroline Mair-Toby first attended the COP (the UN Climate Change Conference held annually since 1995) as part of the London-based Legal Response International team in 2011 on behalf of Small Island Developing States. She has been part of the Trinidad and Tobago delegation as legal adviser and negotiator; and expresses relief that the Loss and Damage negotiations were finally operationalised and funded at the recent COP 28.

She attended COP 28 as an observer and took the opportunity to visit civil society and indigenous peoples’ gatherings. It was, she reports, the most organised COP ever, on a beautifully laid-out site extending over many acres, requiring “Carnival level walking.” COP 28 was staged in Dubai from November 30-December 13, 2023.

Mair-Toby has been a lawyer for over 20 years, and has more than a decade of experience and research in climate diplomacy at the UNFCC climate negotiations. She recalls many years focused on the nitty-gritty of language in order to find consensus and common ground for diverse interests, some diametrically opposed.

On this occasion, she was able to take a high level view of the conference, which has evolved into a decades-long drama involving representatives from 197 countries for the future of peoples on the earth.

Small islands advocate

At COP 28 in 2023, the first time in almost 30 years, the language of the agreements included acknowledgement of fossil fuels and linked them with climate change. The lobby for the oil- and gas-producing countries led by OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) was very strategic, very strong.

But AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) stood its ground.

“It could be the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era,” she thinks, but is wary of good intentions. It is possible to be “intending to intend” for a very long time, since no end date to fossil fuels has yet been agreed.

She is also very concerned that “1.5 to stay alive” which had been led by Caribbean scientists, proposed by small island states and which continues to be the significant goal for countries to set and stay within some boundaries for emissions may be forgotten or watered down in the immediate shift of focus to fossil-fuel phase-out.

She is keenly aware that strategies and negotiations are crafted at many levels, concealing hidden agendas and powerful interests. Experienced negotiators who are wise to many tactics, unspoken intentions and manipulations are being replaced by people still being groomed and eager for experience.

It is in this scenario that Mair-Toby has come to the realisation that of all her representation – TT delegate, small islander, indigenous descendant – it is the indigenous need that is most pressing.

It is her understanding that the indigenous view – that people belong to the earth, not earth to the people – is essential to integrate every discussion of climate change. And the lack of safeguards for indigenous peoples everywhere, from Africa to the Amazon to the Russian taiga (the snowy forests that are more extensive than the Amazon rainforests) might now present the biggest threat in the effort to stem or reverse climate change.

She believes, for instance, that the carbon market and rules for the global trade in emissions may actively endanger indigenous communities.

How so? What is the future of (indigenous) peoples who are part of the forest ecosystems when the forests are considered trade-able? Some native tribes may already be seen as trespassers.

The future is in the hands of the grassroots

Though Mair-Toby hasn’t moved from diplomacy, her world view has enlarged to see that the future must include small farmers, rural peasantry, local communities, indigenous peoples, civil society. And the language used to keep disadvantaged groups separate and voiceless must now be re-framed for their benefit.

She is seeing the unification of indigenous peoples, 430 million around the world, as the potential for humanising the Earth’s eight billion. The rights of indigenous people must be protected; we still have a lot to learn from people who see themselves as belonging to their land. We have to move away from the idea of domestication of land or that the earth is ours to use as we like. Nature is the navel string that connects us all.

The challenge cannot be undertaken by one person or community alone. And Mair-Toby moves, not always with ease, from diplomat, lawyer and advocate to parent and homemaker. She juggles her roles with extraordinary effort and conscientious passion.

“My days are organised around my eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son. I work through the night. I don’t sleep a lot. My goals are to eat more vegetables, exercise, to be home more.”

In the last year, she travelled to Dubai, Barbados, Jamaica and the US. TT is her base, her father’s firm, Mair and Company, her ground zero.

Mair-Toby’s commitment to applying her training and knowledge to sow fairness and justice will be underscored with the urgency of this COP 28 slogan: “Act now for our common future.”