From Richard Branson’s comment on his post – thank you – here is his response with what  countries are on the list:

“Hi Taran – the countries already signed up are: Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, Jamaica, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos, St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua & Barbuda, US Virgin Islands, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Belize, Barbados, Bahamas, Guyana, Suriname, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, St Vincent & The Grenadines, Panama, Haiti, Mexico, Honduras. I hope to see more join the list!?”

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I was perusing my networks and came across this post by Richard Branson on LinkedIn about creating a cleaner Caribbean, complete with a picture of him chatting with Usain Bolt. This, in turn, leads to a post about creating the world’s first Climate Smart Zone.

I knew nothing about it. Here I am, in Trinidad and Tobago  – a part of the Caribbean – and I’m getting this news from Richard Branson on LinkedIn. That’s peculiar, isn’t it? So I dug in, particularly interested in aspects related to Trinidad and Tobago. Short answer: Nothing specific about any country, really.

In spending about an hour doing some research on it this morning, I saw no particular references to Trinidad and Tobago related to the ‘Caribbean Climate-Smart Accelerator‘. The name alone is a mouthful, distills to an unwieldy acronym, and doesn’t actually get into much detail. It’s boiler-plate NGO/Government communications, the message diluted for the people who probably should know more about it.

Caricom Today has an interesting article on it – “Caribbean Aims to Become World’s First Climate Smart Zone“:

Core partners include the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, CARICOM, and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

Over the next five years, the accelerator will create the right environment for private and public funds to flow into investments in clean energy, building resilience and climate-smart cities and healthy oceans.

Oh. And it mentions something rather interesting as well – that US $200 million is earmarked for this. Hidden in plain sight.

There’s more from the Inter-American Development Bank here:

The deadly havoc that was caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 posed huge challenges to many Caribbean countries. While the Caribbean has historically been vulnerable to natural disasters, climate change is exacerbating these risks and is threatening the region’s quest for sustainable development. Unless confronted with substantial resources, the economic impact for the region could exceed US$22 billion per year by 2050, or about ten percent of current GDP. Speaking at an event, Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group said:“Our goal is ambitious and bold: we are creating the world’s first climate-smart zone. We have a vision of the Caribbean which is greener, stronger and more resilient than ever before – built on innovation, powered by clean, sustainable energy and accelerated by public and private investment”.

And this, apparently, has been a thing since at least December, 2017, as this World Bank article demonstrates.

And yet, there are claims of all these ‘Caribbean countries’ being involved, but no real list of them. I found nothing about Trinidad and Tobago in there. When we write, “Caribbean Countries”, it’s a nebulous thing.

So, I’m not sure about much of this – I’ll be paying more attention to it, but there needs to be more detail in what they send out.

The people of the Caribbean certainly would be interested in this, if only there were usable information… which is always the problem with such things.