The Lid is On United Nations

Dominica is described as highly disaster-vulnerable: the country is regularly hit by hurricanes and, when the last one swept through in 2017, it caused huge devastation across the island.
The government, led by President Sylvanie Burton, the first woman and the first member of the indigenous Kalinago community to be the country’s Head of State, wants to make Dominica the world’s first ‘climate resilient country’. But, as the climate crisis threatens to lead to increasingly intense and frequent hurricanes, is this feasible?
Conor Lennon from UN News met President Burton and Lorenzo Sanford, the youngest-ever chief of Dominica’s Kalinago community to find out how they plan to achieve their goal.

The vast majority of small island developing States (SIDS) are heavily dependent on polluting, and expensive, fossil fuels for their energy needs: some spend around a quarter of their national budgets on imported fuel. 
However, for Trinidad & Tobago, fossil fuels have been a boon to the economy: the country has exploited its oil and gas reserves for several decades and profited from the wealth. But now, those reserves are running low. Is this the moment for Trinidad & Tobago to kick the fossil fuel habit, and exploit the kinds of renewable resources that are abundant in SIDS?
Conor Lennon from UN News went to the capital, Port of Spain, to put the question to Sheena Gosine, a sustainable energy analyst at Trinidad’s Ministry of Energy; Kishan Kumarsingh, the head of Multilateral Environmental Agreements at the Ministry of Planning and Development; and Curtis Boodoo, lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Trinidad & Tobago, and an expert on the energy transition.

Like many island economies, Dominica experiences high youth unemployment, and recent events, in particular Hurricane Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic, have combined to make the search for work even harder.
A UN-backed initiative designed to improve the employment options for young Dominicans, Work Online Dominica, has been successful in helping them to overcome the barriers they face on a small, remote island.
Conor Lennon from UN News met aspiring photographer Josiah Johnson, a graduate of the programme, in Dominica’s capital, Roseau, to find out how he, and other young people, have benefited from Work Online Dominica. 

Caribbean island nations are vulnerable to a host of extreme weather events, from hurricanes to floods and droughts, that are becoming more dangerous and intense as a result of the climate emergency.
UN News met with three of the most prominent young climate activists on Trinidad & Tobago, and learned of their frustration with current environmental legislation, and what they are doing to raise awareness of the crisis.
Conor Lennon spoke to Priyanka Lalla, a teenage climate activist and UNICEF Youth Advocate for the eastern Caribbean, Joshua Prentice, a climate and ocean scientist, and Zaafia Alexander the 18-year-old founder of an environmental NGO.

Dominica may have found a solution to cover all of its electricity needs, and even sell electricity abroad, without burning fossil fuels: geothermal energy. This power source is 100 per cent clean, cheap and practically limitless.
Conor Lennon from UN News meets Vince Henderson, Dominica’s Minister for Economic Development and Sustainable Energy, and Fred John, CEO of the Dominica Geothermal Development Company to find out if the country really is on its way to a clean energy future.

Small Island Developing States are particularly vulnerable to plastic pollution. As well as coping with a tsunami of waste washes up on their beaches every day, these countries – which are generally highly dependent on imports – generate a large amount of plastic waste of their own, and often struggle to manage it.
Plastic pollution has a detrimental effect on the health and livelihoods of people living in small island states, which often lack the means to effectively treat and process it. It’s not great for the economy either: tourists don’t want to hang out on dirty beaches, and marine litter can damage fishing stocks. 
Conor Lennon from UN News went to Trinidad to see how the UN is working with civil society and the government to not only deal with the waste, but also find a way to reuse it, and take it out of the environment.