LOS ANGELES — The secretary-general of the 15-member Caribbean Community opened talks Thursday with the Biden administration over a new partnership to tackle climate change and the region’s energy crisis by making it clear that Caribbean nations were not quite ready to give up fossil fuels.
Carla Barnett, who heads the Guyana-based secretariat that represents a 15-member coalition of Caribbean nations, including Haiti and Suriname, also emphasized that the region’s economic recovery from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic remains a top priority.
“Our member states are heavily dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs; oil and gas reserves are concentrated in a few of our countries, but we are predominantly energy importers and therefore for us, energy security is a critical matter even as we seek to transition our energy systems to more modern, clean and reliable supplies of renewable energy,” Barnett said. “Our position is to optimize our indigenous sources as we make that ... transition to renewable sources.”
