The Bali Road Map and its implications for Guyana
Stabroek News Editorial, Friday, January 4th 2008
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and
its Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) held in Bali,
Indonesia from the 3rd -14th December 2007, agreed on a Road Map which
requires Parties to the Convention to take individual and collaborative
action during a two-year negotiating process 2008-2009, which seeks to
finalise a post - 2012 successor Protocol Kyoto, that is reflective of
the need for urgency in addressing the several core issues. These core
issues are:
a shared vision for long-term cooperative action that includes a
long-term global goal for emissions reduction; enhanced
national/international action on mitigation of climate change; enhanced
action on adaptation; enhanced action on technology development and
transfer to support action on mitigation and adaptation; and, enhanced
action on the provision of financial resources and investment to
support action on mitigation and adaptation and technology cooperation.
This process will be conducted under a subsidiary body under the
Convention, known as the Ad Hoc Working Group, AHWG, on Long-term
Cooperative Action under the Convention that is required to complete
its work in 2009 and present the outcome of its work to the COP 15.
Guyana, as a Party to the Convention, has to compile its own road map
in order to ensure that its individual and its collective
responsibilities are pursued in a manner that is convergent with the
work of the AHWG.
Guyana's national interest, fortuitously, accords with the interests of
several groupings that made their mark on the Bali conference.
The Association of Small Island Developing States, AOSIS, of which
Guyana is a member, highlighted their vulnerabilities to the adverse
effects of climate change, in particular flooding, droughts, and
decline in traditional economic activities. The COP 13 decided that
developing countries Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that are
particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change are
eligible for funding from the Adaptation Fund. The Adaptation Fund
shall finance concrete adaptation projects that are country driven and
are based on needs, views and priorities of eligible Parties.
The Coalition of Rainforest Nations, CRN, is a grouping of developing
countries that has been lobbying for financial incentives for the
development of mechanisms which "Reduce the Emissions from
Deforestation and Degradation" (REDD). Not only will this serve the
purpose of capturing and storing carbon that would otherwise contribute
to global warming, but it will also protect important forest habitats,
and ensure sustainable co-benefits to biodiversity conservation and
livelihood improvement. The COP13 encouraged all Parties, in a position
to do so, to support capacity building, provide technical assistance,
facilitate transfer of technology to improve, inter alia, data
collection, estimation of emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation, monitoring and reporting, and address the institutional
needs of developing countries to estimate and reduce emissions from
deforestation and degradation. Those countries which have had a history
of low deforestation, argued also for 'avoidance of deforestation' to
be included in consideration of co-benefits from REDD.
The Centre for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, which has been
entrusted with a global mandate to examine and reduce the risks
associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation policies,
especially where they threaten those least able to afford them, such as
poor rural communities who heavily rely on forest, is stepping up its
investment in climate change and forest research with the 2007 launch
of its Climate Change and Forests Initiative. This initiative embraces
two strands of the Centre's globally mandated research: adaptation and
climate change; and, mitigation and climate change. The former looks at
how governments and communities can improve the ability of forests to
adapt to climate change. The latter examines how forests can best be
managed to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time improve the
well-being of poor communities that depend on the forests, partly or
wholly, for their livelihoods. With the right research informing policy
making, sustainable forest management can safeguard existing community
livelihoods while generating new income possibilities through
compensated avoided deforestation.
Guyana's road map must of necessity reflect its national circumstances
and these, as far as practicable, should be integrated into the
mandates being pursued by AOSIS, CRN and CIFOR.
Great importance will therefore have to be placed on the setting up a
national team of resource persons to develop such empirical data as
determined by the shared vision of Bali and specified in its road map.
This process requires consultation with all stakeholders in Guyana and
collaboration with AOSIS, CRN and CIFOR.
It is the inputs of these three groups and their collaborative
interventions throughout the two year process of the AHWG that would
determine whether Guyana's national interests will be reflected in the
latter's outcomes to be placed before COP 15 in 2009.
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