Guyana must take more active role in climate change arena - Bulkan
Stabroek News, Wednesday, January 16th 2008
Researcher and columnist Janette Bulkan believes Guyana must take a
more active role in presenting its case with respect to climate change
if it wants to be taken seriously on the world stage.
In a letter to Stabroek News recently, Bulkan said that in the reports
of the working groups, which prepared for the Bali climate change
conference in Indonesia, the concerns of Guyana seemed not to have been
presented.
"Perhaps Guyana did not send delegates, or its delegates were unable to
present a persuasive and rationalised case. Yet Guyana should have a
good case in relation to rising sea levels, and should be able to
present a comprehensive and costed action plan for re-engineering of
its sea defences and of its drainage and irrigation control systems in
the water conservancies," the letter said.
She said the relevant chapters in the National Development Strategy
2001-2010 contain the bases for such an action plan. "Is the Ministry
of Agriculture working on such an action plan as its contribution as a
member of AOSIS [Association of Small Island Developing States]?" she
pondered.
She said this briefing pointed out that countries with good forest
governance would be well placed to take up post-Bali funding while
countries with a reputation for poor forest governance would not. Also,
technologies - of the kinds now being promoted by the GFC - are not a
substitute for good governance. "In other words, to be credible and
eligible for new donor funding Guyana (as represented by the GFC) would
itself need to engage in real internal reform," the letter said.
"This reform is not evident. The GFC is ordering the forest product
processors to reform, even though it has not explained publicly the
rationale for such reforms, and is critical of the press for not
correctly reproducing the instructions," she said.
She said that at Bali, the Coalition of Rainforest Nations - to which
Guyana is aligned - was mostly concerned about extracting cash from
major carbon-emitting countries for reduced emissions from forest
burning associated with land clearing for subsistence and commercial
agriculture. "As predicted before the Bali conference, the delegates
were little concerned about difficult-to-measure degradation of
standing forest through poorly-controlled harvesting of timber and
other products," Bulkan said.
A source, who was part of the Guyana delegation, told this newspaper
that at a later point the delegation would issue a statement in
response to Bulkan's letter and Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud
confirmed this. The source said too that Guyana is gearing to be part
of the larger negotiating process involving the Coalition of Rainforest
Nations (CRN) and AOSIS.
The source said that shortly Guyana should be able to present a
definitive position on where it is going in terms of negotiations,
mitigation and adaptation.
Bulkan said the small budget of US$100 million for the "readiness
mechanism" in the World Bank-administered Forest Carbon Partnership
Facility touted at the conference would be easily "soaked up."
"The presidential expectation of receiving funding related to reducing
emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) simply for having
standing forest not under threat of deforestation seems to be
misplaced," she said. REDD is a facility through which countries could
access financing to cut down on deforestation.
"This fund is intended to assist 20 countries to reduced emissions from
deforestation," she said, adding, "instead of looking towards REDD for
financial support, Guyana should take note of a pre-Bali briefing
provided by the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London and
the consultancy ProForest in Oxford UK." She believes Guyana ought to
be able to draw on the new United Nations Climate Change Adaptation
Fund which had been agreed under the Marrakesh Accords in 2001. "The
Bali conference finally agreed that the Global Environmental Facility
at the World Bank would act as the interim secretariat for this Fund,
and Guyana ought to be actively engaged to make this Fund operationally
effective," she said.
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