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.
