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.
