Dear Editor,
Ideally, I do not venture into areas in which I am ignorant. However, I will make this an exception. I have just come out of a climate change and governance workshop in London, part of the Commonwealth Day celebrations and wish to endorse the sentiment of Mr Clairmonte Lye.
We cannot continue to sit in ignorance of climate change and like some of the Pacific Islands hold on to a perverse incentive to just ‘wait and see’ and when disaster strikes, expect the international agencies to rush to our assistance. This is not to say that the rest of the world is far ahead of us either as it seems that only a few are prepared to take the issue of climate change seriously and it is hoped that a change in the US presidency will lend support to an international regime which can seriously commit to sustainable development.
I am glad that in Guyana’s case, while civil society seem blissful in their ignorance or silence, the President is awake and has even had climate change on the Commonwealth Ministers of Finance meeting agenda last year. But we need civil society fully on board as it is the only way we can sustain interest and voice on the issue.
Why am I suddenly awake? The answer simply is a woman called Meredith Hooper (author of The Ferocious Summer, named as the Daily Mail Science Book of the Year in 2007) witnessed first hand the effects of global warming – higher temperatures in the Antarctic peninsular, which means more snow (as a result of warmer air holding more moisture) which affects the breeding grounds for the penguins (Adelie) while the melting ice sheets as a result of the warmer air changes the salinity in the water and drives away the shrimp like krill on which the penguins feed. We never saw dinosaurs. Our great grandchildren may never know what penguins look like.
But that is not all. It is not just that the weather patterns change and there is heat when there should be snow/rain and there are unexpected storms and heatwaves which are all dictated by the waves and currents in the ocean. It is not just that the sinking ice sheets mean that the level of the sea will rise and the islands in the Pacific and countries under the sea will be inundated and people will need to relocate. The frightening reality is that the food that we consume depends on our geographical characteristics. For example, in Guyana, we depend on rice and sugar as our main exports and these are planted and harvested according to our traditionally two main seasons.
We have witnessed first hand how these seasons have changed in the past few years and how these and other crops have been devastated by floods, excess rainfall and drought. Did we link it to climate change?
Now just imagine if the world continues along this path of development, without factoring the environment as one of its factors of production to be used sustainably and carbon emissions continue unabated in the race to develop faster. We will have a world of superpowers clashing with hundreds of new factories and cars with the backlash of rapidly changing weather patterns of heat and snow/rain and higher sea levels. There will be less sea food as the water salinity changes and less crops as the periods of harvests become sorter or populations have to move to different locations which will affect the crops actually cultivated.
The population explosion has not helped as it demands products which consume trees or the clearing of the trees (which breathe in very carbon dioxide). What does this mean in the distant future? The weather changes will consume low lying land. Its effect on crops and sea food will be such that there will be a diminished supply of food, and much of the world will have to go without food especially the poorer countries. Food prices will go up and we will be in a situation which we never imagined possible.
I remember Charles Ceres telling me just after the 2005 floods that Guyana needs to shift its capital into the interior as in another 20 years, the coastland will be under water. I heard, but like many others, I did not take it seriously. The government will shore up the sea defences and we will all be happy.
Guyana needs to start planning ahead. We can kill each other in politics, but there will be nothing to fight over in another 50 years if we do not act now. There is need for a strong public relations campaign so that farmers do not destroy the waterways in the use of fertilizer and pesticides, so that residents are aware of the dangers posed by mining and logging and the other economic activities.
Climate change in effect means that even renewable resources will become less renewable.
Guyana needs to be in a position of strength to bargain in the trading of emissions for its own development. It needs its people behind it.
As the Pacific Islands are finding out, they are not being taken seriously by the west because they simply do not matter in the hegemonic scheme. Guyana has its forests on its side and we need to leverage that. The government needs to seriously consider its investment programme, including its housing programme and public sector investment programme and how this affects catchment areas for water which compromises drainage. And civil society, of course, needs to be on board, ever alert.
As Meredith said, when the rain comes heavier than usual it does not come with a label ‘this one is as a result of climate change’. The climate has been undergoing changes for a long, long time. What we are seeing now is an acceleration of that climate change. It was in the 1940s when the UK stationed its Royal Navy in Antarctica but could not leave them there with nothing else to do, that they were given instructions to monitor the temperature every three hours. It was only in the 1990s with the wide use of computers that the data was assembled into a programme and someone decided to see what the trend was and discovered that the temperature was rising. The temperature will fall and it will become hotter. That is the reality of climate change. Whether the heat is a result of more greenhouse gases or more heat being felt from the sun is a matter for scientists to decide but we are reeling from its effects.
It is a wake up call. Of course nature has a way of healing herself. She will. But at what price? The BBC website (science & nature) is educational on what earth looked like millions of years ago, what plant life existed and what animals were there. We seem headed to change the face of the earth for another few million years.
Yours faithfully,
Gitanjali Singh
