President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday took his offer for Guyana to provide the world with a model on how to address deforestation in a sustainable manner to the UN.
Speaking at the 17th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development at the United Nations Headquarters in New York yesterday, the president said that his government supports calls to cut net global deforestation in half by 2020 and to make the global forestry sector carbon neutral (where greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation are balanced by new forest growth) by 2030.
According to the text of his speech made available to the media, Jagdeo said that that when countries meet at the Copenhagen Summit later this year, if there is no agreement to create financial incentives to address deforestation, the costs of inaction will dwarf the investments that are required to solve that issue. The only Head of State invited to speak at the forum, Jagdeo asserted that Guyana is willing to provide the world with a model of how this can happen quickly and done sustainably noting that for two years now, Guyana has indicated its willingness to place the country’s entire rainforest under long term protection if the international community finds the right way to include forestry within a broader climate arrangement.
“We have calculated the value of our forest, and are currently engaged in a national consultation with indigenous peoples and other national stakeholders to determine exactly how compensation for forestry climate services could be invested. We believe that this can be done in a way which not only protects our forests, but also re-orients our economy onto a low-carbon trajectory by for example, taking our entire country’s electricity supply from renewable sources instead of fossil fuel dependence; by reducing overall industrial emissions from energy generation by one third without sacrificing healthy growth rates, by opening up unused, non-forested parts of the country to agricultural development, and by unprecedented investment in economic opportunities within our forest communities”, the president said.
He pointed out that the country is currently working in partnership with the Government of Norway and others to try innovative ways for the developed and developing world to work together as equals to solve the climate problem and said that he hopes that governments will be able to point to success by the time they meet in September at the UN General Assembly.
He called for the world’s “historic polluters” to make meaningful commitments to reduce emissions, asserting that if the current global economic crisis is used as an excuse to pull back from making these commitments, it will send a disastrous signal to the developing world that action on climate change can only take place during times of prosperity. The Head of State said that if the developed countries accept their responsibilities then the developing world will be willing to play its part. He declared that it would be mathematically impossible to avoid catastrophic climate change without the developing world being able to take a more sustainable path to their future development. Jagdeo said that apart from deep emissions cuts, Copenhagen must create financing flows and technology transfer to enable the significant abatement potential of the developing world to become part of the solution. “This won’t be cheap – latest estimates suggest that the global flows to the developing world will need to be about 60 billion Euros per annum by 2020 – but it will be good value for money because the investment will prevent emissions far more cheaply than many of the abatement solutions that are being pursued in the developed world”.
Noting that over 80% of Guyana’s territory is pristine forest and “we want it to stay that way”, the President said that preserving the forest comes at an economic cost to the nation today.
Meantime, noting other issues which threaten global well-being and security and recognizing the work of persons in highlighting these, Jagdeo said that awareness-raising, though vital, is not enough to achieve sustainable development and the international community needs to turn that awareness into solutions that make the difference urgently required. He said that countries need to embrace a global responsibility to forge a new international policy environment whose effectiveness is commensurate with the challenges being faced. He pointed out that there are two significant opportunities to forge that this year, with the international community moving to create a new global institutional and regulatory framework as a consequence of the global crisis and the Copenhagen summit in December to forge a new global climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. “It is vital that we are bold in ambition at Copenhagen – climate change is a far greater threat than the collapse of any bank, so the world needs to act with the same urgency it displayed when wrestling with the worst of the last year’s financial collapses”, he said.
The President, in relation to food security, added that this challenge can no longer be addressed within the confines of national boundaries and called for a partnership that brings together the best science, adequate resources and a coherent set of international trade and other policies to ensure food security. He cited a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) initiative in this regard.
“There is need for coherent global policies to help secure global food supplies over the long term. This will not be achieved without the meaningful reform of multilateral institutions and the creation of a new international policy environment since the challenge of food security is not confined to national boundaries but is becoming increasingly global in scope. Countries with the available land and freshwater resources can play a special role in addressing the food security challenge at both the regional and global levels”, he said.
