Dear Editor,
In its partial replv (‘Correcting errors of fact,’ GC, August 3) the Office of Climate Change (OCC) in the Office of the President says that I “have not submitted any ideas or suggestions for the purpose of improving the Strategy.” That is because the OCC or manager of the LCDS website is not complying with the process document for communications about LCDS. It should be possible for anyone to see what proposals are being made. In that way, people don’t waste their time in duplicating suggestions, and the OCC does not waste time in replying to duplicates. There was a button on the website for “Responses” but that was never active and has now been removed. The LCDS has completely failed to indicate in what format suggestions might be made, whether they should be confined to the major headings on pages 20-29 of the LCDS draft of June 2009 – hydropower, drainage, fiber optic cables, fruits and vegetables, etc, – or if they can deal with more institutional and policy matters such as improving governance, supporting transparency, decreasing corruption, etc, without which donor funding supplied under REDD or LCDS is likely to be wasted relative to the official objectives.
The OCC needs to re-read the process document and remind itself what it is committed to in relation to Norwegian support for the LCDS process. The OCC should be operating in a much more transparent manner and supplying much more information.
The LCDS fails to indicate if proposals should be for the vast sums which are proposed in the draft LCDS without any public domain supporting documents; the OCC claims that these figures “were the result of months of research, data gathering, and expert inputs from local and international expertise.” Then let us see the compilations resulting from these studies, not just one-paragraph pies in the sky.
Surely the OCC can appreciate that donor agencies are likely to need better justification for supporting investment in hydropower than a single paragraph? Or perhaps that is precisely why the government has failed to secure funding for the Amaila Falls hydropower dam?
Given that the President’s draft LCDS does not figure in ‘The Little REDD Book,’ which has compiled the major proposals for REDD during the period leading up to the COP15 climate change summit at Copenhagen (and which the OCC is required by the process document for communications about LCDS to put up on the website and has failed to do so), and thus the lack of attention to the LCDS numbers in the international UNFCCC negotiations, what is the motivation for anyone to make proposals for LCDS spending when there is no assurance of income?
I would be grateful if the OCC would list the technical meetings and working groups in the UNFCCC context where the Government of Guyana has made contributions but which curiously have escaped the attention of the highly professional reporters of the International Institute for Sustainable Development which compiles the Earth Negotiations Bulletins. Can the OCC explain why the draft LCDS does not figure in reports on the UNFCCC technical and working group discussions?
I would also be grateful if the OCC would ensure that all the questions raised and
reported at the multi-stakeholder consultations and the succeeding “awareness sessions” are fully answered. Too many of the questions are not being answered by the President’s teams.
Finally, can the OCC say why the LCDS is not suggesting projects to test various modalities for operating REDD schemes, as Brazil and Indonesia are encouraging? Why is Guyana confined to one single, non-mainstream approach which has no resonance internationally?
Wouldn’t there be a greater chance of securing international funding if Guyana’s proposal were to try to conform to proposal guidelines elsewhere?
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan
