Tomado de http://www.guyanachronicle.com/ del 08 de diciembre de 2008
Guyana to press case at key UN climate talks
By Sharief KhanGUYANA is to press its case for greater world attention to avert deforestation at a key United Nations climate meeting underway in Poznan, Poland.
President Bharrat Jagdeo is due to leave today for the talks where he said he will announce that he believes Guyanese are ready to play a major role in determining how to combat deforestation and seek the partnership of others on the way forward.
Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud, will also be at the meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which began December 1 and runs to December 12.
Mr. Shyam Nokta, Chairman of the National Climate Committee and Mr. Andrew Bishop, head of the Lands and Surveys Commission have represented Guyana at the technical sessions, Persaud told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday.
The UN meeting is further developing the framework for a summit next December in Copenhagen, Denmark and Mr. Jagdeo last week said if the Copenhagen bid to forge a global deal fails to address deforestation, it will be virtually impossible to stabilise the world’s climate.
At the presentation here Friday of a Guyana technical paper on avoiding deforestation which he will formally table in Poznan this week, the President said a more ambitious global agreement is required when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and this is the agreement that must be reached at Copenhagen next year.
“Unlike Kyoto, Copenhagen must create proportional incentives for all causes of greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, it is essential that it creates incentives to reduce tropical deforestation”, he asserted.
Noting that deforestation causes about a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions (more than the United States or the entire global transport sector), he said the Kyoto Protocol created one mechanism (the CDM) with small incentives for some countries to reduce deforestation.
“It excluded countries like Guyana that have maintained their forests in a pristine state. This introduced perverse incentives which made it more viable to destroy forests and then re-grow them than to preserve them in the first place”, Mr. Jagdeo said.
He argued that the ineffectiveness of Kyoto is proven by the fact that deforestation continues apace - an area of tropical forest about half the size of Guyana is destroyed every year.
The President said the Guyana Government supports international proposals that at a minimum, Copenhagen must create incentives to halve tropical deforestation by 2020, and as a country where almost 80% of the territory is tropical rainforest, “we recognize that we have a responsibility to work with others to frame a solution.”
At the presentation to a packed International Convention Centre at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara last week, Dr. Roger Luncheon, Cabinet Secretary and Chairman of the session, called it a “most historic event”.
He noted that Guyana has been putting its case consistently to the world since October 2007 and said “today we are at a pivotal stage”.
Luncheon said Guyana has come up with a “feasible market model that warrants comprehensive scrutiny.”
Loud cheers from a packed gallery also greeted Mr. Jagdeo’s suggestion, after his presentation, that a website be created to get feedback on the document from stakeholders and the public.
Opposition Leader Robert Corbin and key representatives from labour, churches, the private sector, Amerindian communities, non-governmental organizations, diplomats and others were among invitees for the presentation.
Mr. Jagdeo reported that local and overseas experts have used Guyana as a case-study for what it would take to make tropical forests worth more alive than dead.
He said: “We started examining what long-term solutions will enable future governments to deal with the difficult trade-offs between national development and avoiding deforestation. If trees are worth more dead than alive, economically rational decision makers in countries with rainforests will find it hard to resist harvesting timber and converting the land to other productive use, for example to meet global demand for agricultural products.”
He assured, “Nobody should interpret this as Guyana threatening the world by suggesting that we will deliberately destroy our forest. Guyana has one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world and we want this to continue. But in common with other rainforest countries, we face huge development challenges.”
“We need to train our teachers and hospital staff, we need to build schools, hospitals and roads, and we need to create economic opportunities and generate jobs for our citizens. Developing our economy to provide resources to fund these and many other social and economic needs has to be a responsible government’s top priority. If we are to reconcile this with the world’s need for forests to be kept intact, we must find a way to make national development and sustainable use of our forests complementary, not competing, objectives.”
He said the analysis over the past several months has focused on three areas:
“One, we looked at how we can assist the international community forge a post-Kyoto climate agreement that creates incentives to rapidly slow tropical deforestation.
Two, we are developing rigorous business cases for low carbon investment and employment opportunities in Guyana.
And three, we are addressing the other side of climate change (the adjustment side) – the need to invest heavily in infrastructure to protect our people and productive land from rising sea levels and changing weather patterns.”
He said work undertaken in each of these areas will provide the foundation for next year’s national consultation.
Mr. Jagdeo said the first set of outcomes is in the report which is being presented in Poznan with the hope that it “will bring fresh thinking to many of the issues which have bedeviled the forest issue internationally.”
“The rest of the work, including our proposal for how rainforest countries and the developed world can act immediately to combat deforestation, will be published in the New Year.”
The paper on the Guyana model, he said, recognizes the stark economic reality that deforestation happens across the globe because forests create economic value when they are harvested, despite the fact that deforestation causes enormously expensive climate change costs to the wider world.
“Aligning national and global interest is the only long-term solution to deforestation”, he stressed.
The analysis of the value of the Guyana forests was done by developing a hypothetical model which estimated the economic value Guyana could realise from its forest (excluding: 1.7m hectares of forests under the jurisdiction of Amerindian Community and 10% of Guyana’s forest with the highest conservation value), the President said.
He said that based on internationally-accepted projections of increases in global demand for these commodities, “we determined that our forest could generate economic value to the nation of between US$430 million and US$2 billion per year.”
“This wide range relates to variability driven by fluctuating prices for commodities such as logs, palm oil and rice – but the most likely economic value to the nation is about US$580 million per year. This estimate is validated by the regular requests we receive from investors who want to use the land in our forests for agricultural development.”
He pointed out that generating this value for Guyana would, however, incur significant costs for the world through the loss of eco-system services.
“It would involve a deforestation rate of about 4% - which is less than existing deforestation rates in many similar parts of the world”, he said.
It would also result in the release of over 200 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, he said.
Mr। Jagdeo said that early next year the government will lay out details for how all Guyanese can participate in a national consultation on how to create a low deforestation, low carbon economy.
Nota del Editor del blog: Al referenciarse a la República Cooperativa de Guyana se deben de tener en cuenta los 159.500 Km2, de territorios ubicados al oeste del río Esequibo conocidos con el nombre de Guayana Esequiba o Zona en Reclamación sujetos al Acuerdo de Ginebra del 17 de febrero de 1966.
Guyana to press case at key UN climate talks
By Sharief KhanGUYANA is to press its case for greater world attention to avert deforestation at a key United Nations climate meeting underway in Poznan, Poland.
President Bharrat Jagdeo is due to leave today for the talks where he said he will announce that he believes Guyanese are ready to play a major role in determining how to combat deforestation and seek the partnership of others on the way forward.
Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud, will also be at the meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which began December 1 and runs to December 12.
Mr. Shyam Nokta, Chairman of the National Climate Committee and Mr. Andrew Bishop, head of the Lands and Surveys Commission have represented Guyana at the technical sessions, Persaud told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday.
The UN meeting is further developing the framework for a summit next December in Copenhagen, Denmark and Mr. Jagdeo last week said if the Copenhagen bid to forge a global deal fails to address deforestation, it will be virtually impossible to stabilise the world’s climate.
At the presentation here Friday of a Guyana technical paper on avoiding deforestation which he will formally table in Poznan this week, the President said a more ambitious global agreement is required when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and this is the agreement that must be reached at Copenhagen next year.
“Unlike Kyoto, Copenhagen must create proportional incentives for all causes of greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, it is essential that it creates incentives to reduce tropical deforestation”, he asserted.
Noting that deforestation causes about a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions (more than the United States or the entire global transport sector), he said the Kyoto Protocol created one mechanism (the CDM) with small incentives for some countries to reduce deforestation.
“It excluded countries like Guyana that have maintained their forests in a pristine state. This introduced perverse incentives which made it more viable to destroy forests and then re-grow them than to preserve them in the first place”, Mr. Jagdeo said.
He argued that the ineffectiveness of Kyoto is proven by the fact that deforestation continues apace - an area of tropical forest about half the size of Guyana is destroyed every year.
The President said the Guyana Government supports international proposals that at a minimum, Copenhagen must create incentives to halve tropical deforestation by 2020, and as a country where almost 80% of the territory is tropical rainforest, “we recognize that we have a responsibility to work with others to frame a solution.”
At the presentation to a packed International Convention Centre at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara last week, Dr. Roger Luncheon, Cabinet Secretary and Chairman of the session, called it a “most historic event”.
He noted that Guyana has been putting its case consistently to the world since October 2007 and said “today we are at a pivotal stage”.
Luncheon said Guyana has come up with a “feasible market model that warrants comprehensive scrutiny.”
Loud cheers from a packed gallery also greeted Mr. Jagdeo’s suggestion, after his presentation, that a website be created to get feedback on the document from stakeholders and the public.
Opposition Leader Robert Corbin and key representatives from labour, churches, the private sector, Amerindian communities, non-governmental organizations, diplomats and others were among invitees for the presentation.
Mr. Jagdeo reported that local and overseas experts have used Guyana as a case-study for what it would take to make tropical forests worth more alive than dead.
He said: “We started examining what long-term solutions will enable future governments to deal with the difficult trade-offs between national development and avoiding deforestation. If trees are worth more dead than alive, economically rational decision makers in countries with rainforests will find it hard to resist harvesting timber and converting the land to other productive use, for example to meet global demand for agricultural products.”
He assured, “Nobody should interpret this as Guyana threatening the world by suggesting that we will deliberately destroy our forest. Guyana has one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world and we want this to continue. But in common with other rainforest countries, we face huge development challenges.”
“We need to train our teachers and hospital staff, we need to build schools, hospitals and roads, and we need to create economic opportunities and generate jobs for our citizens. Developing our economy to provide resources to fund these and many other social and economic needs has to be a responsible government’s top priority. If we are to reconcile this with the world’s need for forests to be kept intact, we must find a way to make national development and sustainable use of our forests complementary, not competing, objectives.”
He said the analysis over the past several months has focused on three areas:
“One, we looked at how we can assist the international community forge a post-Kyoto climate agreement that creates incentives to rapidly slow tropical deforestation.
Two, we are developing rigorous business cases for low carbon investment and employment opportunities in Guyana.
And three, we are addressing the other side of climate change (the adjustment side) – the need to invest heavily in infrastructure to protect our people and productive land from rising sea levels and changing weather patterns.”
He said work undertaken in each of these areas will provide the foundation for next year’s national consultation.
Mr. Jagdeo said the first set of outcomes is in the report which is being presented in Poznan with the hope that it “will bring fresh thinking to many of the issues which have bedeviled the forest issue internationally.”
“The rest of the work, including our proposal for how rainforest countries and the developed world can act immediately to combat deforestation, will be published in the New Year.”
The paper on the Guyana model, he said, recognizes the stark economic reality that deforestation happens across the globe because forests create economic value when they are harvested, despite the fact that deforestation causes enormously expensive climate change costs to the wider world.
“Aligning national and global interest is the only long-term solution to deforestation”, he stressed.
The analysis of the value of the Guyana forests was done by developing a hypothetical model which estimated the economic value Guyana could realise from its forest (excluding: 1.7m hectares of forests under the jurisdiction of Amerindian Community and 10% of Guyana’s forest with the highest conservation value), the President said.
He said that based on internationally-accepted projections of increases in global demand for these commodities, “we determined that our forest could generate economic value to the nation of between US$430 million and US$2 billion per year.”
“This wide range relates to variability driven by fluctuating prices for commodities such as logs, palm oil and rice – but the most likely economic value to the nation is about US$580 million per year. This estimate is validated by the regular requests we receive from investors who want to use the land in our forests for agricultural development.”
He pointed out that generating this value for Guyana would, however, incur significant costs for the world through the loss of eco-system services.
“It would involve a deforestation rate of about 4% - which is less than existing deforestation rates in many similar parts of the world”, he said.
It would also result in the release of over 200 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, he said.
Mr। Jagdeo said that early next year the government will lay out details for how all Guyanese can participate in a national consultation on how to create a low deforestation, low carbon economy.
Nota del Editor del blog: Al referenciarse a la República Cooperativa de Guyana se deben de tener en cuenta los 159.500 Km2, de territorios ubicados al oeste del río Esequibo conocidos con el nombre de Guayana Esequiba o Zona en Reclamación sujetos al Acuerdo de Ginebra del 17 de febrero de 1966.
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