President Jagdeo was at the wrong conference

Dec 13, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The climate change proposal being pursued by President Bharrat Jagdeo is a pipe dream. It will not go beyond the hyperbole.
It should not be pursued, because it is unethical for Guyana to use its standing forests to help companies in the developed world avoid reducing their emission levels.
What our President is fighting for is not worth the fight.  He is hoping for a post-Kyoto deal that would allow countries such as Guyana to be compensated for not exploiting their forests.
At present, developing countries can benefit from carbon credits if they engage in projects to replant forests, but there is no provision in the existing protocols to allow countries which avoid deforestation to benefit.
Whenever companies emit greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, these deplete the carbon levels in the atmosphere. On the other hand, through the process of photosynthesis, this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is converted into food and oxygen, thus replenishing the carbon content in the environment.  When countries do not cut down their forests, they are thus conserving carbon and thus adding to the carbon sink, or carbon credits of nature.
Scientists have long argued that it is the emission of greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, industries and deforestation which causes climate change. They are calling for reduced levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
The international community is trying to encourage this by rewarding countries that replant their forests.
President Jagdeo is arguing that it is unfair to compensate countries that cut down their forests and then replant them, but not do the same for countries which keep their forests intact.
The argument, however, is not as fair as it sounds.   Why should countries such as Guyana be compensated for keeping their standing forests intact when it would have been kept intact in any event? How do we know for sure that the forests would have been levelled had there not been a compensation plan?
Guyana is already said to have one of the lowest rates of deforestation, and this has nothing to do with protecting the environment; but, rather, as one letter writer noted in yesterday’s newspapers, because of low natural fertility to sustain commercial agriculture.
There are also a host of technical concerns about how one measures the carbon that is saved by not cutting down the forests. In addition, there are ethical concerns about rewarding countries for doing nothing.
In light of all of this, I do not see the proposal for gaining credits because of the avoidance of deforestation going anywhere.
At present, there is what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing countries to sell carbon credits to countries that have to put a lid on the level of their greenhouse emissions.
But this scheme has been problematic, and it has proven expensive and time consuming for projects to be certified.
I do not know whether President Jagdeo is planning to use the Amalia Falls Hydro Electric Project to gain funding under the CDM. The President may be thinking about presenting this project to the CDM as a clean energy project that will allow it to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, and thus qualify for some credits to finance the project.
I hope he is not, because the time it will take to get this project certified, it would be better waiting for the year 2012, when the UN might consider including avoided deforestation as part of its carbon credit scheme.
The President is in Poland battling hard to get the international community to see the wisdom in having countries such as Guyana gain carbon credits for not cutting down their forests. These credits can then be sold each year for hundreds of millions of US dollars on the carbon credit exchange.
What the President has failed to adequately consider is that the entire carbon credit scheme is predicated on the reduced emission targets set by the developed world. In order to encourage companies to reduce their emissions, an allowance system has been established.
Companies are given targets for reduced emissions, and are granted allowances for not exceeding these targets. If a factory, for example, is set a target and is able to achieve emission levels below this cap, it can take its allowance credits and sell these on the carbon exchange, or it can roll over these credits to the next year.
Similarly, if a company exceeds its emissions levels, it will have to buy credits. It can buy on the exchange from other companies which have credits to sell; or, as Jagdeo is hoping will happen under a new deal, these companies can purchase their credits off the exchange from countries such as Guyana that would receive credits for not cutting down its forests.
At present, the rules do not allow for credits for avoided deforestation. This is what Jagdeo is fighting to reverse.
The whole carbon trading system, therefore, rests on the degree to which countries agree to reduce their emission levels. If there is an agreement to only reduce emissions marginally, then it will mean that companies in Europe can elusively trade carbon credits among themselves, rather than seek credits from developing countries such as Guyana.
Jagdeo is obviously hoping that Guyana can capitalize on carbon credits trading, and he is in Poland at a UN Climate Change Conference arguing for a new deal.
He is at the wrong conference, because Europe has just sealed a new deal in Brussels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 20 per cent by 2020. At the same time, it seeks to embark on a plan to have 20 per cent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2020.
Jagdeo should have been in Brussels instead of in Poland, because the Europeans, by these latest decisions, have effectively killed the possibility of large amounts of carbon credits being purchased from outside of Europe.
Thus, there will now be little incentive for the Americans to adopt substantially reduced targets for greenhouse emissions, and even further less incentive for carbon credits to be approved for standing forests. There goes the pipe dream!

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