The Summit and Climate Change

Apr 17, 2009 Editorial

In his comments before leaving for the Summit of the Americas in T&T, President Jagdeo was very realistic in assessing his chances of presenting Guyana’s case on climate change – slim or none.
And this is so even though the theme of the Summit, “Securing our citizens’ future by promoting human prosperity, energy security and environmental sustainability” directly encompasses the environmental issue that the President has pushed and taken a world-leading advocacy role – the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) initiative.
This proposal is intended to prevent the emission of the major causative factor in global warming – carbon dioxide, by rewarding those countries that have standing forests and utilise them in a sustainable manner. This is environmentally helpful in two ways – firstly, by not directly releasing carbon dioxide if those forests were to be slashed and burnt – as has been the practice in huge swathes of tropical forests.
And secondly, by acting as “carbon sinks”, since trees utilise carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they manufacture food. Deforestation and forest degradation is the second largest source of anthropogenic emissions, accounting for 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a larger share than all the world’s cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships combined.
REDD — which could send $10-25 billion per year to developing countries such as Guyana — could also be a tool for alleviating (rural) poverty, which is one of the primary Millennium Goals that the developed world claims they are committed to achieving. There would be the opportunity to help resolve the economic and social inequities that are leading to massive deforestation, vulnerable local communities, poverty, biodiversity extinction, and climate change.
However, the financial crisis that has enveloped the world – especially the developed and emerging economies – appears to have derailed the encouraging forward movement that was developing last year. An indication of where climate change in general – and REDD in particular – might stand at the Summit can be gleaned from the communiqués issued after the two meetings held by the G-20.
These countries collectively produce 90% of world GDP and not coincidentally, a commensurate share of carbon dioxide. At their first meeting in Washington on November 11th 2008, lost among the excruciatingly detailed proposals on financial reform, was the bald: “We remain committed to addressing other critical challenges such as energy security and climate change, food security, the rule of law, and the fight against terrorism, poverty and disease.”
No details, no targets and certainly no mention of REDD.
In their follow-up meeting at the beginning of this month in London, the attendance of U.S. President Obama raised high hopes in some quarters that the decisions may be “greener”. Those hopes were quickly dashed. Dubbed the “Global Plan for Recovery and Reform”, the final statement mentioned in its paragraphs 4 and 6 that any sort of an economic recovery strategy should incorporate an inclusive, sustainable and green approach.
But no numbers, no targets and therefore no real commitment. Later, in paragraph 27, even though the document links the green recovery with the “transition towards clean, innovative, resource efficient, low carbon technologies and infrastructure”, it once again neglected to mention any measures that would be put in place to ensure compliance. Most significantly for us – no REDD.
President Obama obviously must have had some pressure during the side discussions to have the U.S. move on its emissions but all he would say at the end was, “We need an interesting conversation on how to overcome this challenge. We need low carbon growth, a rapid deployment of technology across the world.
The U.S. needs to lead these countries into the low carbon energy future.”
However, while Obama was speaking in London, back in the U.S., two major pieces of legislation were passed by Congress. The first was on a “Cap n Trade” approach that failed abysmally in Europe to reduce emissions but fattened the profits of the participants, and the second was to pass the U.S. budget without allocating the funds Obama requested to boost research and development (R&D) in new energy sources. More significantly, the Senate mandated that any bill that dealt with climate change would henceforth need a super majority. Not exactly good news for REDD from the largest economy on the planet – and most likely from the Summit.

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