LCDS is about privatising the air we breathe

Jun 29, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The lack of public discussion about Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) underpins the stark reality that Opposition politicians and Civil Society do not fully understand the “clear and present danger” facing Guyana and the developing world.

Most are afraid to speak out in this society because of extrajudicial killings, political and commercial victimization and cowardice.

Low Carbon Development is about the “air we breathe”. Falsely camouflaged as an issue about carbon and green development, it is really about who will own “the air we breathe”.

Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network has made the following complaint.

“What’s happening is that in this whole market system is that it’s put a market value on traditional people and traditional teachings – those things that we hold sacred to our people. This is evil at its worst. They’re trading air that is sacred. We’re looking at some spiritually profound values that people of industrial society really have a difficult time grasping. So when we talk about commodities – whether it’s the sacredness of trees, and especially air now – is in order to trade CO2, in order to trade greenhouse gases — this is air — they have to define it as a property. It’s a property. Someone has to own the air in order to trade it. Very fundamental. So, the question is: who owns the air then?

Yes indeed. Someone has to own the air we breathe in order to trade it as a property. This is a very dangerous global precedence that will lead to scarcity, wars, civil conflicts and the burning down of forests as a new form of terrorism. Once we move down this “slippery slope” of making air a property, then water will be the next property to be owned and traded as a global commodity. Countries, from which the source of water begins, will claim they own the water passing through other countries. This is already happening in Africa. Science in Africa Magazine recently had an article that stated:

“In recent years, however, the use of the Nile’s waters for development has become something of a bone of contention among the 10 countries that share its basin – Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt. The contention partly arises from two agreements signed during the colonial era – the 1929 Nile Water Agreement and the 1959 Agreement for the Full utilisation of the Nile – that gave Egypt and Sudan extensive rights over the river’s use. The upstream countries, including the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, have expressed concern over the long-standing arrangements, arguing the treaties have served to give Egypt unfair control over the use of the river’s waters. None of the colonial treaties involved all the (affected) countries and therefore, did not deal equitably with the interests of the upstream countries, they say.”

But let us return to the “privatization of global air” by the re-colonization minded Developed World. Having destroyed the atmosphere, and having threatened life on Mother Earth, these countries are proposing a new re-colonization scheme and Guyana is the staking horse in this global crime against developing countries.

How does one own air? The use of the term “low carbon” is a camouflage for the truth. It is air that is being traded. The developing world is being re-colonized through a high tech lynching financial technique call Reducing

Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The United Nations is protecting its masters.

Why is Guyana being used as a stalking horse? Guyana has a government which will do anything for the West to save its skin from criminal prosecution and jail. This government and its President will do anything to remain in power. Roger Khan’s plea bargain was the final piece of the puzzle. Now, the President and his men area totally compromised and could be charged for extrajudicial killings and ethnic cleansing

Eight tropical countries contain 80% of the world’s remaining forest cover. They call themselves the Forestry Eight.

Guyana is not one of them. As a matter of fact, the countries with the largest forests in numerical size are: Brazil, Congo (Zaire), Peru, Indonesia, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Suriname and then Guyana.

Guyana’s Merchant Banker friends at McKinsey& Company are making the argument Guyana should be paid US$580 million per year for its forests. This payment will be forever and ever. If this is true, then what will the World have to pay?

Brazil has 1.3 million square miles of forest. Guyana has about 60,000 square miles.

This means Brazil should receive, in the thinking of Guyana’s geniuses, twenty one and a half times what Guyana receives from the West or approximately US$15.53 billion dollars per year forever and ever.

Brazil has rejected this proposal. Instead, Brazil favours a different approach, outlined at the last climate change talks in Poland.

Brazil plans to establish a voluntary fund into which developed countries, companies, and other entities pay to reduce emissions from deforestation. With complete control over how the funds are spent and no allocation of conventional carbon credits to contributors, this strategy maintains Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon and gives it an unprecedented financial incentive to preserve the region’s forest cover. What Brazil does is crucial, since it is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon and accounts for nearly half of global tropical forest loss annually.

Guyana’s role in this global re-colonization process is to create a price point (US$580 million per year) which will then be used by International bankers and fraudsters to create a market for the owning and selling “the air we breathe”. What is more frightening is that private companies and not governments will be responsible for the trading of carbon credits. Madoff and Stanford will look like angels.

President Jagdeo talks about preserving Guyana’s sovereignty, while receiving a free US$580 million (over half a billion) per year. Has he lost what precious little commonsense he has? Why didn’t Guyana join Brazil in a joint strategy with the Forestry Eight group of countries to control their own economic destiny and sovereignty?

Finally, once the re-colonization of air (and therefore the developing world) is completed, the Developed World will effectively have colonized “water” which is the source of life and a very scarce commodity that Developing countries do not have.

Why? If Brazil were to be trapped in REDD or LCDS, its 15 % of the world’s fresh water would be captive to monitoring and foreign control. As a recent journal stated:

“Today the Amazon River is the most voluminous river on Earth, 11 times the volume of the Mississippi, and drains an area equivalent in size to the United States. During the high water season, the river’s mouth may be 300 miles wide and every day up to 500 billion cubic feet of water (5,787,037 cubic feet/sec) flow into the Atlantic.

For reference, the Amazon’s daily freshwater discharge into the Atlantic is enough to supply New York City’s freshwater needs for nine years.

The force of the current — from sheer water volume alone – causes Amazon River water to continue flowing 125 miles out to sea before mixing with Atlantic salt water. Early sailors could drink freshwater out of the ocean before sighting the South American continent”.

Finally, President Jagdeo needs to be more transparent about the Trojan horse private deal that currently exists in Guyana’s forests.

In March2008, a private equity firm, Canopy Capital, purchased the rights to environmental services generated by a 1,432-square-mile rain forest reserve in Guyana. Canopy’s website states “Canopy Capital has created an investment template for first-movers in an emerging market for Ecosystem Services.

These include rainfall generation, moderation of extreme weather, carbon storage and biodiversity maintenance.

I wonder what rainfall generation is. It seems we now have new Gods!

Canopy Capital and its legal advisers admit that the deal was not adequately discussed with the implicated communities, but just discussed and agreed with the Board of Iwokrama, which has one community representative.

However, the community of Fairview that has titled lands within the Reserve was not consulted directly and communities that use the reserve and have never surrendered their ancestral ownership over the area were not directly involved.

Asked about why the deal had been shrouded in secrecy, Canopy Capital and Iwokrama advise that for reasons of ‘commercial confidentiality’ it was not possible to broadcast the issue before the deal was done and for this reason also the agreement remains confidential.

Sounds familiar? The capital market hounds are sharpening their teeth.

Anthony Limbrick, Chief Investment Officer of the New Zealand-based firm Pure Carbon recently told Reuters, that his firm has a Fund to trade in the European carbon market and will have an initial capacity of $US20 million. He said the fund will aim to grow as the carbon market evolves, but is also ready to exploit the possibility of a slump in the segment. At a recent hedge fund conference, Limbrick said:

“We think there’s a 30 percent chance the market collapses. That could create a ‘fat tail’ (a very rare event with major consequences) for us to make money”.

For those who are being consulted and bombarded by slick ads on Channel 11, the reality is Guyana is being used as a stalking horse to create new slaves and indentured servants. First it was sugar, and the west got richer and richer. Now, it is the sacred air we breathe

President Jagdeo states Guyana does not have to give up any of its sovereignty with his LCDS approach. Yet, the IMF has held Guyana’s sovereignty for decades. Who is he kidding?

Now he is playing three-card monte with our sovereignty in a new move by the West to re-colonize those countries that have precious forests. Oil has been replaced by air. Soon it will be water.

By being a stalking horse in the quest to privatize “the air we breathe”, President Jagdeo is exhibiting a special type of lunacy or self survival. He is trying to move Guyana from a High C economy (cocaine) to a Low C economy (carbon). Both are crimes against humanity.

Eric Phillips

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