THE AFC HAS BEEN SUCKERED

Nov 15, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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By throwing its weight behind the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), the Alliance For Change (AFC) has demonstrated that it can be easily wooed by the government and by the intricacies of the international political system.
The AFC has taken the inexplicable decision to support the strategy even before the government has inked important supplemental agreements which would indicate the precise benchmarks of economic activity which must be foregone in order to receive the promised assistance from the Norwegians and more importantly has endorsed the LCDS even before parliament has had reason to debate it.
The Alliance For Change has no doubt been influenced by the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Government of Guyana and the Norwegians which commits that government to provide some US$30 million almost immediately and potentially up to US$250 million by 2015. This agreement, the AFC no doubt sees as vindication of the President’s claim that Guyana can earn funds for avoided deforestation.
The AFC and the nation, however, have not yet seen the fine print or the subsequent supplemental agreement that would specify the thresholds beyond which economic activity in the forestry and mining sectors cannot extend. And as they say, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
This agreement which has been signed by the government of Guyana is controversial and should be rejected until sanctioned by the parliament of Guyana. While the specific targets have not yet been put into writing, a top government official has indicated that the levels of economic activity within which Guyana would be constrained in the mining and forestry sectors would be around the historic levels. That is, the two hundred and fifty-odd million that Guyana will receive for the next five or six years will be dependent on this country capping emission levels from these economic activities at more or less the levels that prevail today. What this means is that Guyana is more or less committing to capping emissions from deforestation in return for less money than is being embezzled through fraud and tax evasion from the Guyana Revenue Authority each year, or in real terms for an average of US$30M each year.
This is where the danger lies and this is why the AFC must reconsider its support for the Low Carbon Development Strategy. Guyana cannot afford to enter into an agreement with Norway on a number of counts. Firstly, we cannot agree to cap emission levels from deforestation to historic or prevailing levels. Guyana is a natural resource–based country and thus the future growth of Guyana is dependent on the extent to which we can sustainably exploit our natural resources. Right now the natural resources sectors are under producing and therefore to cap emission levels at prevailing or even historic levels is to place a cap on future growth and development.
Secondly, this agreement is a show parade being engaged by the Norwegians aimed at making a grandstand at Copenhagen in December. The Norweigans because of their “climate change” in many countries has emerged as one of the leading advocates of climate change in the world. Forget about Guyana. The limelight at Copenhagen is going to be on the big powers – USA, Brazil, India and China. Norway has now pushed its foot into the doorway and through this agreement which it has inked with a small poor country like Guyana, will see its standing rise in the parade of developed countries that are leading the fight to save the planet.
Norway is a rich country and can afford the price tag of US$30M that is needed to show the world the outcome of partnership between a rich country and a poor country, in which the rich country uses the poor country as the lungs of the world. This is the ethical dilemma of the Low Carbon Development Strategy. The greatest burden for cleaning up the world rests on the shoulders of the poor countries who are being lured into things such as avoided deforestation while the rich countries refuse to make the level of emission cuts necessary to save the planet.
The greatest responsibility for climate change rests with the developed world. But they wish to keep on polluting the atmosphere while paying poor countries to keep their forests intact and cap economic activities so as to compensate for their own failure to make the desired levels of emission cuts. These countries are going to continue to burn fossil fuels and pollute the atmosphere while Guyana is going to be praised for keeping its people in poverty so as to save the world.
On this count alone, the AFC ought to have demanded that the Jagdeo administration not commit to any agreement with a foreign nation that would bind future administrations to this unethical sharing of ecological responsibility.

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