Everyone knows transparency is essential to assuring foreign funding to save our forests

Dec 07, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Today (07-12-09), over 90 world leaders, including President Bharrat Jagdeo, along with scores of delegates from various countries will descend on Copenhagen in Denmark to start 11 days of deliberations to arrive at a communiqué that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012.
But just as the Guyana Government keeps emphasising climate change under the guise of actually seeking money, I want to keep emphasising that government’s real motive for jumping aboard the climate change bandwagon is different from the other countries and world figures.
The world keeps focusing its talks on cutting carbon emissions; Guyana keeps focusing on getting its hands on badly needed money to salvage its underperforming economy that has been propped up for the last 17 years by foreign loans, grants, remittances and money laundering. In short, to this government, Guyana will rise or fall based on financial commitments after Copenhagen.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Guyana trying to get as much foreign money as possible, whether via traditional Foreign Direct Investments for development of our natural resources or via climate change funds for developing our resources, while simultaneously saving its forests, but this aggressive push by President Jagdeo for lots of foreign money to save our forests flies in the face of logic given endemic corruption in his government.
At times I think there are two President Jagdeos: one who has a terrible governance record and another who is on a whirlwind tour to promote climate change awareness. And it is the former that I can’t help noticing, even as folks in other countries applaud his efforts. Forbes Burnham also shared a similar split image: at home he was horrible; abroad he was regaled.
Unlike Burnham, though, President Jagdeo has literally allowed corruption to spread like a cancer because he obviously does not think it is a major problem that needs to be urgently tackled lest it becomes terminal, taking down him and his government. Transparency International ranks Guyana high on the list of corrupt countries (and the government has done nothing major to stop this practice). And there has been no noticeable shift in perception from previous TI reports.
The President himself, for good reason, has repeatedly adverted to transparency and accountability among Third World countries and governments – including his own – as being major concerns of rich nations who might be inclined to pay developing and underdeveloped nations to preserve their forests. Recently, Scientific Advisor at the CARICOM Climate Change Centre, Guyanese-born Dr. Ulric Trotz, too, couldn’t help bringing up the transparency and accountability issue during a lecture series on “Climate Change Challenges to Governance in CARICOM countries”.
According to the Guyana Chronicle (December 4), “Trotz maintained that good governance is critical to addressing climate change and major efforts are needed to improve transparency, accountability and equity amongst the Private and Public sectors and Civil Society.
He said climate change poses not merely a regional challenge but a global one which must be addressed collectively”.
And this is what is missing from the President’s own message at home, even as he runs around the world preaching about climate change and arguing for money to save Guyana’s forests.
We have a major good governance crisis in Guyana on several fronts, including the lack of constitutionally due LG elections for 15 years, but transparency and accountability are the twin problems for the Jagdeo administration, as has been repeatedly exposed by the Auditor-General’s reports and a series of Kaieteur News exposes on highly questionable spending of public funds on projects that should require contractors to reimburse the treasury or be barred from future projects.
But corrupt countries like Guyana are making it hard and bad for other poor and deserving countries that really deserve all the help possible. The Guyana Chronicle (December 1) in a news item, “Rich countries should pay Africa to preserve forests,” noted that this headline suggestion came from Canada’s former Prime Minister, Mr. Paul Martin, in the lead up to Copenhagen Climate Change Confab.
Martin, co-chair of the Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF) said, “African countries of the Congo Basin are not part of the problem, but they are part of the solution by preserving the rainforest which acts as a defence against global warming.”
The Congo Basin forests reportedly cover an estimated 200 million hectares and provide food, shelter and livelihood for more than 50 million people and by preserving their forests, many will be saved.
To this end, Martin added, “The rest of the world, particularly the industrialized north, must recognise (this) and understand that somebody has to pay the price for preservation.”
So I have no doubt that rich countries are going to pump millions of foreign currencies into developing countries without any of those countries leaders having to beg for the money.
Ironically, other than Guyana’s President on his one-man crusade to get money under the guise of promoting climate change awareness, I have not heard or read of another world leader, especially from Africa, South America or Latin America where huge rain forests exist, running behind rich countries for money in the name of saving their forests.
It may not even make a significant difference in what Guyana will eventually get despite all this leg work, because besides climate change conferees agreeing to reduce greenhouse gases, the richer conferees will seek to set up a US$10 billion fund by the year 2012 to assist developing and underdeveloped countries help slow climate change.
This runs counter to the President’s assertion in an impromptu interview after being honoured last week by UWI in Trinidad when he said, “We don’t even have pledges for the US$10 billion per annum for fast start funds, much less the larger sums that will be required.” Where did he get the idea that the rich nations will be paying up US$10B a year to such a fund? And who told him any larger sum required will be made available?
Is he not running with his own dreams? Again, the rich countries will agree at Copenhagen to set up a US$10B fund in 2012, or two years from now and a year after the President is supposed to demit office, so what exactly is he aiming for here?
That US$10B figure will not be written in stone and could also be revised downward, especially if the investigation ordered by the UN’s chief climate scientist finds British climate researchers discussed plans to alter global warming data. The UN’s point man here told the BBC it is impossible to ignore the allegations said to be discovered in thousands of hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia. “We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet.
This is a serious issue, and we will look into it in detail.” Seems like as though not only the Jagdeo administration has a problem with being transparent; so are the British climate change researchers. Two peas in a pod?
If that investigation proves wrong-doing by researchers, it could change the dynamic of the argument in favour of those who think too much is being made of global warming and also force rich countries to rethink their commitment to reducing greenhouse gases or doling out billions to developing countries to save their own forests.
This will not bode well for Guyana, whose President, like so many world bodies and leaders, could have been duped by fabricated data. Guyana’s socioeconomic future, as of this moment, hangs on Copenhagen, and unless we have a change of leadership with a change of vision, we could be going down a dead end street with an impenetrable brick wall waiting to greet us.
Our only chance of turning back seems to be two years away, but can we afford to wait?
Emile Mervin

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