Guyana and its LCDS after Copenhagen

Dec 20, 2009 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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All that remains for Guyana after the Copenhagen summit is the much-publicized LCDS and the Agreement signed between Norway and Guyana. Consequently, Guyanese need to appreciate the post Copenhagen implications.
The Copenhagen climate summit ended this weekend amidst great disappointment among the developing countries of the world. Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, apart from lip service, was largely ignored by the developed world. The three-page summit document, still to be agreed by all 192 nations that attended, only commits to maintaining global temperatures at two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels and dropped all reference to the specific 50 per cent cut of global emissions by 2050.
The proposed agreement urges developed nations to implement reductions they have already pledged without spelling out those numbers or establishing baseline years. Developing nations would establish their own emissions curbs. The verification provision rests on merely international consultations and an analysis clause.
The agreement also incorporates the US-European offer to help mobilize $100 billion a year until 2020 to help poorer nations contend with climate change and commits $30 billion for short-term funding for related programs, such as deforestation prevention, without providing details about these financial programmes.
The document ignores any legally binding treaty incorporating global cuts. It will be left, therefore, to the next climate change summit scheduled for Mexico in December 2010 for any further progress to achieve an enforceable agreement among all the nations of the globe.
Fortunately, before this ill-fated summit commenced, Guyana managed to ink an agreement with Norway. That Agreement, however, has several conditionalities including, verification, strict accountability, transparency and consultation with stakeholders.
Consequently, it came as no surprise to the PNCR that, while the Climate change summit was in crisis and about to conclude, the PPP brazenly moved a motion in the National Assembly with the intention of deceiving the world that there is national consensus on their LCDS, despite its failure to have any meaningful consultation with the parliamentary Opposition. In the debate of that motion on Friday last, PNCR members of Parliament Winston Murray and Lance Carberry explained fully the position of the PNCR on the issues of climate change and the LCDS as proposed by the PPP.
The PNCR had earlier endorsed the Commonwealth Climate Change Declaration in Trinidad and Tobago, which emphasised that a global climate change solution is central to the survival of peoples, the promotion of development and facilitation of a global transition to a low carbon development path.
The Party also supported the expectation that the agreement in Copenhagen should “address the urgent needs of developing countries by providing financing, support for adaptation, technology transfer, capacity building, approaches and incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and for afforestation and sustainable management of forests.”
While the Party was encouraged by the pronouncements of the Commonwealth Heads and recognised the potential for Guyana to benefit from funding under a  REDD+ mechanism, we remain deeply concerned that the Jagdeo Administration continues to avoid a credible commitment for the articulation, and presentation for public scrutiny and consideration, of a National Development Strategy which is designed to transform the Guyana economy to a low carbon path while ensuring the social and economic development of the Guyanese people.
Such a strategy should be capable of achieving a national consensus and ownership by all the people of Guyana.
The governmental propaganda mouthpieces and President Jagdeo have sought to pretend that the intensively touted, so called, “Low Carbon Development Strategy” has benefited from meaningful consultation with all Guyanese Stakeholders. This is far from true, since the Government has studiously excluded the Opposition Parties from any Consultation. The reality is that the titled Amerindian Communities have been subjected to a propaganda blitz, by a well-supported and funded official circus, replete with dazzling promises of financial resources, which can be anticipated from the Copenhagen process.
The PNCR is convinced that the Administration has not yet recognised the merit and importance of achieving National Consensus on this strategy, which would fundamentally affect the livelihoods and well-being of the majority of our citizens.
It is significant that although the forests of Guyana are recognised as our collective national patrimony, a distinction is explicitly made between the forested areas, which have been “titled” to indigenous Amerindian and local forest Communities, and the rest of our forests.
The titled areas are subject to a “voluntary opt in/opt out”, whereas, the views of the Communities representing the rest of Guyana do not seem to be recognised as having equal validity.
So far, the Government has not behaved as if it is necessary to pay the same level of attention to the views of all other Guyanese, particularly the miners and those involved in the forestry sector.
The PNCR reiterates its previously stated position that, given the experiences of the last decade of the Jagdeo kleptocracy, any funds for Guyana from the REDD+ initiative must be managed under a mechanism of strict accountability and transparency. All funds must be deposited in the Consolidated Fund and accessed under the authorisation of the National Assembly.
This concern is real since despite several warnings from the Auditor General, the millions of dollars due to the people of Guyana from the lottery Funds have not been paid into the consolidated Fund and find its way into an account controlled by Office of the President. The same is true of the proceeds of the sale of public assets during privatisation. Those funds are paid into NICIL. Is this the manner in which the Jagdeo regime intends to squander any funds accruing to Guyana from the Norwegian agreement?
Regrettably, the debate last Friday in the Parliament of Guyana only exposed the continued arrogance of the PPP with no indication of any willingness to genuinely take on board the views of those who would be directly affected by the LCDS including the miners and workers in the forestry sector.

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