Guyana should brace for more extreme weather patterns – environmentalist

May 15, 2022 News

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By Davina Bagot

Kaieteur News – Over the past few months, Guyana has seen an increase in heavy winds – some that were intense enough to cause damage to homes leaving families with added expenses.

But there might be even more to come. According to some commentators, these patterns are likely to progress, meaning such conditions can become more extreme in the coming days.
While some are speculating that the country’s oil production could be blamed for this development, some environmentalists are certain that the impact is the result of climate change. Climate change, according to the United Nations (UN) refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which produces heat-trapping gases.
Guyana discovered oil in 2015 and started production by 2019. It wasn’t long after that the country began burning or flaring associated gas, rather than re-injecting same, as the cost for the latter is the more expensive option.
The oil company, ExxonMobil, has been paying a small fine of US$45 per tonne of Carbon Dioxide equivalent released. Extensive research conducted by Kaieteur News shows that gas flaring contributes to climate change, which has serious implications for the human security and wellbeing globally. In fact, the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, outlined in one of its studies, that gas flaring is actually a major source of greenhouse gases, which accelerates global warming.
It was noted that flaring releases Carbon Dioxide and Methane, the two major greenhouse gases. Of these two, Methane is actually more harmful than Carbon Dioxide. It is also more prevalent in flares that burn at lower efficiency.The University of Ibadan study also noted that flaring contributes to local and regional environmental problems, such as acid rain with attendant impact on agriculture, forests and other physical infrastructure. The acid rain results in environmental degradation, which includes soil and water contamination and roof erosion.
Furthermore, there have been over 250 identified toxins released from flaring including: carcinogens such as benzopyrene, benzene, carbon disulphide (CS2), carbonyl sulphide (COS) and toluene; metals such as mercury, arsenic and chromium; sour gas with Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2); Nitrogen oxides (NOx), Carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4) which contributes to the greenhouse gases.
This newspaper spoke with one environmentalist, Simone Mangal-Joly, who explained, “If you look at the climate models, the main weather pattern change that is expected is more intense rainfall during rainfall events, from this we can expect more incidences of land-side flooding and the losses that come with that. At the same time there may be longer or more intense dry periods or drought conditions in some parts of the country during the dry season.
So basically when it’s wet it will be really wet and when it’s dry, really dry. We have been seeing many instances of high precipitin events and flooding already, where public funds have to be used for flood relief. Drought also comes with losses, crop losses, for example, and public funds have to be allocated for relief. We can expect more of this in the future.”
On the other hand, she noted that the ambient temperature is expected to rise by 1-4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. As a consequence, the environmentalist explained, “So folks will feel hotter and be hotter. We can also expect Sea Levels to rise about 1-3 feet, which means rougher, higher seas and a higher probability of flooding from sea defence breaches.”
On this note, she stressed the importance of mangroves and the current trends relating to the removal of these species in the interest of development. “Water as you know finds its way around things. The key is to try to have an uninterrupted line of mangroves between us and the sea along the coast and riversides wherever possible, and to bolster this with built defences in areas where mangroves do not grow. There’s no point in protecting one patch of mangroves but removing another. The cost of built defence is enormous compared with the option of maintaining and protecting mangroves. Plus the cost of floods and losses are significant, this is why it makes sense to build shore bases in front of mangroves rather than remove them. The shore base facility planned at Vreed-en-Hoop by a local consortium is a good example – it shows that it is possible to build infrastructure without pretending that the environment and social well-being must be sacrificed for this thing I hear people call ‘progress’,” she said.
Development
According to the environmentalist, “Progress and development are two words I hear folks using a lot, along with the false assumption that measures to protect the environment and human quality of life somehow stand in the way of progress and development. These words only mean change. They are not inherently positive. Progression to where? A place where some people have lots of money and the rest of the country is catching its tail with floods droughts, diseases, and taxpayers have to pay for disaster relief as par for course? Development of what? A society of high buildings and fancy bridges but ordinary people can’t afford to buy rice and flour and their children must sleep, wake up, and play next door to a toxic waste facility or under a bridge ramp, or perhaps we all swim in a soup of toxic waste when floods come to the coastland?”
Further, she reasoned, “Isn’t a progressive place or developed country one that upholds careful and lawful environmental planning and decision making? Would America’s buildings stand up if their government hustled past environmental protection laws and procedures, codes and practices? Does it really make sense to keep investing Guyanese money in more fossil fuels based energy?”
Mangal-Joly was keen to note that she is not advocating for an end to oil production, but instead believes in a safe process to extract the natural resource. She questioned, “Do we need to rush recklessly ahead trying to pump as much of it out of the ground and to burn it for energy where it is not necessary, and without consideration of the tangible weather and financial consequences here at home and the rest of the world?”
A February 2022 report by Client Earth Communications states: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that emissions from fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global warming. In 2018, 89% of global CO2 emissions came from fossil fuels and industry.
Coal is a fossil fuel, and is the dirtiest of them all, responsible for over 0.3C of the 1C increase in global average temperatures. This makes it the single largest source of global temperature rise.
Oil releases a huge amount of carbon when burned – approximately a third of the world’s total carbon emissions. There have also been a number of oil spills in recent years that have a devastating impact on our ocean’s ecosystem.”
The Government of Guyana, however, argues that most of the country’s land is covered by forests, making the country a carbon sink, meaning our forests sequester more carbon than the country’s human activity generates.
Even though this may be the case, it does not slow the progression of climate change locally nor does this fact shelter the people when their roofs are blown away by tornado-like winds.
Just recently, residents in the villages of Plantation Hope and Experiment, West Coast Berbice, Region Five, complained that their homes sustained damage when a “freak storm” of unprecedented proportion wreaked havoc.
During the mayhem, electrical poles were uprooted, leaving several homes without electricity until it was fixed by the Guyana Power and Light Inc.
Vanita Pariag, an affected resident, shared that she was in her bed when she felt a “trembling” sometime after 22:00hrs on Friday, May 6, 2022. She said she and her husband got up and when they looked through their windows, they saw what looked like the smaller version of a tornado coming from the seaside, which is behind her home.
Pariag said that her children, who were also aroused by the storm, started to scream and she too was scared. “I thought the windows would have popped,” she said.
According to the woman, she noticed several zinc sheets from other houses as they were being blown off and a house opposite her home, where an old man lives, also collapsed.
Over 20 houses were affected during that freak storm.

 

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