The things a President say

Jun 06, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – At an event held yesterday to observe World Environment Day, the President of Guyana made an astonishing statement. He said that we cannot address climate change unless we address the fundamental needs and wants of citizens.
This statement by the President turns the entire discourse, about climate change and its impact on development, on its head. The acceptable position globally is converse to what the President is now saying.
The standing position in the international community is that fundamental needs of citizens will be affected unless the world addresses climate change. The conventional wisdom is that climate change poses a threat to our existence.
The President went on to attempt to make the case that unless we address hunger, inequality, vaccine hesitancy, access to safe water, and the unfulfilled commitments to climate adaptation, we cannot speak about a “One Earth”.
When the United Nations Environmental Programme set the theme for this year’s World Environment Day, it decided on “Only One Earth”. The use of the “one” was numerical. The President spun it to mean inclusive, thus allowing him to protest against the failure of world leaders to meet the US$100B needed for climate adaptation. In effect, the President sought to speak about a more inclusive world.
But notwithstanding, the President argument makes an interesting nexus. The President was suggesting that environmental concerns have to be addressed in the context of economic and social concerns. Not many people will agree with him when he said that we cannot address climate change unless we address issues such as hunger, inequality and water scarcity. But people will agree that environmental considerations cannot be delinked from the economic conditions under which people live.
This was one of the arguments which was made recently when persons agitated for the government to use Exxon’s application for the renewal of Liza-1’s environmental permit. Some of those persons wanted the government to consider more than simply environmental concerns when making the decision to renew; they wanted the government to use the application to wrest additional economic benefits.
Is this an ethical approach? Should non- environmental demands have been made as a condition for the renewal of the permit?
There is one view which states that only environmental considerations should inform the decision as to renewal. That view was that there should be extraneous considerations: the application was for an environmental permit and only environmental issues should be considered.
The same school of thought, it was held that if the material environmental considerations have not changed, there can be no basis for not renewing. It was further argued that the demand to use the permit to extract additional financial benefits amounted to economic blackmail. In other words, Exxon and its partners should not be to ransom by the insistence that in order to get the permit it has to improve the benefits the country receives.
The other view was that environmental considerations cannot be separated from economic considerations. It was pointed out for example that the health of our people will be affected should there be an oil spill. To take care of the people’s health, the country needs money. The livelihoods of tens of thousands will be destroyed in the event of an oil spill. Environmental concerns have economic consequences. Therefore, the two – economic and environmental – considerations cannot be separated.
The President’s address to the event held for World Environment Day makes the very link between the economic and the environmental. He said that you cannot address climate change without addressing the fundamental needs of citizens.
The same logic, therefore, can be used in relation to the renewal of the environmental permit – Guyana cannot address environmental concerns unless its addresses the material conditions of our people.
Yet, despite this position, the government has opted not to seek fairer economic terms in renewing the Liza-1 environmental permit. In other words, not only has the President turned the climate change debate upside down, he has also not applied his own logic to the process of renewing the permit.
According to the Second Vice President, the focus will be on getting a better deal in the future, and through revised Production Sharing Agreement guidelines. In other words, things will improve in the future.
Climate change, however, is not waiting on the future. If the President feels that the world has to address inequality and hunger and water shortages before it can address climate change, he is in for a rude awakening. If he goes international with that message, he is going to embarrass himself further.
The future belongs to the oil companies. In the meantime, our people have been shortchanged by the agreement which has been signed by the APNU+AFC and which the PPP/C has refused to renegotiate even though the opportunity to do so has presented itself on no less than four occasions.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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