Guyana: Climate Change Funds

The mining community is up in arms against the government’s proposals to institute some stricter guidelines over their industry. While the government has gone to some length to deny any linkages between their initiative and their championing of forest conservation on the world stage, the miners – and most commentators - are not convinced.

Apart from the two initiatives being strongly correlated temporally, the conditionalities spelt out in the one concrete offer of aid to support the more “responsible” usage of our forests – from Norway – do make a strong case that the government’s sudden conversion to the ranks of the conservationists has been caused by the latter’s five-year US$250 million carrot.

Last year, in our Editorial “LCDS Vindicated”, we emphasised that while the government’s overall thrust is exemplary, we had to be aware of “the fine print – the “conditionalities” - of the REDD+ governance development (RGDP) fund that will have to be adhered to before the monies are disbursed to fund the LCDS.” It is not only the mining community that will be affected by those “conditionalities”.

We gave as an example “the Lethem-Linden Highway that is supposed to be paved and be extended to a deep-water harbour in Berbice. This highway is critical to our development because our strategic linkages with the giant economy of Brazil hinge absolutely on its completion.

But up to now every highway struck through a rainforest has been followed by deforestation – extreme deforestation. Once access to remote areas is opened up then loggers, miners and plantation companies etc. follow.

With Brazil moving aggressively to reduce deforestation, the commercial interests in search of timber, gold, soya and beef are moving elsewhere. We are going to be a prime destination. So what do we do then, when the contributors to our RDGP fund balk by either reneging on pledges or hold up funding until the interminable reviews are conducted?”

Up to now we have not heard anything about the US$30 million that was to have been delivered by Norway this year. It would be interesting to hear what exactly is holding up the disbursement.

And from all indications, it does not appear that any additional funding to support our efforts to reduce overall world carbon emission through forest conservation is on the near term horizon.

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference of last December, there was a US$30 billion Green Climate Fund (GCF) established “to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer”. This money (US$10 billion annually) was to have been disbursed between 2010 and 2012, and to be evenly spread between mitigation and adaptation.

It should be noted however, that with the Copenhagen Accord not having legally binding force, the GCF is quite up in the air. At the very best, it might not be until the next COP at the end of this year that the modalities might be worked out.

And at the very best we should note that with the enormity of the costs of mitigation and adaptation necessary across the globe, US$30 billion is literally a drop in the ocean, and Guyana’s share is going to be very insignificant.

The greatest hope for a financial windfall emanating from our forest conservation efforts was always the hope that in order to meet even its modest commitments to mitigation of CO2 emission, the US would include a robust “cap and trade” component in its plans to address climate change.

US polluters, it was expected, would take the opportunity to keep on pumping out CO2 while they paid a fraction of what it would cost then to clean up their act, to countries such as Guyana.

The bill passed in the House included a “cap and trade” option but the Senate balked and the latest proposed compromise eliminates it completely.

President Obama’s new support for nuclear power (in his State of the Union Address last week) suggests that the US might deal with CO2 without the need for forest offsets. This is not good news for us. And may suggest, as we have always advocated, that we keep all our options open.