Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 23, 2009 News
In an interview yesterday with Reuters in New York, President Bharrat Jagdeo touted Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) as a model that can provide solutions to many of the issues that have arisen in the negotiation of a new global climate change agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
“By Copenhagen, we can show a real country model working that would address all of the issues that have come up in the negotiations,” he said.
President Jagdeo, given his stance on the climate change issue, has also met with several other leading news agencies including the Wall Street Journal, the UK Guardian, the Financial Times, the editorial board of the New York Times and CNN in New York. He is expected to meet with a correspondent from the Economist magazine later this week.
The President explained that Guyana can combat climate change by preserving the 15 million hectares of near-pristine tropical rainforests that the country possesses in exchange for forests credit payments which can be employed in developing a low-carbon economy.
“We can generate money from preserving the forests, we can use these resources to invest in low carbon opportunities, and we can use some of the money to make our economy climate-resilient,” the Head of State said.
However, he noted that the biggest stumbling blocks to making the model work were persuading rich countries that payments they make to poor ones would be used transparently, and convincing poor countries they would not give up sovereignty when they agree to set aside forests for conservation.
President Jagdeo is in New York to attend the 64th United Nations (UN) General Assembly which begins today. He was one of over 140 participants in a special Summit on Climate Change instigated by the UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon, yesterday.
The President co-chaired one of eight closed round-tables with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain during the afternoon session of the special summit that included participants from Andorra, Belarus, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Dominica, Eritrea, Fiji, Germany, Ghana, Mexico, Namibia, Palestine (observer), Poland Korea, Rwanda, St Kitts & Nevis, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland and Tanzania.
This special summit came at a time when the negotiations on the world climate change compact among the 190 countries is stalled over how to share the burden of curbs on gas emissions through 2020 between rich and poor nations, and how to raise perhaps $100B a year to help the poor combat warming and take adaptation measures.
In the Reuters interview on Monday, the President stated, “What will constitute a good agreement in Copenhagen.”
He opined that only rich countries should face mandated deep cuts in carbon emissions as poor countries might have to sacrifice future economic growth if they agree to mandatory reductions.
“We don’t want to pass blame, but many of the developed countries used these traditional tools to get where they are today. Many people feel that they are kicking away the ladder now, they don’t want us to use the same development tools, which were high carbon,” the Head of State said.
“We believe we don’t have to go that route, we believe that we can shift to a low carbon direction without compromising our development prospects, but we have to be helped to that route.”
Earlier on Monday, President Jagdeo joined movie star, Harrison Ford, at an event organised by Conservation International in Greeley Square, New York to showcase the urgency of protecting tropical forests and to urge support on forest protection from the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and in the Copenhagen Climate Council this December.
Ford, who has been a board member of Conservation International for 15 years, said: “By having the foresight to recognise that serving the needs of the planet could also help the people of Guyana, President Jagdeo is helping to change the way that we think about economic development and climate change.” (GINA)
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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