Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 30, 2009 Editorial
President Jagdeo returned to Guyana after a week-long trip to New York, where in addition to participating in the annual talk-shop of the UN General Assembly (in which Guyana is usually very nondescript and anonymous) he had a very high-profile role in the Special Meeting of world leaders convened by UN Secretary-general Ban Moon on the subject of climate change.
The reason for the dramatic increase of visibility of course, was that in a world in which climate change had become its sword of Damocles, the President had taken a rather bold stand on one of the mechanisms that might possibly avert the predicted catastrophe if the world continues on its present path – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
The question for us, however, as the President pointed out on his return, is whether the world will be willing to go beyond REDD – which is concerned with offering incentives to slow down the rate of deforestation and thus focuses on those countries that have historically been felling their forests and leaves countries like us that have been practicing sustainable harvesting of forests out in the cold.
REDD+ extends the concept of valuing forest conservation and would compensate us for the service we are providing to the world by keeping our forests practically intact.
The fact that the leaders of the world have had their consciousness raised (hopefully) by the flurry of activity in NY was certainly necessary to move us closer to a REDD+.
But was it sufficient? We do not think so.
While there certainly has been some progress in moving closer to a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the refusal by the developing world to set precise limits on their emissions (demanded by the US and used as a reason for their refusal to sign the protocol) going forward is certainly going to torpedo any new concrete agreement later this year at Copenhagen.
The developing world – as illustrated, for example, by the statement by the President of China – expect that the historical role of the present developed world in precipitating the climate change monster cannot be ignored and will therefore not accept any agreement without the US signing on the dotted line to firm, deep and stated cuts in emissions.
Even the Europeans have signaled their impatience with the position of the US.
The best we can possible expect to emerge in Copenhagen is an agreement on principles with the details to be negotiated during the following year.
But we all know to our cost that the devil is in the details.
One of those details will be the question of the mechanism that would fund any REDD+ component of any new climate change agreement. We believe, as we have stated before in this space, that the “cap and trade” approach that has been tried successfully in both the US and Europe with previous programs will be in the mix.
Compensation in any agreement rests on two basic premises: one, that we can only continue to harvest our natural resources as long as our rate of renewing them exceeds our rate of harvest; and two, that our current economic system doesn’t factor the cost of environmental degradation into the cost of production.
The logic flowing from these premises ultimately boils down to the conclusion that we have to embed the cost of environmental degradation into the cost of production.
That means, first determining what constitutes a safe level of degradation, (we’re now all agreed on this) and then coming up with a way to keep the rest of us within that limit (the present challenge).
Cap-and-trade gives government the task of determining that amount by setting one limit for the entire economy, but it lets companies decide among themselves how they can hit those targets most efficiently by issuing or selling pollution allowances that can be bought and sold.
But “cap and trade” has its own plethora of details – and the devil will once again manifest his presence. We suggest once again: while we ride the REDD train we must still open up our interior. REDD+ is not quite ready.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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