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H.E address to the nation on Climate Change and Copenhagen Meeting.
Address to the Nation
on Climate Change and
the Copenhagen Meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
by
His Excellency Bharrat Jagdeo,
President of the Republic of Guyana
December 10, 2009
Members of Cabinet
Members of Parliament
Special Invitees
Ladies and Gentlemen
Tomorrow, I will leave Guyana to join over 100 other Heads of State and Government in Copenhagen at one of the most important meetings in history. Our goal can be simply expressed: to stabilise global temperatures. But the simplicity of the goal hides the complexity of the means to achieve it. Never before have science, economics, geo-strategic self-interest and politics inter-sected in such a way on an issue that impacts everyone on the planet. It would be tempting to be daunted by the scale of what we need to do as a global community. It would be especially tempting for small developing countries like ours to leave it to others to forge the global solution. But this has not been the Guyanese way when it comes to climate change.
Over the past four months, the people of this country have taken part in one of the most comprehensive national conversations on climate change to take place anywhere in the world. Well over 10% of our population attended information sessions and consultations on our Low Carbon Development Strategy. All our media outlets devoted considerable time and energy to explaining and understanding the problem. From the boy scouts to women’s groups to students at the university to Amerindian villagers in some of the most remote parts of the country: people across Guyana have engaged with the issue like few others. They have started to come up with meaningful, relevant ideas on how we in Guyana can protect ourselves from climate change, help the world store carbon through the deployment of our forests, and move the rest of our economy onto a low carbon trajectory. I challenge anyone to show me any other country in the world where as large a proportion of the population has engaged in an endeavour as comprehensive as this.
I want to thank everyone who took part in the conversation so far. And to remind you that it is not over. Yesterday, the second draft of the Low Carbon Development Strategy was released, and the members of the Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committee have started the next wave of review. It is being sent to all Members of Parliament, and within the next few hours, it will be available on the LCDS website. Over the next three months, I hope that people will take the time to review the updated version, which reflects the outcomes of the consultations that took place this year. I hope that Members of Parliament will read it thoughtfully, debate it and improve it in the National Assembly: as I have said many times, this strategy is about the long term direction of the country, and will long out-last the current Government.
I recognise that it can sometimes be confusing when our national process is advancing quickly alongside an international process which involves important milestones like the meeting at Copenhagen. I will be going to Copenhagen with a message that the people of Guyana want to act, I will be pointing to the progress we have made so far and the process that is underway. But our national process is paramount, and it will continue in the months after Copenhagen. Indeed, it will be significantly informed by what emerges at Copenhagen.
And it is vital that Copenhagen shows that the world is serious about facing down climate change. There has been talk in recent weeks of a political agreement being enough. We must not be satisfied with political rhetoric or platitudes. Copenhagen will be a failure unless we leave with a binding agreement including mandatory commitments from developed countries to be codified within an international treaty within six months.
Copenhagen will be a failure unless it acknowledges that even temperature stabilisation at 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels is too high, we must put in place arrangements to regularly review the science behind climate change, and find measures to increase our ambition if needs be. And Copenhagen will be a failure unless it agrees to significant financial transfers from Annex I countries to the developing world. In recent months, we are finally starting to hear the possibility of commitments of the scale that might be needed – the European Union and others have agreed a figure of around US$150 billion per year by 2020. These estimates are still probably too low, but at least they are in the right ballpark.
If leaders leave Copenhagen without these three commitments, then history will judge them poorly. Why? Partly because this is about justice – it is simply wrong to condemn millions of people to misery, and in some cases death, because we could not muster the resolve to save them. But it is also about something far more optimistic.
If we are to defeat climate change, we need to unleash the biggest wave of innovation the world has ever seen. To stimulate energy efficiency, catalyse a global move to clean energy, and to redesign the agricultural and forestry economies. We recognise that most of this has to happen in the developed world. But we also need to open up the struggle against climate change to the millions of innovators, entrepreneurs, activists and thought-leaders who live and work throughout the developing world. In a few years, over a trillion dollars will be in circulation for the new technologies and new ideas that are needed in the years ahead. If this trillion dollars stays in the developed world, that will create a new protected industry, just like has happened so many times before. That is wrong. But more than the fact that it is wrong, it is utterly short-sighted, because it means that we will stifle the ideas to defeat climate change in the very places where those ideas and solutions are most likely to originate.
We have seen this in Guyana, where the people who understand forest protection best are the people who live in, and depend on, the forest. They know that it causes 17% of global emissions, and they know that the way to solve it is to unleash the creative ideas and energies of our people to find new ways to forge a new economy. In 2010, we can start to forge this new economy, thanks in part to the world-leading partnership between Guyana and Norway, which is the second biggest agreement of its kind in global history. Only Brazil’s Amazon Fund is bigger. We have started to place a value on the services that our forests provide – and Norway intends to start paying for those services, up to a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth by 2015. These payments enable us to start the shift towards a low carbon development trajectory and in 2010, we will be able to fund about US$30 million of low carbon and adaptation work as a result. In the 2010 budget, we will outline the first wave of priority investments for our low carbon future, and establish the Guyana REDD Investment Fund to do this. The LCDS sets out further details.
While this is an extremely welcome start, we need Copenhagen to create those kinds of incentives more widely. And then, whether for reasons of social justice or self-interest, the countries of the world can align behind a set of goals to stabilise global temperatures. The long-term climate finance I mentioned before is essential - but we can get started now. At the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the leaders of over 50 countries, including Guyana, agreed to support the establishment of a Copenhagen Launch Fund, with funding commitments of about US10 billion per annum from 2010 until 2012, before any Copenhagen Agreement would come into force. Governments throughout the world have started to pledge their support to this, in the last few days, the United States, Sweden, Denmark, the UK and Australia have all signalled their willingness to act. This is compatible with the work of the Informal Group on Interim Financing for REDD+, of which Guyana was a member. This group has made practical proposals for reducing global deforestation by 25% by 2015, for a total of less than €25 billion. Using highly conservative estimates, this could deliver 7 Gigatons of emissions reductions by 2015, which would be the single biggest contribution to combating climate change in that period. The Copenhagen Launch Fund can deliver the resources required to achieve this, as well as stimulating action on adaptation and energy-related climate change mitigation.
I remain confident that if the international community forges a meaningful, binding agreement in Copenhagen along the lines I have outlined, the people of Guyana will not be found lacking. The next LCDS starts to frame the decisions we in Guyana need to make if we are to participate in the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD, mechanism as part of a UNFCCC agreement. We are ready to implement tough reform where that is needed, the people of Guyana have always understood that combating climate change requires us to make choices.
Some have said that it is unfortunate that Copenhagen is taking place this year, after the financial crisis ravaged economies across the world, leaving many countries heavily indebted and in recession. I disagree. This past year has shown what the international community can do when its interests are in danger. Trillions of dollars were mobilised to rescue banks and protect the economies of the developed world. Long-established conventions were torn up to rescue entire countries. Governments in the developed world invested heavily to save jobs, citizens’ homes and individual companies. This year has therefore shown that when the world wants to act, the world is able to act. Our planet and the livelihoods of its six billion people call for a similar resolve – in Copenhagen we will see it if exists.
I was the first world leader to announce that I would be travelling to Copenhagen for this year’s meeting. This was because I knew that the people of Guyana were ready to step up their efforts in the battle against climate change, and that my responsibility as leader was to take that message to the international community. There are now over one hundred leaders attending. This in microcosm shows that the people of Guyana are at the forefront of solving climate change, and are not just complaining about it. The consultations on the Low Carbon Development Strategy have inspired others across the world, and this is due to the time and effort of thousands of our citizens over the past few months.
For that, I thank you.
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