CHAIRMAN of the Climate Change Unit in Office of the President, Mr. Shyam Nokta, has underscored the important role the Amazon region can play in the climate change fight.

He did so while addressing tourism delegates from seven of the eight member countries of Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO), who are participating in the four-day meeting begun here Tuesday.

The participants, deliberating on strategic visioning, planning and implementation of sustainable tourism development for the Amazon as a single geo-destination, at the Guyana International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.

ACTO, an inter-governmental organisation that unites eight countries of the Amazon Basin – Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – was formed in 2003, after being founded through the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT) signed in 1978.

In his presentation on ‘Tourism and Low Carbon Development’, Nokta alluded to the tourism context within the wider climate change agenda and the importance of the Amazon.

He mentioned some of the initiatives that Guyana has been undertaking in recent times, specifically its thrust in developing a Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and the approaches taken.

“As you spend the next few days talking about tourism and planning for tourism in this region and looking at the opportunities and the challenges, it is important that we recognise the important role that the Amazon can play in this very important issue of climate change,” Nokta reiterated.

About the challenges faced and what scientists are saying, he said the world is already witnessing as much as a 0.7 degree rise in global temperature and, in the last 50 years alone, carbon dioxide levels have grown more rapidly than ever before, at between 1.5 to 2 parts per million per year.

Nokta said every year of inaction is contributing a range of four to five parts per million per year and, if unchecked, “we are going to be faced with a catastrophic climate change situation.”

Effects
He said: “Already, we are starting to witness the effects of climate change in every country, in every region and the Amazon has not been left out.”

“So, it means that we have to take urgent action at a global level to address this issue of climate change.”

Nokta said the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated that, to achieve, at minimum, a two degrees rise in global temperature, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has to be stabilised at 450 parts per million.

He said this would mean that greenhouse gas emissions have to be cut by between 25 and 40 per cent and, in particular, the industrialised countries would need to take the lead in doing so.

Nokta said approximately 17 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emission reduction annually needs to be secured.

“When we look at deforestation, right now it contributes approximately 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and, of the 17 gigatonnes required if we are going to reach that stabilisation level, only about five will come from developed countries,” he calculated.

Nokta said, based on the trend in commitments, even at this stage approaching the Copenhagen meeting in Denmark later this month, the remaining 12 gigatonnes have to come from developing countries.

He said there is an informal working group on interim financing which has been meeting over the last year, representing the majority of forest countries in the world today.

Nokta said seven of the Amazon countries are a part of that group which has come up with a proposal deploying forests which can realise seven gigatonnes of reduction.

“What it represents is an immediate action that forest countries are prepared to do, that can bring results but also means one of the lowest cost abatement solutions, even as we go into Copenhagen,” he posited.

Nokta said: “It means that countries of the Amazon are willing to step up and commit their valuable forests resources in this global fight against climate change. What we need to see happen is a similar commitment on the part of the developed world to come up with the financing that is required.”

He continued: “In our efforts towards climate change abatement at the global level, we need to ensure that we can develop our economies sustainably even as we move forward to deploying our forests and that is the thrust of Guyana’s LCDS.”

Principles
Nokta repeated that the strategy is based on the principles of avoided deforestation and opportunity cost, which Guyana has been doing, working with a number of local and international experts.

“But, importantly, Guyana’s LCDS represents a national scale model, a model that looks at forest at a national level and seeks to address many of the challenges that are, sometimes, associated with undertaking small pilots,” he offered.

Nokta observed that there are a number of other initiatives that the Amazon countries are undertaking and he recalled that, at the recent important summit convened by Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Manaus, again the commitment of Amazonian countries was underlined.

“Brazil, in particular, has put on the table proposals to reduce by as much as 80 per cent their deforestation rate up to 2020 as well as proposals to cut their greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

“This, we hope can set the trend for more and more high emitting countries to come on board even as we move into this very important Copenhagen meeting,” Nokta said.

“Clearly our region is working closely on the issue of climate change, on the issue of how we can work together to deploy our forests as a region but also how we can work together to ensure that we can receive adequate financing to make it an economically worthwhile and rational decision,” he asserted.