WHATEVER is the eventual outcome of the United Nations climate change conference under way in Copenhagen, Denmark, Guyana can be proud of its contributions thus far to the global cause.

President Bharrat Jagdeo has said that this country has been building a coalition with other tropical forest countries for the Copenhagen meeting.

He announced in Trinidad and Tobago, after the Commonwealth summit there, that Guyana and Papua New-Guinea will be co-hosting an event at Copenhagen and this country has been binding with Suriname, Belize, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and others in the run-up to Copenhagen.

During a lecture Monday at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), he noted that Guyana is also a party to the declaration issued by Amazon Basin countries in Manaus, Brazil, last week when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hosted a summit ahead of the Copenhagen conference.

“We hope that we can influence what takes place in Copenhagen and this is why our model is getting so much publicity around the world”, he said, recalling that Britain’s Prince Charles recently spoke about Guyana’s model.

Other countries are also using Guyana’s model which is largely centred on avoiding deforestation although it is not the only model because for deforestation there are different categories of countries and models have to be adjusted.

But in his detailed presentation at UWI, President Jagdeo noted that Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is the only one that has advanced so far and this country feels it can become a very important part of the abatement solution.

“We have had a long march to get where we are today…to develop the REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) concept and to get REDD expanded to REDD Plus (avoiding deforestation, sustainable forestry management, reforestation, aforestation)”, he said.

Mr. Jagdeo noted that REDD Plus has been accepted as part of the United Nations lexicon and there is now significant support from the developed and developing countries for this new concept.

He recalled the offer he made about three years ago to deploy this country’s forests in the cause of climate change and reiterated that to get REDD approved in a global climate change agreement, a national scale model was needed.

“We are the only country that has done this so far. We have a national scale model covering the entire forest”.

He outlined the development and central elements of the LCDS in which forest carbon is a commodity which Guyana wanted to establish as a commodity which could be traded because it has a value to the world.

He stressed that national acceptance of LCDS was “very important for us” and referred to the nationwide three-month consultation on the draft with stakeholders and others.

“We are going out to tender for an internationally replicable Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) system that will use remote sensing devices, satellite imagery to identifying any change of carbon stocks in our forests. With those techniques we will be able to assess whether the country performs in accordance with the agreement”, the President said.

He recalled the signing last month of the Memorandum of Understanding with Norway which will provide US$250M to support the LCDS over the next five years.

Whether there is financing or not in Copenhagen, Guyana already has an MOU with Norway which Mr. Jagdeo said was built on the work done in the Informal Working Group after the G20 meeting in London in April this year.

These are solid achievements by this country and not whims and fancies that some local and overseas-based political and other critics of the Guyana Government continue to indulge in through their blinkered views of the LCDS.
Guyana can hold its head high on the road to Copenhagen and after.