– CARICOM Climate Change Advisor
CARICOM Climate Change Centre Scientific Advisor, Dr. Ulric Trotz has said Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is not only the recommendable pathway for the future but timely and worthy of full support from all Guyanese.

“Our forest and the REDD+ initiative, in my opinion, offer an excellent opportunity for Guyana to rally around an issue that should not be in the political arena. An issue which is not about our own survival but our children’s and their children after them and, in fact, the entire global community. With good governance, the REDD initiative could provide the platform from where we could start to heal the wounds, to join hands across the ethnic and political divide that now threatens to tear us further apart and to start on the road of building a Guyana that is prosperous, undeniably democratic and unquestionably free. A Guyana of which all of us can be justly proud.” -Dr. Ulric Trotz

A Guyanese himself, he expressed the view on Tuesday at the start of a lecture series titled ‘Climate Change-Challenges to Governance in CARICOM Countries’ at Regency Suites, in Hadfield Street, Georgetown.

“Our forest and the REDD+ initiative, in my opinion, offer an excellent opportunity for Guyana to rally around an issue that should not be in the political arena.

“An issue which is not about our own survival but our children’s and their children after them and, in fact, the entire global community,” Trotz declared.

CARICOM Climate Change Centre Scientific Advisor, Dr. Ulric Trotz addresses the gathering. At the Head table are Acting UG Vice Chancellor, Professor Carrington and British High Commissioner to Guyana, Mr. Fraser Wheeler. (Carl Croker photo)

“With good governance, the REDD initiative could provide the platform from where we could start to heal the wounds, to join hands across the ethnic and political divide that now threatens to tear us further apart and to start on the road of building a Guyana that is prosperous, undeniably democratic and unquestionably free.

“A Guyana of which all of us can be justly proud,” he told the well-attended event, organised by University of Guyana (UG) in partnership with the British High Commission.

His audience included Interim UG Vice-Chancellor, Professor Lawrence Carrington; British High Commissioner, Mr. Fraser Wheeler and representatives of both the Private and Public sectors.

Trotz, a former Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at UG, also emphasised that climate change must be an issue of national concern and national approaches to deal with its consequences are a sine qua non to address them.

Composite photo shows the audience.

In that context, he said a change in government should not affect the national policy direction to tackle the natural phenomenon and relevant national institutions should be continuously strengthened, as well, to better respond to such issues.

CRITICAL
Trotz maintained that good governance is critical to addressing climate change and major efforts are needed to improve transparency, accountability and equity amongst the Private and Public sectors and Civil Society.

He said climate change poses not merely a regional challenge but a global one which must be addressed collectively.

He noted that the fourth United Nations Inter-Governmental Assessment Report on Climate Change pointed out that there is now unequivocal evidence that human activity is responsible for altering global climate.

Dr. Ulric Trotz

“In a few short years, climate change has evolved from the realm of being an environmental problem to that of a most serious developmental one that threatens to railroad the sustainable developmental aspirations of the Caribbean and, indeed, the entire global community.

“We, in the Caribbean, are already experiencing the vagaries of a changing climate that is adversely impacting on our natural eco-systems, our agriculture, our tourism, our water, our health, our coastal infrastructure and, indeed, our ability to pursue our developmental goals,” he said.

The recipient of the Arrowhead of Achievement (AA) national award, Trotz underlined that the recent floods in England, caused by one in a 1,000 years event; the forest fires in Australia resulting from unprecedented drought; the 2005 flooding in Guyana and the current extended dry season here, have, irrefutably, demonstrated that climate change is real.

“Our projections for the future are that these extreme events will become more frequent and pose serious challenges to our quest to attain even the modest benchmarks of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he warned.

PERVASIVE
Against that backdrop, he reiterated that climate change is all pervasive and will affect every inhabitant of Mother Earth.

“We also have to share the collective blame for the present state of the world’s climate, although, this time, some more than others. As a result, the responsibility for turning the clock back and successfully meeting the challenges that climate change poses, rests on the shoulders of every single country, every single region, every single individual.

“Without collective global action in which each and every nation state, each and every community, each and every individual plays his or her part, we will not be able to galvanise the response required to meet the climate change challenge.

“Any governance system adopted to address this issue, at the national, regional and international levels, will need to be informed by this fact. For our nation States, the demand is that we think global but act local,” underscored Trotz, who is also an Honorary Distinguished Fellow of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.

He said financial institutions need to revisit their governance regimes now that a lending window is available for countries willing to go ahead with the implementation of mitigation measures.

The climate change expert said such a deal will provide funding that is readily accessible and disbursed expeditiously at reasonable interest rates.