–calls attention to potential of developing countries in climate change fight
PROGRESS being made by developing nations like Guyana in moving towards a zero-emissions future is often overlooked, according to Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo.
“From a developing country’s perspective, we are not getting the same attention that the developed world gets; there is a great deal of worry. In fact, stress in the developing world that in spite of all the progress we are making towards a zero-emissions future, the issues that affect them, and the help that was promised to them is not adequate.
“Whatever little financing has come our way, when these pools of resources are made available, the process of [financial] intermediation of these funds is a nightmare. The fact is that the threat to them is becoming even more existential,” he said.
Jagdeo advocated for Guyana and other developing countries to be recognised for their efforts, during an interactive session hosted by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy on Tuesday.
In making his pitch for developing nations, the Vice-President questioned whether global pledges, particularly among developing nations, towards reducing carbon emissions would be irreversible.

“This is a question for many countries; for the private sector, particularly in the developing world. What if there is a change in administration, let’s say in the United States again? Will it mean that the pledges currently made would be reversed, and, therefore, create another spiral, or lack of will? That is a major concern. The policies made have to be permanent; irreversible, for the massive scale of action needed to de-carbonise the world,” Jagdeo reasoned.
To this end, the Vice-President noted that, globally, enough is not being done.
He said: “The developing world has some major concerns; a lot of these countries have very narrow economic structures. Their economies are not diversified; these countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change. A single event; a hurricane, can have a systemic impact. It can wipe out 50 years of accumulated wealth.
“These countries are heavily burdened by debt, and they also are fiscally stressed. They don’t have fiscal space to fund adaptation, and the adaptation funding, globally, is estimated now, at this point in time, at US$150 billion. The world pledge since Copenhagen (2009) has been US$100 billion per annum, and US$75 billion has been delivered. But of that US$75 billion, $50 billion is in loans.”

On the second method of countering climate change, mitigation, Jagdeo said developing countries cannot fund the incremental cost of using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
“…On the mitigation side, to de-carbonise their energy sectors, they cannot fund the incremental cost of using renewable energy over fossil fuels, and there was a promise that the world will help them to fund the incremental cost, because newer technologies tend to be more expensive.
“So, developing countries have budgets that are stressed; they have no capability to fund adaptation. The threat is existential,” the Vice-President lamented.
However, he advised that, at the same time, the “burden” has started to shift to developing countries.
“Now we hear about equal burden sharing…many of these countries have no capability of equal burden sharing. So, the justice; the fairness of this has been eroded over time… And these countries were not, historically, contributors to the current concentration of greenhouse gasses, yet they suffer the most from it… This is why the developing world feels that, sometimes, enough is not being done,” Jagdeo related.
For this reason, the Vice-President said the time for action is now, and expressed the hope that the upcoming United Nation (UN)’s Climate Change Conference will see tangible outcomes, including financing for developing countries.

GREATER URGENCY FOR ACTION
Referencing the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report, released earlier this month, he said: “From the first report, almost 30 years ago, everyone understood that global warming is caused by human action. The last report just reinforced that.
“It is anthropogenic action that is causing climate change, yet we have delayed. We knew what the solution was 30 years ago, but the move forward to implement and to make the necessary commitments to address this problem has been delayed significantly, because of a lack of political will.”
Notably, the IPCC’s report addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations.
The panel noted that scientists are observing changes in the earth’s climate in every region, and across the whole climate system.
The IPCC, in a statement, said: “Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion, such as continued sea level rise, are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years. However, strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change.”

In Vice-President Jagdeo’s view, delayed action has created a greater urgency for action.
“The scale of the action [needed] is even more enormous, and the question is: Will there be enough popular support? We know political will seems to have increased with the election of President (Joe) Biden here; there has been a flurry of activity, and the pledges have increased. And you’ve had the return of the U.S. (United States of America) to the Paris Agreement, which has given a great momentum to COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference).
“But, is there enough popular will? Have people been briefed enough on the scale of action required now, and the destruction and the cost to de-carbonise the future?” Jagdeo questioned.
He said that “major action” is required to meet the targets set by the IPCC.
The IPCC report provides new estimates of the chances of crossing the global warming level of 1.5°C in the next decade, and finds that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C would be beyond reach.

LOW-COST HIGH-IMPACT
A low-cost, high-impact means of addressing global warming revolves around the forestry sector, Jagdeo related.
He said: “About 16 per cent of global emissions come from deforestation, and land-use change. Practically nothing has been done in that area, because we still lose, every year, forests the size of Greece.
“…although it is one of the lowest cost abatement solutions, there is no market for forest carbon… If you look across the spectrum of the sectors that supply the largest emissions; that emit the most, you will see that in each of these sectors there is not enough, pledge-wise, nor is there enough financing, both from the private side and the public side, to achieve the required de-carbonisation of these sectors.”

He advised that there should be greater focus by the global community on developing countries.
“In Guyana’s case, we have a major contribution to make, but we believe that enough policy attention is not being paid to countries in the developed world,” Jagdeo said.
The presentation made by the Vice-President was also the subject of discussion by the audience at Rice University.
Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, also known as the Baker Institute, is an American think tank on the campus of Rice University, in Houston, Texas.
Jagdeo is leading a high-level delegation there this week for the 2021 Offshore Technology Conference, where he addressed, among other issues, the question of whether Guyana could advance development in the oil-and-gas sector, while maintaining its environmental credentials.