By the time this column is published, I should be on my way to Dubai for this year’s key global climate conference, COP28. I will be reporting for the News Room with support from Climate Tracker. And I hope to do my best to report on crucial climate change engagements, especially those relevant to Guyana.

Naturally, a huge part of my focus will be on Guyana and our Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). Guyana hopes to demonstrate how it has been managing its forests which provide key environmental services to the entire globe and its development needs. I know many have varying views of Guyana’s attempts to balance low-carbon development with oil and gas production and its wider developmental thrust. So, I expect COP28 to be a space to explore the nuances of Guyana’s development.

As a journalist, one of the key considerations I grapple with when reporting on climate change is making my stories appealing. I don’t believe it is a topic that enjoys widespread interest as yet, so often, extra effort is required to make these stories more interesting to readers or viewers. That means demonstrating how climate change will impact people in their daily lives, be it flooding, a sore issue in Guyana for years, or intense heat that plagued us this year. That, I believe, is crucial to help people understand our realities, challenges, and advocacy, all to empower them to participate in the decision-making processes.

Climate change stories about or from international engagements, like COP28, also require an appreciation of various agreements and mechanisms instituted to help move plans along. This year, for example, many of us will be looking at the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund to help developing countries access funds to help countries from things lost permanently to climate change or those affected by climate change that can be restored. The Global Stocktake is also a huge part of this year’s discussions. Essentially, this tool assesses the entire globe’s progress in limiting global warming and actions to cope with climate change. This year, we will have discussions on the first-ever assessment. However, many already know we aren’t doing enough to cut harmful greenhouse emissions, nor have adequate resources been disbursed to help countries meet their climate goals, like transitioning to the use of more renewable energy sources. I think the task for myself and my colleagues is to guarantee we explain what these talks mean in general, but also what they mean for people who live in small, developing regions like ours.

To try to be more engaging in my reporting, I will once again use this space to explain the topic.

Trees breathe in the carbon dioxide (a gas) that humans breathe out; this carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when trees are cut down or when fuels are burnt. When this gas (called a greenhouse gas) is released into the atmosphere, it makes the earth hotter (through a process called global warming). It contributes to other climatic situations, such as increasingly worse natural disasters like floods. Carbon dioxide is viewed as an environmentally-unfriendly gas, and the goal is to limit how much of this gas we release into the atmosphere. It is not the only gas, however, that efforts are being made to reduce emissions of.

Trapping carbon dioxide specifically is a key part of Guyana’s plans. Guyana’s forests are valuable because intact forests mean that more trees would capture those gases that make the earth hotter. So Guyana has been arguing for years now, that it should be compensated for keeping these trees intact because otherwise, those trees could be cut down and used to earn money, or the area could be cleared to make way for some new development. Norway was the first country to support Guyana in this regard, and more recently- last December to be exact- the Hess Corporation is paying Guyana significant sums of money to keep protecting those trees. This payment scheme involves “carbon credits”- a tradeable permit or certificate that represents the removal of a certain amount of carbon dioxide from the environment. Already, Hess secured 30 per cent of Guyana’s available carbon credits, which means the country has about 70 per cent of credits left to market to countries or companies. It is worth noting that for any of the credits sold, Guyana’s government said it would directly allocate 15 per cent of the funds secured to Indigenous communities for their developmental priorities; it has done so following the first payment from Hess earlier this year. The remaining 85 per cent will be spent on national development priorities.

In the context of COP28, Guyana hopes to get support for this venture there. The country also hopes to show the world, on arguably the biggest climate discussion stage, that it has indeed been able to promote low-carbon development and will continue to do so despite oil and gas production. The weeks ahead, I think, will certainly be interesting.

If you would like to connect with me to discuss this column or any of my previous works, feel free to email me at vish14ragobeer@gmail.com