GUYANA’s President Donald Ramotar on Thursday called on World Leaders at the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development or Rio+20 in the Brazilian City of Rio de Janeiro to leave the conference with firm commitments to implement practical and bold actions to combat climate change.
Ramotar making his maiden address to any United Nations forum said leaders must come up with practical and bold actions to combat challenges related to climate change especially among developing countries.
“We cannot leave this city at the end of this week with no more than simplistic messages of inspiration. Instead, we need to agree specific, practical actions that are relevant to today’s realities.And to do so, we need both boldness of vision and an agreement on specific actions that match the scale of the challenges we face.The boldness of vision should be set out through a high quality set of sustainable development goals as has been discussed in recent days” Ramotar charged.
He said the summit which was first held 20 years ago, sought to inspire a generation to meet these challenges, “but today, inspiration is not enough.”
Ramotar said what is need is for countries to come up with practical solutions to address the global challenges of food security and climate change.
“How to feed and power the world; how to provide the minerals and metals that are essential to economic prosperity; how to alleviate poverty and promote equity; how to safeguard the ecosystem services on which global economies and societies depend. We all know that these are difficult and tightly inter-connected challenges” Ramotar declared.
These actions will be difficult and expensive, Ramotar said, adding that “there is no magic way to fixing the problems caused by unsustainable growth in the past, so we need to face up to the need for funding.”
He said the international community has acknowledged that today’s developed world should pay.
“This has often been justified on the grounds of fairness – the developed world both caused the problem and can afford to pay for solving it. But that sometimes obscures the fact that the solutions to the major issues we discuss – such climate change, bio-diversity, water regulation – are far more prevalent in the developing world. So we need to see investment where the solutions are – and that will require significant financial transfers” Ramotar added
The president also lashed out at the developing world for commitments made in Copenhagen to provide a total of US$30 billion in fast start funding for the period 2010 to 2012 rising to US$100 billion per annum by 2020- most of which are not forthcoming.
“Experience with fast start funding has not demonstrated either speed or focus, but the commitments to 2020 provide an opening to start the process of correcting the centuries-old imbalances in the global economy which have meant that the natural capital of the developing world was provided to the world for free” Ramotar said.
He outlined that in dealing with this financing, world leaders need to be clear about the special conditions that exist across individual countries –, especially those that apply to small highly indebted and middle income countries.
“If the right international conditions are created, Guyana will not be found lacking in the search for solutions. I hope that we are already proving that progress on sustainable development is possible. I want to highlight three ways in which I hope we are helping” he added
Ramotar outlined his government’s plans to move the Guyanese economy unto a low carbon path, including the preservation of 99.5% of the country’s rainforest, distribution of 11,000 solar panels to indigenous communities, distribution of 90,000 laptops to low income households and establishment of an Amerindian Development Fund among others (inews)