The 2017 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 23) — held in Bonn, but actually hosted by Fiji — was wrapped up last Friday on a more positive note than had been expected, after US President Donald Trump’s bellicose opposition to the COP 21 agreement crafted in Paris two years ago. That agreement had committed the countries gathered to collectively limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the tipping point for irreversible climate change.
The fly in the ointment being that individual national targets had not been made mandatory, the goal at Bonn was to move closer towards such targets. While Fiji did place on the agenda a process for the post-2020 emissions’ reduction targets to be stated by all countries – developed and undeveloped — it failed to point out that, under the Paris Accord, emissions’ reduction by developing countries were linked to those of the developed countries.
The developed countries had also committed to provide up to 0 billion in funds by 2020, and transfer green technologies to developing countries. This became the pre-2020 agenda of the Bonn climate change talks, but the developing countries found that this had been dropped from the formal UN negotiations. That meant that the developed countries would not be held accountable for their commitments up to 2020.
Matters were not helped after the Conference opened on Nov 6th and the US negotiators immediately began pushing for upping the use of coal and other fossil fuels. But the G77 countries+ China took a tough stance, and eventually the developed nations agreed to report on their emissions’ reduction targets for 2020, and these would be linked to the “facilitative dialogue” for measuring the developing countries’ cuts.
The developed countries would also have to inform the UN climate change forum about the levels of finance they provide to developing countries by 2020.
But, from a local standpoint, it was very disappointing that, for a nation that had been catapulted to the very centre of the fight against global warming by former President Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana was nowhere to be seen at Bonn — especially when it was the block of developing nations that took the lead in forging the new agreement. The representatives of the latter block were very candid about their assessment — that the developed countries: the EU, Britain, Japan, Australia and Canada, would hide behind the skirts of the US in the future, but they would at least be able to occupy the moral high ground.
Guyana’s opportunity to continue occupying that moral high ground had already been prepared by the PPP, so its absence was also surprising — especially since Guyana would be one of the countries most affected by rising sea levels consequent to rising global temperatures, and the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) of the previous PPP Administration had become a model for the rest of the developing world in the goal of creating a sustainable Green Economy. But these had been all but abandoned.
While the PNC-led APNU/AFC coalition speak about a “Green Economy”, most of their efforts have unfortunately been confined to painting government buildings – including the Office of the President – and other official structures in the colour green. The Government seemed to have lost the plot after Exxon struck oil just before they assumed office. The most glaring proof of this is their refusal to pursue the generation of hydro-power even though Guyana is so bountifully provided by waterfalls that it is conservatively estimated that we can generate over 4000MW of electricity annually.
The Amaila Falls Hydro-Electric Power project has been described as most cost effective by Norway, which has committed US million towards its completion; but it has been abandoned simply because the administration does not want Jagdeo to receive credit for his visionary plans on dealing with Climate Change.
In fact, if the plan of the Government is to pursue generation of power from the newly discovered fossil fuels, Guyana might just have to issue its plans for achieving COP 23 compliance.
