Dear Editor,
After reading the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) document, I am satisfied that this idea will not fly in its current form. Sizeable financial transfers are required from the top polluters and this position does not reconcile with their current national priorities. My congratulations go out to McKinsey & Company for a well-written document. However, in order to make this very academic and theoretical document workable, the designers should have fleshed out an implementation strategy to assess a way forward if Copenhagen does not provide the required funding.
As a background to understanding where Guyana sits in the world, here are some stats:
1. The world has nearly 4 billion hectares of standing forest (close to 30% of the total land mass).
2. Guyana has approximately 17.2 million hectares of standing forest (both commercially exploitable and non-exploitable).
3. This equates to Guyana having 0.4% of the world’s forests.
4. If we use the worst case scenarios, as spelt out in the LCDS, Guyana can expect US$60 million a year from the polluters of the world.
5. If this is extrapolated to better understand the minimum expenditure required from the major polluters, it adds up to US$14 billion a year.
6. However, we must understand that the G-15 countries of the world have a sizeable share of the world’s forests (as shown below), which can result in only US$5 billlion being payable to the third world “environmental vacuum cleaners” like Guyana with their generally pristine forest.
Name of Country Size of Forest Amount to be (million of hectares) Off-set (US$ million)
USA 64 220
China 175 612
Japan 25 87
Germany 11 38
India 76 266
Sub-total 351 1,223
Russia 1178 4,123
Canada 400 1,400
Brazil 230 805
Australia 165 577
Other G-15 Countries
(with sizable forest) 872
TOTAL 2159 9,000
7. The UN budget is around US$3 billion and history has exposed that most of the main polluters of the world are always in arrears with their financial commitment to this organization.
8. Pick sense from non-sense people; if the biggest polluters are always struggling to pay US$3 billion to a leading global body, why would they be in a hurry to pay US$5 billion to selected members of the third world?
9. Failure to address this big ‘if’ will condemn this idea to failure. The USA will just not support funding their share of $5 billion to third world countries, when they can do with that money themselves at this point in time of their history (recession and all).
It makes better strategic sense for the top polluters to create jobs at home by ramping up their own tree-planting programme and take measures to reduce their carbon emission rather write blank cheques for Guyana.
The dynamics of the world’s politics today is – ‘look after your vested interest’ (eg assess what Obama has done for his steel industry with his recovery programme at the expense of lower-cost steel operators in other countries).
For me, Guyana should have been looking after its own vested interest rather that pretending to be the environmental ‘czars and czarinas’ (paraphrased from Prakash Ramjattan) of the world. I call again for us to get to know the top investment bankers of the world to flesh out and possibly fund in the most cost effective manner, some of our big projects.
If we do a value for money audit on all the global escapades done while pursuing a low carbon strategy, we will uncover hundred of millions of dollars already expended on the LCDS. If Copenhagen fails, what would the taxpayers get for the money spent on LCDS? Would it not have been more economically sensible and feasible to have spent this money on other projects that would have been more beneficial to Guyanese?
Case in point, we could have invested in building the social cohesion institutions in the villages and wards of Guyana, or we could have retrained and created jobs for the army of unemployed youths. From this bottom up approach, we would have been able to better design and implement public policy that would have arrested crime, drug trafficking, widespread distrust among the people, unemployment, corruption, hopelessness, suicide, alcoholism, and the infamous philosophy of some people called ‘mo fiya, slow fiya.’ There would have been no need to unleash state terror on alleged suspects in the first place because people would have no time with any $300,000 pay-off from power drunk politicians to burn buildings. In the end who benefits? The taxpayers!
In conclusion, my observation is that Guyana is too exposed to the Copenhagen meeting and there are inadequate mitigants in place if Copenhagen says no. If this strategy fails, (we will know in December) I trust the relevant decision makers will take full responsibility for the failure and accept the ensuing consequences rather than deflect the blame to the blameless. If this high-risk strategy succeeds, I will be the first in line to apologise. We will wait and see!
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
