Are there no alternative plans to LCDS out there for our economy?

Dear Editor,

Maybe before the President demits office in 2011 he will realize that his one-man struggle to get his hands on hundreds of millions of dollars to finance his ailing LCDS is not going to happen, and that while his ’Champion of the Earth’ award from the UNEP may have boosted his personal resumé, it did ‘diddly squat’ for the economy, which is where awards and rewards ought to have mattered more.

In the Wednesday edition of Guyana Chronicle, he reportedly said the “Cancun agreement [is] in doubt,” and that “large countries do not want to put more money on the table or make deeper cuts in emissions. He [also] said that although there may be some stand alone initiatives, Cancun may not deliver anything else.” He may be the political version of a modern-day Christopher Columbus, but what he is discovering now was revealed a long time ago.

Out of one side of his mouth, he keeps talking about the effects of climate change on developing countries, but out of the other side of his mouth he as quickly would start talking about the monetary aspect of climate change promises by developed countries. It’s almost laughable to read the news reports in which everyone else is talking climate change and he is talking money, money, and more money.

Think of the import of this statement he reportedly made here and understand what I am saying: “…if these [developing] countries do not receive funding for adaptation then they run the risk of having to choose between dealing with the effects of climate change and providing welfare for their citizens.” He is linking the survival of economies in developing countries on monies towards averting the effects of climate change, as though Guyana fits into the same category as developing countries whose economies are directly impinged by the effects of climate change. Guyana has natural resources that many developing/poor countries can only dream of having, yet we suffer.

It ought to be clear to all by now that, outside LCDS, he does not have a Plan B for the economy, and so we will have to endure his political gamesmanships and overseas travels while relying on foreign loans and grants, foreign remittances and money laundering in a country where the informal economy is responsible for a relatively high percentage of the formal economy.

And the much vaunted Norway deal to bring in US$50M a year, starting this year and continuing over the next four years, seems to have taken on a disappearing act. Matter of fact, I did read somewhere that Norway is interested in having the World Bank (WB) disburse climate change dollars to developing countries.

This seems to be the pattern that all other developed countries will take, so that whatever final figure these developed countries agree on, all will be funnelled through the WB to developing countries.

Just last Monday, one Reuters report also said that now that developed countries are feeling the effects of the global economic pinch, and their contributions to the WB are dropping, the WB will be challenged to come up with “creative ways” to raise matching funds for the world’s poor nations. One suggestion, the report said, was to “stretch out donations over a longer period of time.”

Editor, President Jagdeo is an educated economist and he must come up with creative ways to jump start or accelerate the economy, but to spend enormous amounts of time on one game plan – LCDS – is foolhardy. Are we going to live or die by LCDS? Is there no one else out there with alternative plans for our economy that cries out for creative thinkers to constructively exploit its natural resources?

Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin