Guyana’s REDD+ advocacy advances in Cancun

Guyana’s advocacy of the REDD+ strategy to help combat global climate change was significantly advanced at the United Nations negotiations which ended last Saturday in Cancun, Mexico. 

Close to 200 countries at the meeting reached agreement on several issues, among them REDD+ , which goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. 

This country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is based largely on REDD+, which President Bharrat Jagdeo continued to push in Cancun.

His unrelenting lobbying for building this country’s low carbon economic development thrust gained new ground at the latest round of UN climate change negotiations. 

The president’s stand in presenting Guyana’s case at the meeting was widely reported by mainstream international media, including Time magazine, The Economist, the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper of London. 

Apart from the progress on REDD+, the Cancun meeting also reached agreement on a new fund for climate financing, which will benefit from some of the US$100 billion in “long- term finance” that the agreements see flowing from north to south every year by 2020. 

This fund will not be directly under the control of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but will instead be run by an independent board. The World Bank will function as a trustee for the fund, but in a way which is yet to be fully defined. 

In Cancun, Jagdeo highlighted the need for international mechanisms to facilitate the flow of climate finance from the developed world to the developing world. 

He reiterated that having commitments of finance would be insufficient if these were not matched by the mechanisms to intermediate them. 

On a panel convened by the Avoided Deforestation Partners, a non-governmental organisation which included Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, international philanthropist George Soros, and President Barack Obama’s Advisor on Energy and Environment, Joe Aldy, President Jagdeo explained how Guyana and Norway’s experience could provide valuable lessons for how multilateral institutions like the World Bank could be modernised to provide the financial intermediary services required for climate financing. 

The president said, “Having a generous donor and a progressive forest country are not enough when payments are being made from the developed to the developing world. We need institutions that are able to move beyond the old-fashioned ODA (Official Development Assistance) thinking, which (thinking) does not have a good track record of delivering timely solutions”. He spoke of the difficulties experienced by Guyana and Norway to establish the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF), and said that if Guyana and Norway could not make it work, nobody could.

President Jagdeo said that global institutions need to evolve quickly if they are to play a critical role in helping countries to take action on climate change. He added that failure of these global institutions to act in a timely manner can undermine the political momentum and support for addressing climate change. 

In the world’s second largest Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) agreement, Norway has committed to paid US$30 million to Guyana for progress in protecting Guyana’s 16-million-hectare forest. Norway will pay Guyana up to US$250 million by 2015. 

Prime Minister Stoltenberg spoke of there being three leading examples of REDD+ in the world – Brazil, Indonesia and Guyana. Norway has bilateral agreements with all three.

Later in the day, President Jagdeo and Prime Minister Stoltenberg reviewed progress on the Guyana-Norway partnership. 

President Jagdeo said the meeting was “very focused, and we will both keep a very close eye on progress in the months ahead”. In the coming months, the first investments from the GRIF will begin to finance the priorities highlighted in the LCDS. The initial priorities are to progress Guyana’s low carbon energy transformation, starting with the distribution of solar panels to indigenous communities; the acceleration of the land titling process for indigenous lands, in accordance with the goal set out in the LCDS: to address all requests for titling by 2015; and support for vulnerable groups to participate in the new low carbon economy. 

President Jagdeo also held discussions with President Luis Alberto Moreno of the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB). 

After the meeting, President Jagdeo praised the IDB’s ability to “deal with challenges such as climate change in a way that is practical and implementable.” Jagdeo and Moreno discussed progress on preparations for the Amaila Falls hydro-electricity plant, which will catalyse in excess of US$400 million of private finance and provide affordable, reliable and clean energy.

The IDB is providing support to the government of Guyana to develop the project.