Climate Action 2010-2011

Redd, Sustainable Forest Management and Agriculture
supply and more critically, the agricultural produce that
can be grown on the land after trees have been cleared.
This world economy does not value the vital climate and
biodiversity services that forests provide. Put simply,
forests are worth more dead than alive.
It is easy to caricature deforestation as capricious
governments colluding with corrupt logging companies,
and this is sometimes the reality. But most deforestation
is caused by individuals, companies and communities
pursuing legitimate social and economic goals. It is not
just illegal loggers; it is also the African mother who
needs charcoal to cook for her children, the Asian farmer
who produces palm oil to earn money and the South
American soya entrepreneur who provides employment
for thousands. These people cannot be expected to
voluntarily give up their livelihoods to help solve a
climate change problem they didn’t cause.
If forest peoples and countries
are treated as passive recipients
of aid, we will fail.
And this is the main reason that every day, at least
32,000 hectares of rainforest disappear in countries across
the world – despite decades of work to secure forestry
protection through philanthropy and well-meaning
conservation attempts.
So the only way we can halt deforestation in the long
term is by creating new economic incentives to value the
services that forests provide, and to enable new economic
and employment alternatives in forest countries to tip
the balance against the economic forces which drive
deforestation.
Redd+ can make forests worth more
alive than dead
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and REDD+ provide us with an historic
opportunity to save the world’s forests by putting a value
on the climate services they provide. However, while this
opportunity is welcome, it will only become a reality if
both forest countries and the rest of the international
community work together to make it one.
To do this successfully, we need to recognise that the
solutions for REDD+ must primarily come from within
forest communities and countries. If forest peoples and
countries are treated as passive recipients of aid, we will fail.
Most of the knowledge, intellectual energy and innovation
needed to identify and implement successful solutions can
only come from those people who understand the societies
and economies of forest countries best.
The good news is that forest communities and
countries across the world are willing to play their
part. What is missing is the change in global economic
incentives that make forests worth more alive than
dead. Guyana is of the view that these must be created
within a legally binding, international climate treaty as
soon as possible and we will continue to support specific
proposals that target global carbon neutrality in the
forestry sector by 2030.
But we can get started now, even in the absence
of a full global agreement. Guyana supports the
recommendations of the Informal Working Group
on Interim Financing for REDD+ (IWG-IFR),
which outline how action on deforestation and forest
degradation can start immediately. The IWG-IFR
report sets out ways to achieve a 25 per cent reduction
in global deforestation rates by 2015 for a cumulative
total of less than €25 billion. Not only is this one of the
cheapest abatement solutions available but, if successful,
it could deliver 7 gigatonnes (Gt) in cumulative emissions
abatement. This would be by far the biggest contribution
to the fight against climate change in that period.
Guyana: seeking a way forward on
Redd+
In Guyana, we have long recognised that we should seek
to help build the international partnerships we need,
and through our work with Norway, we have found an
international partner who shares our views on the need
for economic incentives to save the world’s forests.
Our partnership has its roots in October 2007, when I
expressed my long-held belief that the people of Guyana
did not just want to complain about climate change, even
though we are already suffering from its impacts. In 2005,
we experienced floods which caused damages equivalent
to 60 per cent of our GDP.
I said that we were ready to be solution-finders and
proposed two ideas. The first was that I believed that the
people of Guyana would be willing to help in the global
battle against climate change by putting the majority
of Guyana’s forest, which is the size of England, under
long-term protection provided the right economic
incentives were created and the people’s sovereignty
over the forest was not sacrificed. Secondly, I expressed
my belief that the people would be willing to invest the
income Guyana received from these incentives to forge
a new, low-carbon economy.
This led to our Low Carbon Development Strategy
(LCDS), which resulted from a comprehensive, national
consultation involving over 10 per cent of our population.
The LCDS sets out specific measures to ensure that
Guyana’s national development and the fight against
climate change are complementary, not competing,
objectives.
At its core is a forest payments incentive system,
which we hope provides a scalable, replicable model
for addressing deforestation and forest degradation.
The government of Norway has made voluntary
commitments to pay for up to US$250 million for forest
carbon abatement in Guyana at US$5 per tonne during
the period 2010-2015. Guyana invests this revenue in
the priorities identified in the LCDS. We have created
the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) as the
financing mechanism, and asked the World Bank to act
as trustee of the fund.
We estimate that a further US$100 million total for
the period 2011-2015 will supply sufficient revenue for
Guyana to create the world’s first national scale forest
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