Why the West should put money in the trees

Bharrat Jagdeo, BBC Green Room 8 Sep 08;

In 2006, Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo outlined an offer to place almost the entirety of Guyana's rainforest under international supervision as part of the world's battle against climate change. In the Green Room this week, President Jagdeo sets out his views on how to reduce the 18% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by tropical deforestation.

Imagine a business which invested 80% of its profits in products with the lowest rate of return.

Is this business destined to succeed? Unlikely.

Yet global efforts to combat climate change bear a worrying similarity.

The Kyoto Protocol has resulted in the emergence of a more than US$60bn (£34bn) carbon market as the world's main mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a welcome start. But about 80% of this money goes to countries which cause less than 20% of emissions.

We will fail future generations unless we address this lack of proportionality.

In early December, we will have a chance to do this when representatives of almost 200 countries gather in Poznan, Poland to continue forging an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

As a rainforest country, securing a proportionate response to tropical deforestation is of particular importance to Guyana.

Tropical deforestation contributes about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is about the same as the total emissions from the US, and more than the entire global transportation sector.

Yet under the Kyoto Protocol, it remains more valuable to cut forests down than to leave them standing.

Economic question

If we are to solve this problem, we need to first accept a fundamental point.

Legal deforestation takes place because forest communities and countries can earn money and create jobs by selling trees and clearing land for agriculture.

These are legitimate objectives for citizens and governments to pursue - particularly because most rainforest countries are among the poorest in the world.

By contrast, the global economy does not value the services that forests provide when trees are kept alive, including the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions.

Correcting this market failure will require recognising that protecting rainforests is not only an environmental concern but an economic issue that cuts to the core of a nation's development.

It therefore needs sustained attention from the highest levels of governments.

Partners in progress

I was my country's minister of finance when the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, and I paid very little attention to it.

This was a mistake; and I advise today's ministers of finance, prime ministers and presidents to ensure that they give climate change and deforestation a greater priority than I did.

As well as national leadership, we need international partnership. No country can go it alone.

We need the active involvement of governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and conscientious people everywhere, to advocate for action and to devise realistic solutions.

In Guyana, we are ready to play our part, and to provide a model for other rainforest countries to share.

Our deforestation rate is one of the lowest in the world and we want it to stay that way.

However, we also face considerable development challenges. We need better schools and hospitals, more jobs and economic opportunities, and to meet all the other economic and social demands of Guyana's people.

Poverty indicator

I frequently receive proposals from investors to convert our forest into land for agriculture or biofuels.

Agreeing to these would be a quick way to meet the development challenges we face.

But in Guyana, we are acutely conscious of climate change.

Most of our population and productive land are below sea level and suffering from changing weather patterns.

In 2005, floods caused economic damage equivalent to 60% of our GDP.

We recognise that as a nation where over 80% of our surface area is tropical rainforest, we have an obligation to our own people and the wider world to seek to preserve it.

This is why in 2006, I suggested that the UK and Guyana could work together to identify bold rainforest solutions that could be used as models for the world.

For our part, we are willing to place almost our entire rainforest - which is larger than England - under internationally verified supervision if the right economic incentives are created.

This does not mean sacrificing sovereignty over our forest or restricting the development aspirations of our people. It simply means allowing globally recognised supervision to verify that activities within the forest are sustainable.

At the UN climate meeting in Poznan, I will be outlining our vision in greater detail, and I hope that many British people will support our efforts.

This hope stems from my experience at the 1998 meeting of the G8 in Birmingham, when I joined British NGOs to lobby for debt relief.

Thanks to the efforts of these NGOs and thousands of individuals from across the UK, the British government took the global lead on securing debt relief for countries such as mine.

This has transformed the lives and livelihoods of millions.

With climate change and deforestation, the prize is greater still.

I hope that the months and years ahead will see us renew our partnership.

And I believe that this can be our contribution to winning the battle against our generation's defining challenge.

Bharrat Jagdeo is President of Guyana

UK readers can hear more about Mr Jagdeo's proposals on rainforest protection, and debate and discussion of the issues involved, in this week's edition of Panorama , broadcast on BBC One at 2030 BST

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental issues running weekly on the BBC News website