Georgetown: Former President Bharrat Jagdeo said the Caribbean has to be more aggressive in the fight against climate change if it was going to help minimise the impacts of the global scourge on the region.
Jagdeo was at the time addressing the business community as the keynote speaker at a business dinner hosted by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) on Friday at the Princess Hotel, Providence, East Bank Demerara. He said that the Caribbean has made “feeble and visionless attempts” to address one of the most dangerous threats particularly as small countries in the region.
Jagdeo noted that his consistent criticism of the region is in hope of a rude awakening of the Heads of Governments so that they can start paying attention to climate change and its impacts on the region rather than focusing on the traditional sectors that are increasing being phased out.“The region has now run out of steam, it has continued to cling hopelessly to sectors that have plateaued and are sunset industries with the hope that somehow there will be some divine movement and the new wealth created for the new generation of people in this region will come from those sectors and it’s not going to happen,” he stated.
Jagdeo, who received the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Champion of the Earth Prize a few years ago, pointed out that because the region has not fully explored new sources of wealth, it continues to diminish any possibility of having a viable medium-term strategy.
He stated that the frequency of weather-related events (disasters) would increase and the region was doing nothing to avoid them. He further highlighted how a single natural disaster can literally “wipe out” more than half of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which took more than a decade to accumulate. Jagdeo explained that countries cannot have a feasible economic strategy when the external debt service, which is approximately 50 per cent of GDP, sucks the life out of their economies. He referred to the time when Guyana’s debt service about 94 per cent of the country’s revenue, which is seven and a half times the size of the economy.
“Today because we have addressed that variable, the size of the debt is about 40 per cent of the GDP, one of the lowest in this region and we use four per cent of revenue to service that debt… This variable (in the region) is getting worst every single day and so even without addressing climate-related challenges, those countries have seen a significant loss in welfare and future prospects,” the former President highlighted.
He told the business forum that unless action was taken now to align climate change as a key variable in the development equations, the region will suffer the loss of welfare and economic wellbeing. Additionally, he cautioned that if there can be a prediction of what changes will take place globally, then the region will lose with regard to those countries that have the foresight not only to adapt to climate change, but to use it as an opportunity to implement new technologies and innovations.
The former President went on to say that with the exception of Guyana, who has had increased awareness of climate change, most of the policymakers in the region do not fully comprehend the threats that climate change brings. He disclosed that the world currently produces approximately 34 billion tonnes of carbon annually; however ,this amount needs to be reduced to 15 billion tonnes by the year 2050 in order to have a 50 per cent chance of maintaining a two-degree Celsius temperature rise.
He continued that to increase the chances to two thirds, the amount of carbon released needs to be cut to at least 11 billion tonnes. “On a per capita basis today, everyone of us is about five tonnes we emit. We have to get down to 1.6 tonnes per capita by 2050 so that is the task before the world,” he suggested. Jagdeo opined that the globe is not on track to achieving this. He noted that at the recent forum held in Copenhagen, it was expected that measures would have been undertaken, particularly by the developed countries, since the bulk of the carbon is emitted from them, to set the world on a path towards achieving the two degrees Celsius temperature rise or at least to maintain it below that level.
The Champion of the Earth revealed that China has committed to cut its carbon intensity by 30 to 40 per cent. However, Jagdeo noted that in spite of promises made, a recent study by the World Bank puts the globe as faced for a four-degree rise in temperature which will result in parts of the world being inundated as the threats of climate change occur. This, he pointed out, will severely affect Guyana as the country will experience a high rise in sea levels, the destruction of large swathes of forests and adverse changes in the weather patterns. “So in spite of all the wonderful talk you hear and the great speeches that are made, when it comes to making the pledges that will put us onto a sustainable pathway towards achieving two degrees rise, those pledges are yet to be made,” he stated.
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