Guyana: the inside story of a REDD deal

By Daniel Nelson | OneWorld UK | 20 November 2009

REDD – the forest component of the international negotiations to curb carbon emissions and climate change – has taken a stride forward with a deal between Guyana and Norway.

And Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo also took a personal stride forward in terms of PR in Britain this week when he made himself available in London to discuss the deal with forest activists and journalists.

The event was filmed and can be viewed on the Global Witness website. The presentations and the Q&A session contained much useful information about the details and gaps of the deal, the strengths and the weaknesses. Since the project is bound to be studied as a significant prototype, many people will want to watch the entire recording. But here are some interesting titbits:

* Why the groundbreaking deal is with Norway and not Britain: Jagdeo said that he made the offer to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to deploy all his country’s rainforests in the cause of climate change – “but we got little response from this government”. Subsequently, Guyana had received a good response from Norway.

* How Jagdeo became converted to the importance of climate change: he said that as Finance Minister he paid no attention to the issue and did not see its relevance to development. His views began to change when he became President and the country was hit by serious flooding, sending GNP crashing and damaging productive land. (There’s a lesson here for activists, because in many countries – probably a majority – environment ministers tend to lack clout and finance ministers rule the roost.)

* NGOs should scrutinise the agencies that rate countries’ performance, because, said Jagdeo, the ratings depend on who compiles them and who pays for them. He cited the example of an international environmental performance rating in which the US came top (despite its huge per capita carbon emissions, and Guyana was near the bottom, despite tiny emissions per head and little deforestation)

* Large-scale logging operations will not get any of the money made available to Guyana under the project, the President promised, but not all mining and forest operations would stop

* No country in the world will stop extracting logs in a sustainable fashion, said Jagdeo: levels of logging could be reduced significantly, but it would take time (moral: the wording of any REDD agreement – for example, what exactly constitutes ‘sustainable logging’ will be crucial)

* Is shifting cultivation good or bad?. A questioner pointed out that although the Guyana-Norway memorandum of agreement (MoU) treated it as a cause of forest degradation, many people considered it an acceptable practice. Jagdeo pointed out that the UN climate negotiating process defined it as forest degradation – “maybe we can get it changed”, but he did not seem particularly interested in trying to do so

* Good guys, bad guys: if negotiators are not careful, countries with an appalling record of deforestation, such as Papua New Guinea, would be rewarded with millions of dollars worth of funds in an effort to slow the cutting down of trees while countries that had preserved their forests would be penalised. It was vital that the good guys also received funds, so that the loggers did not simply move from the bad countries to the bad. On the other hand, if countries with a low rate of deforestation, such as Guyana, received money and were allowed to continue logging, “Norwegian taxpayers could end up compensating Guyana for increasing deforestation”. In response, a Norwegian representative at the London meeting stated categorically that “The MoU says Norway will not compensate Guyana for increasing deforestation.” (This is a tricky area for REDD, because some deforestation will continue: since REDD payment is for “avoided deforestation” (tree-cutting that would have occurred but for REDD), how will compensation be worked out?)

* There are two groups of NGOs, according to the President – those recognising the importance of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and those that dismissed it as totally wrong

* Many points in the Norway-Guyana deal would change as policy evolved and facts became clear - for example, Guyana’s current rate of deforestation was not known, yet this was a crucial baseline reference point for the project

* The risk to developing country governments: “People from the developed world often talk about the money they are giving,” said Jagdeo. But he would have to tell Guyanans that he was “locking away a huge asset” from which they would otherwise benefit, “on the promise that the international community will compensate you.” If not enough money was forthcoming “many people will get poorer and people will judge me harshly.”

* The dangers of a “REDD rush” as interested parties tried to secure a forest deal: Dr. Rosalind Reeve, forest campaign manager at Global Witness, stressed the importance of giving careful consideration to issues “beyond carbon”, such as governance and the factors driving deforestation. He was taking a “huge risk”.

* The potential benefit: “If we stick with it,” said the President, “saving forests could be the biggest climate change action that is taken anywhere in the world for the next five years.”

And finally,

* “Guyana suffers from a major problem - people think we are in Africa,” said Jagdeo in an aside: he and the Ghanaian head of state sometimes received each other’s mail!

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