Guyana urges Commonwealth to influence UN climate summit

I can see why Jagdeo would want all nations to work together to combat climate change. With the most heavily populated parts of the country below sea level and with much of the rest of the country covered by rain forest, he can seek aid to fix the seawall and compensation to keep the forests uncut (which he has offered to do before).

Guyana urges Commonwealth to influence UN climate summit
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6 hours ago

GEORGETOWN (AFP) — Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo urged Commonwealth finance ministers late Monday to influence the upcoming UN conference on climate change by raising the economic reasons behind global deforestation.

According to Jagdeo, forests are cut down by people living in the area or engaged in agriculture and business to generate profit for national development.

"We must square up to this reality and recognize that the way to stop deforestation is to ensure that there is an economically viable alternative," Jagdeo told ministers of the 53-nation Commonwealth at the official opening of the three-day meeting.

The meeting is being held one week before board meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, and ahead of the December 3-14 UN conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia.

Jagdeo urged his audience to push for incentives at the Bali conference to reward not only re-planting of tropical forest trees but also preservation of pristine forests.

"This is not only morally right because countries like Guyana ... deserve to be rewarded," but also "because to not do so would result in economic leakages across national borders in the Amazon region and elsewhere," he said.

Jagdeo called on the Commonwealth to work with the United States and Australia, which have not ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on carbon emissions.

He also urged them to engage developing countries like China and India "in a way which recognizes that on a per-capita basis, they are far lower emitters of greenhouse gases than much of the world."

Also at the event was Finance Minister Niko Lee Hang of Samoa, who described how climate changed has resulted in what was the island's main export -- tuna -- migrating away from their region.

"We must recognize that there will be increasing cost implications on our annual budgets unless early action is taken now to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change," he said.

"The longer action is delayed, the more expensive it will become to implement appropriate solutions," he added.

The Commonwealth nations, sometimes known as the British Commonwealth, is a voluntary association of 53 former British colonies which now are sovereign states, plus the United Kingdom itself and Mozambique. Together they represent about 30 percent of the world's population.