Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, long before the Copenhagen conference, actively lobbied to widen the concept from "REDD" to "REDD Plus" to add conservation of forestry to the overall concept of cutting deforestation rates -- a position that received much support from both developing and developed countries.
Under the original conception of REDD, countries like Guyana could not have received any money since previous international agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol which will end in 2012, did not reward countries that conserve their forests. Unfortunately, the new proposed mechanism was not formally codified in Copenhagen.
Clearly, the conference failed the expectations of a vast majority of countries that a treaty on climate change issues would have been finalized. Cuba's Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said his country as well as many other poor nations would not recognize the agreement because they were not permitted to participate in its development.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, on behalf of the ALBA group of countries, also vociferously opposed the "non-transparent" agreement reached at exclusion of the vast majority of developing countries, and he sharply blamed the capitalist system for the global climatic predicament. And in expressing his reservations, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sharply criticized the United States -- the world's biggest polluter -- for failing to commit itself to concrete carbon-emissions reductions.
In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the problems associated with climate change are regarded with great apprehension. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in a report released during the conference, warned that the region could bear one of the heaviest costs of climate change. The organization said that up to 40% of the biodiversity of some Latin American nations could be wiped out by 2100 if steps are not taken immediately to control carbon emissions.
"Although Latin America and the Caribbean is the second region in the world with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions after Africa, it is nevertheless suffering the effects of global warming more than any other," the report emphasized. At present, LAC's "carbon footprint" in the global context is quite modest -- about 6% of total emissions, according to World Bank estimates -- but indicators will change in the next 25 years, as transportation and industrial sectors expand.
The report explained that increases in temperature would lead to a sharp fall in rainfall in the Amazon "causing a substantial deterioration of jungles that are home to one of the world's largest concentrations of biodiversity."
It showed that rising sea levels would cause a huge movement of populations and the loss of land, while mangroves on the lower coasts of countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Guyana might be swamped forever and coastal areas of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina and Uruguay could also be seriously threatened.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
