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Since the Rio Summit in 1992, there has been a growing body of evidence that the earth is experiencing a rapid rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, resulting in unprecedented changes to the earth’s climate. For the most part interest has been focused on controlling greenhouse gas emissions and has failed to recognise that our climate is changing and that we are already faced with many years of continuing unavoidable change. Even if we make a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (and we must), we will need to cope with a changing climate for the next 40 plus years, due to emissions we have already put into the atmosphere. The future climate is already set over this time period and the consequences can not be ignored. Businesses and the financial markets need to grasp the reality we face – that we have to both reduce our emissions and acclimatise to inevitable climate change. There is no choice between mitigation and acclimatisation – we have to pursue complementary actions on both – now. Whilst the Kyoto Protocol has created a carbon trading market, sustainable forest management and conservation of standing forests remain excluded from carbon trading under this Protocol. Despite having a large amount of carbon stock, the argument used is that intact forests have low rates of absorption of carbon. There is therefore little economic incentive under the climate change framework that promotes better land use and land use change initiatives of intact tropical rain forests. This is in direct contradiction of Article 6 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Iwokrama as a flagship programme of the Government of Guyana and the Commonwealth will play a crucial role in the re-valuing of standing forests and sustainable forest management as effective climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. What are the expected changes? Climate change is already underway. We will see different effects across the world. ● Average temperatures are rising with increases in extreme events such as |
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