JAMAICA IS grasping an opportunity to benefit from the United Nations Protocol on Climate Change which was formulated by 180 countries at Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, seeking to limit the further build-up of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The protocol called for 38 industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to levels at least 5.2 per cent lower than 1990 levels. The agreement came into effect on February 16 this year.
One of the innovative spin-offs of the Kyoto Protocol is the
emergence of a carbon trade. The carbon trade is not without controversy over its real benefits to the environment. But Jamaica, never far behind in adopting new developments, has just earned US$3.1 million from the trade. Earlier this month, the Government signed an agreement with The Netherlands to sell credits from the Wigton Wind Farm in Manchester which generates electricity without adding carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse pollutant to the atmosphere.
Carbon trading is similar to the trading of any other commodity. Countries which are unable to meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions of carbon-based greenhouse gases can buy credits from countries which produce greenhouse gases below their quota. The win-win system works because it is the total global emission of greenhouse gases which matters for global warming and climate change and not the specific output of any particular country.
Countries like Jamaica which are not heavily industrialised, and therefore, not major polluters on a per capita basis are therefore in a position to sell carbon credits to heavier polluters. When clean
energy sources and industries are developed, like the Wigton Wind Farm, further carbon credits can be earned and traded.
The recently concluded WTO negotiations in Hong Kong served to underscore again inequities in the world trading system, inequities mostly to the detriment of developing states and small states like Jamaica. Capitalising on our advantages in the international marketplace can go a long way to help, even without a level playing field. Our tourism product and some of our natural products are already demonstrating how we can profit from special advantages which cannot be easily replicated elsewhere.
Starting from a less industrialised base, the more clean energy and production systems we can develop and the more carbon dioxide absorbing forests we can plant, the more carbon credits we will have to sell in what is shaping up to be a lucrative market very much in favour of developing countries. At the same time our contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emission, to global warming and to climate change is to our benefit since we face the risks of rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes, among other effects of climate change.
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