PARAMARIBO—Suriname, the most forested country in the world, hosted a major international conference on climate financing for High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries.
Among other things, the February 12 to 14 conference aimed to make the international community more aware of the significant global importance of HFLD countries and the role their productive landscapes play in combatting climate change.
HFLD countries also include Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Bhutan, Zambia and French Guiana. The conference also aimed to strengthen the payment structure for ecosystem services that will be used to advance sustainable development, while mitigating the risk of forest destruction and biodiversity loss.
“Forests bring pleasure to our lives. Next to culture and leisure, it provides us with, among other things, food, timber, clean air and oxygen. But [it] also has important benefits, such as mitigation and the adaptation to climate change,” Suriname Vice President Michael Ashwin Adhin said at the opening of the conference.
“I would like to stress the fact that Suriname has long maintained 93-percent forest cover of its total land area, which has been providing multiple benefits to the global community, in particular, combatting climate change for current and future generations.”
Adhin said climate change and sea-level rise present huge threats to the Caribbean nation—a low-lying coastal state where more than 75 percent of the population and the majority of its economic and social infrastructure is located along the coast.
“We are faced with finding remedies to these problems which we did not cause. We are aware of the similarity of the situation for many other countries,” he said.
Adhin reiterated Suriname’s aspirations to maintain an HFLD rate. He noted that based on the country’s record, they feel obliged to champion this cause on international and multilevel agendas.
“We have taken the initiative for this conference as we recognize that, together as HFLD countries, we can stand stronger and create a critical mass, leading a movement for recognition of our contribution to the global community and cooperate to increase the debt contribution while we enjoy equitable and sustainable economic growth,” he said.
But he admitted that “the challenges are huge,” especially with regards to the mobilization of financial and other resources.
Winston Lackin, Suriname’s ambassador for the Environment, said the government took the decision two years ago to commit to maintaining its position of being the most forested country in the world, and to continue being one of the few carbon-negative countries in the world.
“When we committed ourselves in November 2017 at the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] meeting in Bonn, we also said that we will not be in a position to do this alone, we would need technical cooperation, expertise, financial support, durable partnership, and political will at the national level but also at the international level,” Lackin told Inter Press Service (IPS).
“We know that 30 percent of the land area of the world is covered by forests. From this 30 percent, nearly a quarter is in the HFLD developing countries. And when we know the value and role of forests when it comes to mitigation and adaptation and the added effects of climate change, then we feel that it is time for a different kind of discussion when it comes to accessing finance.”
Pointing out that only 8 percent of international financial resources has been directed to HFLD developing countries in the last decade, Lackin said one cannot expect these developing countries to meet their commitments when it comes to the Paris Agreement. The goals of the Paris Agreement include boosting adaptation and limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C.
He said a very important fact is that the HFLD countries have been contributing to the mitigation of the negative effects of climate change even before the existence of the climate-change conferences.
He said these countries were facing serious problems to meet their daily economic and social development challenges, while at the same time being the victims of the negative effects, which were not of their making.
Lackin said the expectation is that the conference will help Suriname and other HFLD countries meet the challenges, facilitate access to financial resources, meet their commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in 2020, when the Paris Agreement is enforced, countries should be able to meet their ambitions.
“I’m convinced that this conference will help us, will guide us to the next step. The environment is not only our life, it is our survival,” he told IPS.
“We have an obligation to leave a world behind for the youth, for the next generation. So, it is our common responsibility, the joint responsibility of us all.”