Climate Change in Central America

Author

Anne Hambleton is the Program Director for the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas. She reports on progress in combating the climate threat in the Central American region.

THE SEVEN COUNTRIES of Central America--Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Nicaragua--are moving forward dramatically on making and implementing national and regional climate change policies.

These countries, whose economies are largely dependent on agriculture, fisheries and tourism as sources of food supply, employment and foreign exchange, are beginning to recognize the potential economic threats posed by global temperature changes of even a small matter of degrees. The region's vulnerability is influenced by its geographic situation, a land mass bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the confluence of two major ecosystems with many micro-climates and delicate tropical ecosystems, and their dependence on hydrological resources for electricity generation.

In the past three years, these countries have ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), undertaken a regional study to assess vulnerability and adaptation options, formed a central body to address climate change issues on a regional basis, signed several international agreements to cooperate on climate change issues, created national joint implementation policies and programmes, and experimented with 'activities implemented jointly' pilot phase projects.

Guatemala's ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change on December 15th 1995, completed the regional commitment towards combating climate change. With the exception of Belize, which ratified the UNFCCC in October 1994, and Costa Rica which ratified it in August of the same year, the countries of Central America all ratified the treaty within a nine-month period between May 1995 (Panama), October 1995 (Honduras and Nicaragua) and December 1996 (El Salvador and Guatemala). As of March 1996, all of these countries' treaties have entered into force.

In support of these new commitments to fight the threats of climate change, the countries of the region created the Central American Council on Climate Change (CCCC) as the regional programme for the protection of the climate system. It is coordinated by the Regional Committee on Hydraulic Resources and the Central American Commission on Environment and Development.

The Central American Council on Climate Change has three main objectives:

to promote National Commissions on Climate Change in each country as the technical basis for the national communications required by the UNFCCC;
to develop a regional information base; and,
to promote regional and national projects which may contribute to the execution of the national plans.

Most of the climate change work in this region has focused on vulnerability and adaptation. A regional study addressing these issues was recently completed under the United States-sponsored Country Studies Program. Other than Costa Rica, no country has done an inventory of greenhouse gas emission sources and sinks. However, the Regional Committee on Hydraulic Resources has applied for funding to do inventories and national action plans in the rest of Central America.

Several agreements to cooperate on climate issues have been signed in the region. This cooperation is most commonly taking the form of joint implementation pilot projects. At the Central American level, joint implementation is first alluded to in the CONCAUSA agreement signed between the seven governments of Central America and the government of the United States on December 13th 1994 at the Miami Summit of the Americas.

The Action Plan of CONCAUSA calls for the United States to "facilitate the development of joint implementation projects which will... promote cooperation between the United States and Central American governments, the private sectors, non-governmental organizations and other entities."

In the same Action Plan, the Central American governments commit to identifying "as soon as possible, an official governmental contact for the development of joint implementation projects" and to participate in international negotiating meetings in support of the establishment of an international pilot initiative on joint implementation.

The collaboration on the development of joint implementation projects called for in the CONCAUSA agreement established the basis for a statement of intent regarding sustainable development cooperation and joint implementation between the United States and the governments of the region.

The Statement of Intent for Sustainable Development Cooperation and Joint Implementation Measures to Reduce Emissions of Greenhouse Gases by the Governments of the United States of America and Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama was signed in Costa Rica on June 9th 1995.

The agreement commits participants to mutual cooperation including:

the designation of a government office for each participant country, with the responsibility for project evaluation and issuance of official statements of project acceptance;
the identification and support of projects by the participants that are likely to meet the criteria of joint implementation pilot programs;
the design of methodologies and mechanisms to establish procedures for monitoring and verifying greenhouse gas emissions; and,
the outreach and promotion of joint implementation and other sustainable development activities among the private and public sectors and the non-governmental organizations.

On March 11th 1996, the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (Commission Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo--CCAD) formally requested its Executive Secretariat to advance the Central American strategic plan for sequestering and reducing carbon dioxide and for the creation of joint implementation offices in the region.

Three days later, the Central American Council for Forestry and Protected Areas (Consejo Centroamericano de Bosques y Areas Protegidas--CCAB-AP) agreed to focus on providing land-use carbon sequestration training for monitoring and verification, developing a regional position for the Second Conference of the Parties and creating national joint implementation programmes.

At present, only Costa Rica has an established national joint implementation programme. Other countries in the region are, however, interested in establishing similar programmes. Guatemala, Panama and El Salvador, in particular, are currently taking steps to establish national programmes.

Central America has been very supportive of experimenting with pilot joint implementation projects. Twelve projects in the region have been approved by the United States Initiative on Joint Implementation (USIJI). These twelve are out of fifteen USIJI-approved projects worldwide. Central American countries see joint implementation as one way to generate foreign capital and support for their sustainable development priorities including biodiversity conservation and clean energy production. Costa Rica is host to eight projects. Honduras has two renewable energy projects and Nicaragua has one. Belize is host to a land-use project.

Costa Rica has recently launched an initiative to develop two projects of a national scope through the generation of certifiable, tradable offsets (CTOs). In October 1995, President Jose Maria Figueres and United States Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary signed the Cooperative Assessment of Baselines and Certifiable and Transferable Greenhouse Gas Emissions Offsets, the first annex to the 1994 joint implementation bilateral statement of intent between the United States and Costa Rica.

A CTO is a specified number of units of emissions reduced or sequestered in which all phases of the joint implementation project in the host country have already been completed, and in which the 'without project' baseline has been certified by both the home and host country governments. The home-country verification would certify that the offsets are of a high enough quality to allow them to count against national and firm-level greenhouse gas reduction commitments, if and when such crediting is permitted under the UNFCCC.

While the CTOs and activities implemented jointly projects are in experimental stages, they are providing valuable experience to the countries of Central America, as well as opportunities to think creatively about how to most effectively combat the threat climate change poses for their economies and peoples.

Note

The Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas is a Washington DC-based non-profit organization whose mission is to promote sustainable development in Latin America by:

furthering innovative financing mechanisms which promote sustainable development;
establishing strategic connections, especially those which engage the private sector, and facilitate the transition toward regional sustainable development;
enriching the international environmental/ sustainable development policy dialogue; and,
informing the international community about Latin American efforts to move to a sustainable society.