GUYANA is looking to Britain’s Prince Charles to further help the lobby for including forests in a new global climate change agreement, President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday.

He is due to leave today for the world food summit in Rome next week and said he is scheduled to fly to London after for the Prince Charles meeting.

Buoyed by the landmark memorandum of understanding signed Monday with Norway for US$250M in support over the next five years for Guyana’s climate change model, Mr. Jagdeo is looking to bolster this with further support at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark next month.

Prince Charles, through his Rainforests Project, has backed Guyana’s climate change thrust and has praised President Jagdeo’s initiatives, saying his leadership on this issue is perhaps “one of the most optimistic developments”.

“There is no doubt that Guyana represents a unique opportunity to develop a model which could be rolled out across the rainforest nations”, Prince Charles said last year.

“Clearly, if we want to continue to benefit from the services provided by the rainforests we will have to start paying for them. But we cannot afford to lose this opportunity to demonstrate what can be done and to respond to the President’s remarkable offer”, he said.

At a press conference yesterday in the Office of the President complex in Georgetown, Mr. Jagdeo said he will be in London to participate in a meeting with Prince Charles “to focus attention again on the need for the developed world to support the inclusion of forests in the Copenhagen agreement”.

He said the meeting will also be looking at providing adequate resources, even if on an interim basis, particularly based on the work of the informal working group set up after the April G-20 meeting in London to address this issue.

During the April G20 summit in London, President Jagdeo was at an event the Prince of Wales hosted on forestry with Presidents, Foreign Ministers, including United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others.

“I hope that the attention that Prince Charles brings to many global issues could help us with the lobby to have a good agreement for forests in Copenhagen”, he said.

Noting the US$250M pledged by Norway for Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), Mr. Jagdeo said, “Although we have secured a really good agreement for Guyana, it could get maybe 10 times better in financial terms if the right framework is established in Copenhagen.”

“We’ll continue the lobby to get that – not just to get an agreement on forests but to get an overall good agreement”, he said.

The focus of his press conference yesterday was more on agriculture because, he explained, “I don’t want people to think that because of our strong focus on climate change and our international presence in this matter, and our significant lobby in this area, that we have forgotten the whole issue of the importance of agriculture to our region”.

But he noted the continued lacklustre approach of the main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and other critics to the LCDS who felt it was fanciful thinking by the government and pointed to the MOU reached with Norway.

“I don’t want to seem like we are gloating but…some people said no one will pay you for forest carbon”, he recalled.

Some felt it was a waste of time and a daft idea, and some were outright negative, Mr. Jagdeo said.

“Some people said no money will flow because nobody trusts Guyana to give it any money. They have all been proven wrong. And rather than admit that they have erred, they continue with this pseudo-intellectual farce that you see in the papers every day”, he stated.

He said the government remains open to debating the LCDS with the PNCR “before Copenhagen, after Copenhagen, five years from now if they want to, that’s fine with us – whenever they decide to get serious.”

He welcomed the changed position by the Alliance For Change (AFC) party on the LCDS, saying at least some people can recognise the error of their ways.

The agreement between Guyana and Norway provides Guyana with an initial payment of US$30M into Guyana’s REDD+ (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) development fund and Norway will offer further investment in the country of up to US$250M if this initial investment succeeds in reducing emissions and tackling poverty as expected.

The MOU was signed at Fairview Village in the Rupununi Monday by President Jagdeo and Norway’s Minister of Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim.