Managing expectations: Guyana is not three years old

By Marlon Bristol
PEOPLE are arguing that the government has been in office for three ‘whole’ years and they are still ‘waiting’ on some solutions to their economic woes.

It made me think about Guyana and how the basic tenets of development work. My understanding is that Guyana, at least moved politically, from British Guiana to Guyana in 1966, after which we became a Cooperative Republic in 1970.

Marlon Bristol

From colonial capitalism, import substitution industrialisation, export orientation and forms of liberalisation to our continued and current pursuit to mature democratically. However, some existing views would make it seem as though Guyana is the newest country on the planet, starting in May 2015. To fix all the social and economic problems, not inherited, but extracted from the will of the people presumably starting then. We all know that is not the case, even though much time and energy are wasted debating this.

Managing to become wealthy is not mutually exclusive to poverty alleviation. These two ends of the development spectrum require a litany of policies, programmes, and institutional frameworks, all at once. This is not a quest of defence, but a reality check that is expected to imbue constructive criticisms and debate of what managing progress in Guyana has been, and currently is. It is an attempt to understand what type of results we are managing for – to be sustainable, wealthy, and the mitigation of poverty altogether.

During this process, there are many cultural and social norms and mores that have to be challenged for such comprehensive process. These often perpetuate the ignorance that continues to inhibit our maturity as a nation. Race is not the only socio-cultural issue that burdens us; in fact, this is a global challenge affecting even fairly homogeneous societies.

Always seemingly grappling from one critical situation to the next, there is still much we have not suffered, at least explicitly as a result of our pluralism. We still exist in a fairly harmonious context and we silently and sometimes respectfully agree to disagree.

It is now an imperative, as it has always been, for Guyanese to move what some see as this three-year-old country forward. Notwithstanding arcane laws and policies, some of which presents dim guidance that in modern times perpetuate various forms of perceived and real injustice, spanning economic and other arenas.

We have the opportunity to determine the type of society we want to live in, though entrenched with hoary practices, some not so good for our progress looking ahead. Already at the individual level we are aware of our natural inclination towards the preservation and conservation of the national patrimony.

Indeed, at the policy level, we have begun to harness this natural environment into development platforms – Low Emissions. From the establishment of Iwokrama more than three years ago in 1989, to that of low carbon development, all now embraced in the low emissions philosophy of Green State Development.

This is our best bet of the natural balance and our usual primary extractive economy now complemented similarly by the discovery of oil and gas. While these latter efforts might all be considered macro, it is pervasive to our micro upbringing and what we know Guyana as that give credence to these platforms.

The once rural life we know, absent of the usual amenities urban dwellers quibble about is becoming attractive, exactly because it does not possess many urban distractions. The urban dwelling, while attractive for its ease of access to most facilities, is not what it used to be, and especially for Guyanese, due to the unprecedented traffic.

The pressure on social and other services from increasing internal migration, the transient population in Georgetown etc. As a former student of economics, I learnt that rural areas normally have the highest concentration of poverty. This is true for Guyana as it is for most countries.

The last set of poverty indicators from the Poverty Reduction Strategy 2011-2015 indicated that the incidence of poverty (consumption or Income below the poverty line) was 36.1% for Guyanese living below the poverty line in 2006. Disaggregating this further shows that the urban poor constituted 18.7%, rural coastal populations experienced 37%, etc.

Despite this evidence, there is something about our rural landscape, our biodiversity outside of the coastline that takes us mentally beyond material wealth. A reminder that life is not merely about material well-being, but through nature-base Tourism empowering some of these places economically, examples are Rewa and Surama, even Pandama among others.

As life progresses and the pace quickens, urban presence is becoming increasingly untenable for our mental health, as we converge on the city for various reasons in the hustle and bustle. The challenges of sustainability in reducing loss from biodiversity makes it very difficult for the local authorities to regulate and bring some semblance of order in and out of Georgetown. In fact, some aspects of the population seem intransigent to any form of re-organisation or regulation. But these are all part of the development we seek and often enjoy when we visit other countries.

The realisation that life is not simply about material wealth, but includes the very natural capital we have forever been enjoying, the population is now thrust into the reality that what we have and experience is a gem today that one can identify as a needle in a haystack. Guyana boasts one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world, has among the highest forest cover and as part of the Guiana Shield is considered the ‘lungs or greenhouse of the earth’.

These are components that add to the excellent environmental services Guyana has to offer that will now be counted and measured as part of our Gross Domestic Product in the context of natural capital accounting. These assets that have us enjoy the fresh air we breathe, the peacefulness and tranquil rural aesthesis we have grown to endear.

In fact, despite the constant flooding of the coastland which is already 1.5 metres below sea-level at high tide, we have become somewhat tolerant. Clearly, rain does not need to fall for parts of the coast to flood. And, as nature would have it, small states such as Guyana are part of the fight to limit global warming below 1.5o pre-industrial level, well below the 2o which creates losses and damage beyond our current capacity to recover.

The famous target for temperature/warming of 1.5o to stay alive set by the Paris Agreement (2015) has been the mantra of 104 countries, including most small states whose survival depends on this. Anything above this warming level amplifies especially ocean vulnerabilities of the Caribbean, and particularly sea level rise.

The tolerance Guyanese have shown to the inundation of floods over the decades, and even some of our religious beliefs would not see us leave the coast readily. Some might argue that it may be a case of lack of viable options. Whatever it is, our love for water is much more than we simply accept it to be, notwithstanding that it creates much destruction, and migration away from the coastline must be a reality at some point.

At the other end, these are some of the reasons we should take climate issues more seriously, it is for our benefit. Our tradition of using mangroves, and new found behaviours of perceiving development as much of the imported food and unnecessary use of things like plastics are not complements, or should they be substitutes. In this regard, some of our old practices are the best option for sustainability and environmental consistency.

The requirements of behavioural changes that must become a compulsory part of our life is so necessary, that it must be engendered whether or not we have bread and butter issues. In particular, our attitudes, knowledge and understanding of what a good life is really about, is required to be above our previous notion of growth and now development as purely an issue of material wealth vested in how much more bread and butter we have access to.

Our dreams should really take us past this, and there is nothing wrong with thinking and dreaming big beyond bread and butter. With oil, this is incumbent upon us even though we do not immediately possess the financial resource. We currently have everything else, most of which has always been with us.

Rich biodiversity
Let’s start where it has some significance to us all. We cherish our rich biodiversity, yes, the bush as we often call it. Nature’s beauty as we escape to our rural tranquility. The peacefulness of sitting beneath a tree and having a ‘gaff’, something we have lost in urban life. The quandary we find ourselves in is the unmanaged and improperly regulated way of which rural areas are experiencing urban type development.

This hastens a need for decentralisation of community management and the requisite capacity to do so. My recent experience of driving along the Soesdyke-Linden highway is an appalling reality of this. For many years now the foundation of the road has shifted, and they are scenes of indiscriminate cutting of trees and clearing for bread and butter in aid of ‘development’.

Going off road I felt like encroachment on the natural environment due to ‘development’ was occurring without care for the environment. And, I literally felt like the place should be given a chance to remain in a natural state as much as possible, amidst further development. Of course, the regulators attempt now to bring about this is being met with amazing parochialism.

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