I am really proud of President Bharrat Jagdeo for taking a frontal approach to the world’s fight against climate change and by launching a new approach- one that seeks to harmonise development and the environment.

The launching of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, a paper that seeks to sell Guyana’s pristine forest to the rest of the world to help in the fight against climate change is a demonstration of Guyana’s willingness to create a greener world.

This is a most welcome initiative. It is my humble belief that we can make a difference. Our forest can become a carbon reservoir for the rest of the world and thus help in the reduction of the catastrophic effects of climate change.

This new strategy will not only help Guyana, but the rest of the world and it is in this regard that we should lobby for it, as world leaders meet in December at Copenhagen to find new ways of dealing with climate change. From all indications I think that the new initiative is one that is more economically rational than the Kyoto Protocol.

This strategy that President Jagdeo is pushing for to preserve the forest and still have development is the most ideal school of thought, given the new challenges that the world faces today. Scientists have said that the time has come for countries to act against climate change and to create greener economies to save planet earth which is slowly depleting because of hazardous gas emissions.

This is a system that is needed more than ever now and one which has been lacking over the decades, because a market never existed. Once the market is created, it can be used to our advantage to reduce the negative externalities.

Today, if that process is not halted, then wealth that was created will mean nothing, as it will all be lost because of climate change. We have seen the damages it has caused, lives lost, and economies destroyed, simply because the world failed to harmonize development and the environment.

This new strategy is pointing us in that direction, that is saying that we can still generate wealth and still have our most prestigious resources intact.

What does this mean for Guyana, it means that once successful, the idea can generate over US$500 million annually and can contribute some $US40 million to the global economy. Guyana’s people and productive levels can be protected from changing weather patterns and world wide investment in climate changed adaptation infrastructure can see a reduction of 10 percent of current gross domestic product which is estimated to be lost each year as a result of flooding.

Let us all support this new document and be the icons of change in the fight against climate change.
EMILY GRANT