Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud yesterday met with a high-level delegation team from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Kingdom National Committee (UK Natcom), to discuss Guyana’s involvement in its climate change and children’s campaign.

Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud meets with the high-level delegation from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Kingdom National Committee.

He said that the country requires a lot of resources to protect it from the effects of these changes and therefore should be compensated for preservation of its standing forest, and reiterated the reason for Guyana developing the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

Acting UNICEF Representative Geoffrey Ijumba said that research was done on the effects of climate change on children at the United Nations Research Institute, Italy, hence the development of its global campaign.

Ijumba said that Natcom was delighted that Guyana is a leader in the global debate on climate change and as a result Natcom intends to make Guyana the center piece of its fund raising campaign in 2010.

Andrew Radford, Deputy Executive Director, UK Natcom, said that the purpose of their visit was to overlook the works of UNICEF’s involvement in climate change and to forecast the effects of climate change that further impact on Guyana and its response to these effects which will be used to reinforce their work.

Radford highlighted that the agency is looking forward to receiving positive messages from UNICEF and the Government of Guyana working together to deal with climate change.

Funds received will be available in 2011 to develop programmes that will help raise awareness on the effects of climate change on children, and most importantly, children being an active part in adapting to and mitigating climate change.

On December 12, 2007, UNICEF announced that children were among those who would be most devastated by climate change.

Every year, three million children under the age of five die from environment-linked diseases such as diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria, and the agency predicts that these numbers will rise with climate change.

Hilde Johnson, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, said that curbing climate change and UNICEF’s top priority, to protect and support the health, development and education of children, are closely interlinked, noting that, “Action to protect the environment will protect the basic rights of children.”

Acknowledging that UNICEF does not have an environmental mandate, the agency nevertheless hopes that emissions reductions become a reality due to the detrimental impact of global warming on children.

The agency has launched a new publication spotlighting the concerns of children and youth about climate change.

Entitled “Climate Change and Children”, the booklet outlines the dangers global warming poses to children in the form of food insecurity, deforestation, lack of energy infrastructure, increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, disease and water scarcity. (GINA)