While some on the local scene are griping and attempting to throw a negative spin on Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), which is in consonance with the international agenda on Climate Change and Global Warming, increasingly leading statesmen, reputable international organisations, leading personalities in the entertainment world and both developing and developed countries are recognising and endorsing it as viable, feasible and very crucial in reversing the current patterns in the global environment.
Credit must be given to President Jagdeo for so ably articulating the strategy. both at the local and international arenas, and aggressively galvanizing support from major organisations and leading statesmen and countries across the globe.
And this again has been reinforced by a World Bank team that is on current visit here. World Bank Guyana Country Representative, Mr. Giorgio Valentini, said the bank wants to reinforce the message that it supports the Guyana Government on its climate change programme, including the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
“We think the government has done a very good job in the consultations on the strategy”, he told this newspaper. He said this view is also shared by the donors.
Valentini said the 20-member mission includes representatives from the United States and the United Kingdom, two of the FCPF donor countries, and it is the final assessment before anticipated approval of support for Guyana under the trust fund.
The visit, organised by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), is financed by the World Bank and the British Department For International Development (DFID) and the mission will undertake field trips, Valentini said.
It is therefore no surprise that Guyana is leading a group of 37 countries around the world that stands to benefit from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), a Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) administered by the World Bank.
Valentini earlier this year said, “I am a supporter of the climate change agenda of the country and the proposed LCDS provides a very good entry point into the preparation mechanism for the FCPF and the future carbon fund mechanism. The President has well illustrated the benefits of Guyana’s forest to the world and the potential for improving Guyana’s socio-economic development. On this, we are looking forward to supporting the government in implementing the LCDS and to make Guyana a best practice for the rest of the countries in the FCPF.”
“It’s a very unique opportunity if you think about Guyana being the first of 37 countries worldwide in this”, he said.
He explained that the preparation phase to be supported by the grant involves a baseline and historical assessment of the forest to understand the rate of deforestation, changes in the forest and the drivers of deforestation.
It is therefore evident that Guyana’s LCDS is on a solid foundation as the global momentum is building up globally in favour of such a strategy which is not just about the development of individual countries, but rather would be of benefit to the entire world which faces one of the most uphill tasks in the history of mankind and that is to reverse the frightening changes in global weather patterns
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) the Billion Tree Campaign has just passed the four billion mark, in a crucial step towards its target of seven billion trees planted by the end of 2009.
From the UNEP Twitter campaign to tree-plantings on every continent, thousands of people around the world mobilize to put more trees on the planet
UNEP further pointed out that the Billion Tree Campaign has passed the four billion mark, in a crucial step towards its target of seven billion trees planted by the end of 2009.
The milestone was reached following confirmation from the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture that an additional 687 million trees were planted in 2008 under the country’s nationwide tree planting campaign – part of the one billion trees that were planted over the last 52 days.
The total has also been boosted by individual tree planting efforts by people around the world taking part in a global tree planting drive for World Environment Day, a hands-on way for communities to urge world leaders to “seal the deal” at the crucial UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.