MS. JANETTE Bulkan is continuing the masquerade of a defender of the rights of the indigenous people to try to cut down the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) which stands to benefit all the people of this country. She surfaces every now and then to snipe at the LCDS, ignoring the disdain she recently earned for her appalling stand on the issue of Suriname putting up a map of that country that annexed Guyana’s New River Triangle as part of its territory.
I notice her latest excursion in defence of the Amerindian People’s Association (APA) which is also against the LCDS. I am not surprised since she and the few persons running the APA are comrades-in-arms who are not endeared to the LCDS.
They have in the past succeeded in stifling environmental projects designed to help mainly Amerindian communities and seem bent on derailing the LCDS which continues to earn Guyana international recognition.
As Ms. Jocelyn Dow, one of two independent monitors for the London-based International Institute for Environmental Development (IIED) has pointed out in a response to the ridiculous stand by the APA, the LCDS “is not a harbour; it is a voyage as are all current initiatives at national scale to maintain low carbon emissions and to be compensated for same at national and or global levels.”
I notice too that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Guianas and Conservation International (CI) Guyana have pointed to the “substantial and unprecedented effort put in to garner support and input into the LCDS from hinterland communities in particular”.
They added, “we have been encouraged by the depth and range of responses received to date. We share the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) in decision-making that has been stated in the LCDS.”
Bulkan raises questions about FPIC and lands which Ms. Dow, in a letter to the Stabroek News, noted were brought up during the three-month nationwide consultations on the first draft of the LCDS.
Chairperson of the National Toshaos Council (NTC), Ms. Yvonne Pearson, has pointed out that the APA is not willing to work along with the government and the NTC to settle the issues that they are highlighting.
She said the APA was invited to be on the Multi Stakeholder Steering Committee where the lands rights issues could have been addressed but it refused.
Pearson also pointed out that Amerindian lands are not part of the LCDS “and it will not be so until we decide to opt in to the strategy; the criteria for which are still being finalized.”
Are Bulkan, the APA and their cronies really interested in national development, or are they so wrapped up in their own bitterness that they cannot be objective and constructive about the LCDS?