… adaptation to climate change cited
The Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, yesterday handed over close to 160 leases for farmlands in the Pomeroon and along the Essequibo Coast, as government continues apace with initiatives that would see the agriculture sector adapt to climate change. The lands distributed by way of leaser as part of the Essequibo Land Development Project, are located in the high elevations, making them less susceptible to flooding.
The communities in which the land was distributed were Siriki and Warapana in the Pomeroon, and at Paradise on the Essequibo Coast. The ministry worked with farmers’ groups in the area who produced a list of persons interested in being a part of the project. According to the ministry, the names were then signed off by the relevant NDCs and also signed off by the Regional Democratic Council of Region 2. After this, each name was placed in an advertisement in the newspapers for a one-month period, and persons had the opportunity to call in if they had issues to raise regarding any of the names on the list. The ministry then had a lottery to determine the allocation of land.
Speaking to the farmers and residents at a handing over ceremony held outside the Charity Magistrate’s Court, Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud said that the programme was developed to deal with a problem that farmers in the Pomeroon faced for a long time – climate change.
“Those of you who live in the Pomeroon would know what the high tides do. You know what happens when there is a lot of rainfall,” he said. He said that they would know of the experience of the effects of climate change despite the works they might do to empolder their land.
“We cannot give up. In Guyana’s situation, we are blessed with abundant land and we have much more abundant fertile land on the coast. That is why our government, in a very strategic way, have been looking at how it is we can help communities to adapt and adjust to the effects of climate change, and your community in the Pomeroon River is the first community in which we have deliberately put aside resources so that we can develop land in the high reaches and make you less vulnerable. This is not forced relocation. We don’t believe in doing so. But we want you to have the option of moving to higher lands,” he said.
“For us, this is a good model, one that is successful, that we could look at taking to other parts of the country, particularly along the coast,” he said. He said that regardless of the amount of money spent, climate change cannot be defeated, and therefore the only decision to be made is one to adapt to climate change.
“That is why we have looked at your communities here. We have identified three such communities: two in the Pomeroon River, and one along the Coast, whereby we can open up new lands and provide those lands to the vulnerable communities, and doing that in a very open and democratic way,” he said.
“We allocated $40M and started this project in May of this year, and it is for the first time that we have been able, within such a short time, to move from identifying what we will survey to the point when we are telling you that you have your leases,” he said.
The minister said that another project will see the opening up of another 5,200 acres of land.
“Many of you would have heard that we have nearly exhausted the available land on the Essequibo Coast. We have moved from a position where farmers were throwing up their hands and giving up their land to a position in which the government and its agencies cannot provide enough land,” he said.
The minister said that once the Aurora project is completed, over the next three years, government will be opening up another 10,000 acres of land to be made available for different types of agriculture.
He said that because there is such a hunger for land, persons pay as much as $28,000 per acre in rental. “That to me is very, very hurtful, because these same lands are what people pay less than $2,500 per acre when they lease it from the government,” he said.
During the event, the lessees received the leases to their land and were encouraged not to become landlords over the land, but to use it for farming activities, with the aim of developing themselves, families, communities and the country at large.