– Finance Minister at opening of Vybzing Guyana 2014

THE greatest consequences of climate change reside in the long-term survival and survivability of the planet, and of individual communities, and because youth are the future, they more than any generation have a vested interest to protect the planet for tomorrow.This was the view of Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, during his address at the opening of the Vybzing Guyana Workshop at the Grand Coastal Inn on Wednesday. The three-day forum which ends today is the first event, connected to almost two weeks of activities in Guyana as the country hosts the 44th Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Board of Governors in Guyana.

Youths from across the country, between the ages of 16 and 29, will hear presentations on the threats posed by climate change and climate variability, and Guyana’s, the Region’s and CDB’s responses.
The workshop is being facilitated by a team from the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) and is seeing participation from students from the Hinterland, the University of Guyana and Youth Challenge

Guyana among others.
Minister Singh, in his address at the opening, sought to emphasise the role of the youths in addressing the issue even as he noted that his generation is doing its part in the fight. “Our generation will do and are doing all that we can in this fight,” alluding to the pre-eminent Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) initiated by the Government of Guyana to address the issue.
“More than three-quarters of our country is still pristine rainforest, kept intact because successive generations have recognised the need to protect the forest,” Minister Singh said.
“For generations, the custodians of our forest, the leaders and residents of our Amerindian communities have recognised that if they cut down the forest their communities will be wiped out and decimated…and so, for generations, Guyanese have exercised responsible policy choices to keep our forest standing so that today we can proudly say that we serve as an important part of the lungs of the world,” he said.
The Finance Minister pointed out that, “whilst the rest of the world has rushed ahead and cut down their trees in the name of economic development, we have acted responsibly and kept our trees standing.”
“For that reason I am pleased that climate change was chosen as the theme for this forum because we pride ourselves in Guyana to the contribution that we make to the global effort, to fight climate change, and we want to imbue in our young people a sense of responsibility that for generations to come, just as generations before us have done, we in Guyana must always continue to be responsible custodians of our natural environment,” Dr. Singh said.
Over the past few years CDB introduced the Vybzing programme as a component of its annual meeting of Board of Governors, as part of a goal of creating a platform that allows regional youths to be seen as active players in the Region’s development, and in shaping their own future.
The engagement is important in the bank’s structuring of responses to priority actions in the region. In this regard, Minister Singh, in his address also praised the Region’s finest institution for its developmental role.

The Finance Minister, in addition to stating that the CDB is an extremely important regional institution, noted that the institution was founded almost at the same time that the young nations of the Caribbean were being born, and that its founding was very much the Region’s collective aspiration for growth, wellbeing and prosperity for the Caribbean people; an aspiration that the bank has been fittingly fulfilling, he said.

Guyana’s proactive stand on the issue of climate change was also noted during Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony’s address. He spoke at length on use of the LCDS to build Guyana’s economy and at the same time to combat climate change.
Minister Anthony also highlighted the other areas in which Guyana is seeking to move to the use of alternative energy and in so doing reducing its cost of carbon dioxide emission into the environment. “In Guyana we have been pressing for the development of our hydro-project, again it is in keeping with this new source, because if you get your energy from a renewable source you will be contributing less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,” he said.
Guyana has also been working in the hinterland to provide solar panels and to use solar energy to provide electrification, even as it explores the use of wind, Dr. Anthony noted.
“…we hope that each one of you will understand the dangers that we face, not only in Guyana, but around the world and that we will all become not just advocates, but become very active in doing our part and getting our organisations and region to do their part in mitigating some of the changes that are happening in our climate,” Minister Anthony told the participants.
In addition to providing a background on the bank and Vybzing, Vice President (Corporate Services) and Bank Secretary, CDB, Yvette Lemonias-Seale also advised that the selection of this year’s theme for the youth forum was deliberate. “The fact is that we need you the youths, our countries need you, our Region needs you, to be part of the solution, part of the fix and not just because you and your children and their children would be impacted, but because you are who you are; you are innovators, you are fearless, you have an unparallel appreciation and mastery of the technology, which we do not,” she posited.
“You have an opportunity to think locally, to step back and think how in your own communities you can make a difference to how climate change impacts our lives and our future,” she pointed out.
As part of the Vybzing forum, (in addition to creating in the youths a better understanding of the issue and to communicate this understanding to communities throughout Guyana), the youths are encouraged to develop and submit to CDB a proposal on how to solve the issue of climate change in their community.
The bank will provide a grant for the design and implementation of a community-based climate change project, that is youth led and youth-development. The bank will also provide a team to work with the youths on the development of the project.