THE months of May and June are usually considered to be the wettest months of the year in Guyana. These months up until late July to early August are usually predicted to be one of Guyana’s wet seasons (where rain is expected to fall more than usual). Despite being in a tropical climate zone, Guyana has two wet seasons per year. We can thank our greenery and rainforest for that.

These wet seasons can be both a blessing and a curse for Guyana. It’s a blessing for our rainforest and biodiversity as it helps to upkeep the abundance of it but it can also be a curse to our low coastlines and outdated drainage systems. Recently, there has been a heavy pour of constant rainfall and this has resulted in several communities on the coast being affected by floods.

This is not the first time this is happening, it’s been an ongoing problem ever since we decided to populate the coast. However, the questions remain; why is this still happening? Aren’t we learning from our previous mistakes? Should we be worried about developing further on a coastline that is below sea level? I wonder. While doing some personal research, I’ve found that in June alone, Georgetown receives an average precipitation of 13.5 inches.

Annually, Georgetown receives 94.5 inches of precipitation. Our coastline is also six feet below the sea’s level. Hence, why there is a need for the sea defence systems we have in place. The sea defences were originally built to help with irrigation and flooding of the sugar plantations. These days, our country’s drainage systems should be updated and built to serve beyond that to prevent flooding. While upgrading the drainage systems is one thing, our responsibilities as citizens of this country should also be taken seriously into consideration.

How can we help? We may want to lay most of the blame on our policymakers, but we also have a part to play in all of this. Our drainage (trenches, canals and drains) are not covered, nor are they underground.
They are open and easily accessible. As such, garbage can easily get into our drainage ways and can block the flow of water. When the rain falls, the excess rainwater will have nowhere to go and as such, that leads to flooding. The garbage also makes it very hard for the industrial water pumps to get the excess water out of the flooded areas.

We can sit around and play the blame game all. We can blame the outdated drainage systems, the dumping of garbage into the drains, heavy rainfall, high tides, receding shorelines or the fact that our coastline is below sea level. We can do that or we can do the sensible thing and take action by considering these factors of flooding in making sensible decisions for our country’s future.

Not only are floods devastating to our country’s economy, but they can also be very dangerous to our health when the rainwater raises the dirty drainage water. In this difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Guyana’s communities are under severe flooding. I understand that we cannot win every battle against nature, but the least we can do is try to make our communities safer by taking a bit more interest in how we develop safer, more effective and long-lasting infrastructure that will help to combat this heart-wrenching issue.

I can only hope those communities under floodwaters, especially Black Bush Polder and Kwakwani, recover as quickly as possible and I also hope that everyone is paying attention to what Mother Nature is capable of. We should not wait until a disaster occurs to act—prevention is better than a cure after all.