-Jagdeo

ENVIRONMENTAL diplomacy is an important pillar of Guyana’s foreign policy and as such, the country will make a case to champion forestry-conservation efforts at an upcoming summit in Brazil, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary and the country’s Vice-President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has said.

“You will see a recurrent thread of similar positions taken at various forums. We plan to make a case at the G20 meeting, President ‘Lula’ [Brazil’s President] said that Guyana would be invited later this year and I probably will attend that,” Dr Jagdeo said during a news conference last week.

The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union (EU), and the African Union (AU).

When the summit is held in Rio de Janeiro in November, Guyana intends to further lobby for climate financing to support the conservation efforts for forested countries.

“This could be done in a manner that does not burden the world, but provides enormous climate benefits to the entire world,” he said.

According to Dr Jagdeo: “There would be various models from which to choose, so a menu approach to what countries may want to choose, some may choose a market mechanism, for seeing the flow of funds from the forest carbon. And some may want to use public resources, but all these [are] designed for the same benefit, which is to preserve the forest and recognising the important role they play in sequestering carbon in our atmosphere.”
Earlier this month, Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, represented Guyana at the United Nations’ Forest Forum, which took place at the UN’s Headquarters in New York.

There, he joined world leaders as well as ministerial counterparts and other colleagues from around the world, to call for greater urgency in global efforts to maintain the world’s forests, a release from his ministry said.

During the ministerial meeting, Minister Bharrat remarked, “Too often, maintaining forests has not been a valuable choice for communities or countries. Inside this room, we understand this point. However, outside this room, too few people recognise that the entire world benefits from the ecosystem services provided by forests, and if we want those services to continue, economic incentives must make forests worth more alive than dead.”

The minister further briefed attendees on the method Guyana has utilised to address the forgoing challenge, to which he highlighted Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

It was explained that this national low-carbon blueprint sets out a model of how Guyana can balance economic development alongside conserving the country’s forests and biodiversity, while being compensated for same.

To this end, Minister Bharrat shed light on how this approach has enabled Guyana to conclude transactions of almost US$1 billion in payments for the climate services provided by Guyana’s forests, of which US$227 million stemmed from the bilateral deal with the Government of Norway, and an additional US$750 million from the sale of ART-TREES credits made in 2023.