—President Ali defends country’s right to exploit, develop resources

DESPITE oil production, Guyana remains committed to preserving its forest and biodiversity. In fact, the country aims to double protected areas for biodiversity by 2025. This is according to the country’s President, Dr. Irfaan Ali.

Dr. Ali, during an engagement with the New York Times’ Climate Forward, said that Guyana reserves the right to explore and develop all of its resources, noting that the country’s focus on fossil-fuel extraction does not contradict its efforts to combat climate change.
“The story of Guyana today is one in which oil and gas may dominate the agenda but, really, forest biodiversity and our contribution to climate change, our positive contribution to climate change and keeping the planet alive, are the real story of Guyana,” the Guyanese Head of State said.
President Ali posited that Guyana could be the leading producer of energy around the world, even in the post-2050 era when countries are expected to no longer embrace the production of fossil fuel.

He pointed out, too, that Guyana would remain carbon sink. The country boasts a forest coverage of 86 per cent that stores 19.5 gigatons of carbon; it must also be noted that Guyana has adopted a low-carbon development strategy leveraging its forests to earn carbon credits, benefitting indigenous communities.

“We have kept this forest alive. We have pulled on a lot of other competing opportunities that one could have had for the country by keeping the forest standing alive. The world today would have lost in the last 50 years more than 50 per cent of our biodiversity globally….Guyana is located in two of the richest biodiversity zones, the Amazon and the Guyana shield…We are making a commitment to the world, not only are we keeping the forest standing alive, but we are also going to keep this biodiversity.”
He keenly affirmed that there is ‘no hypocrisy, nor contradiction’ in the country’s development matrix.

President Ali believes that we all know that petroleum and the petroleum industry will still have a space in the energy matrix.
In Guyana’s case, revenues earned from the sale of carbon credits and the oil and gas sector are being utilised to implement adaptation measures, drive its energy transition efforts and advance development across the infrastructure, health and education sectors of the country.
He stressed that Guyana, like many other developing states, stands at the mercy of the climate crisis and has to find its own financing to implement the necessary adaptation measures that are needed.

“We are very clear as a developing country that we have to find resources. We are below sea level, we have to build sea defenses, to invest in drainage or irrigation structures. No one has given [us] preferential financing for that, or conceptual financing for that. [We] have to find out resources to protect [our] country.