–but more global support, financing needed, VP Jagdeo says

THE urgency required to address the widening gaps in biodiversity and climate action risk falling behind on policy makers’ agendas amid immediate pressures including energy prices, food security and regional conflicts.
This was according Guyana’s Vice President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, during his address at the Second Global Biodiversity Alliance Conference and Financing Forum on Friday.
Dr Jagdeo urged global leaders to rebuild the sense of urgency to help galvanise climate action.
He pointed to what he described as a lack of established financing for biodiversity; this is an issue Guyana is hoping to address with partners through the alliance.
“There is no market for biodiversity credit currently,” he said, citing the absence of a compliance market or a major voluntary one.
He also said public funding was not available at the scale required, with a financing gap of about US$700 million, and that international discussions had yet to settle on a final definition of a biodiversity credit.
Recalling work by economists and climate researchers at the time, he said the cost of acting early had been estimated at about 1 per cent of global GDP, compared with 5 per cent if action was delayed.
“The first task before this body is to recreate the sense of urgency,” he said.
Jagdeo cited global risk assessments that rank extreme weather, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse among the most severe threats over the longer term.
He warned that current pledges, even if implemented, would leave the world facing warming of about 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels.
Dr Jagdeo believes that Guyana poses the solution, hoping to replicate the model it used to enter the carbon market with its forest.
“We need now to give answers to those, like we did in that period when we were working out this instrument of a carbon credit for the forest,” he said.
The Vice-President also used Guyana’s experience to cement that economic growth and environmental protection must be pursued together.
He said the country had maintained a no-flaring policy and imposed a carbon tax on unscheduled flaring, while supporting the principle that oil and gas production should pay its full environmental costs.
Dr Jagdeo said Guyana had committed to protecting 30 per cent of its land by 2030. He described more than 3,000 projects completed in 252 Indigenous villages using funds from the country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, noting that those works had helped build local capacity to deliver projects.
He reminded that about 20 per cent of the funds had gone to Indigenous communities, with the remainder supporting adaptation.
Infrastructural projects, including the construction of 840 kilometres of canals and 125 kilometres of embankments, were intended to strengthen climate resilience while supporting economic development, he said.
Dr. Jagdeo proposed forming working groups to develop technical analysis that can inform negotiators on biodiversity credits, including design conditions and responses to concerns about integrity, additionality, permanence, leakage, Indigenous rights, and accountable use of funds.