The first tranche of funds under the Guyana-Norway Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of US$30M which is expected this year will be used to finance critical transformative infrastructure, low-carbon small business initiatives, land demarcation and land titling for indigenous communities, and the work of the Office of Climate Change.
This was revealed by Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, when he presented the 2010 National Budget on Monday.
Minister Singh explained that the mechanism through which Guyana will benefit from this financing, the Guyana REDD Investment Fund (GRIF), will be concluded shortly and shall govern the management of the country’s earnings from the deployment of its forests.
The implementation of the Guyana-Norway MoU will result in the receipt of US$250M by 2015 in performance-based payments. It represents one of the first attempts between a developed and a developing country to work together to implement a national scale model on how forests can be deployed to address climate change without compromising sovereignty or national development priorities.

LCDS consultations
Relating to the consultations in the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), Dr Singh stressed that in order to build the strongest possible ownership of the LCDS, Government engaged in a four-month period of intense information dissemination, stakeholder awareness and national and sub-national consultations.
The sub-national consultations benefited from the inputs and ideas of 222 communities and 2,939 persons, in addition to the 346 persons who attended the national event at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC) on June 8, 2009, and were led by Prime Ministerial and Ministerial teams which included representation from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) including the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
This process also benefited from oversight by a multi-stakeholder steering committee that includes representation from Government, the private sector, labour, youth, women, indigenous NGOs, conservation NGOs, mining and forestry producers, and independent professionals.
The developments with Norway and the feedback gathered during the consultation period were used to guide the revisions in the second draft of the LCDS published in December 2009.
Shortly thereafter, the second draft of the LCDS was tabled in and endorsed by Parliament, Minister Singh related.
This position of strong domestic ownership, he stated, was the basis of Guyana’s formal submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Copenhagen.
The Finance Minister concluded his presentation on the LCDS by noting that Guyana has firmly established its role as a world leader on climate change and REDD in terms of advocacy, negotiations and national work and stressed that technical negotiations will continue, as will the political momentum to push for legally binding outcomes at the next UNFCCC meeting in Mexico later this year.
“We will continue to be proactive in the negotiations even as we advance the work on our LCDS. The multi-stakeholder steering committee chaired by our President will also continue to oversee the work at the domestic level,” he said. (GINA)