GUYANA’S landmark Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) has shifted into implementation mode with seven priorities identified for 2010-2011, President Bharrat Jagdeo has announced.
The advance was marked at the ceremonial release of the third LCDS draft Monday at the Umana Yana in Georgetown where leaders of Amerindian organisations, business, labour, civic society and leading international environmental organisations again endorsed the strategy and its aims.
A brief issued at the ceremony said between US$60M and US$111M in total will be invested this year and next year in the seven priority areas indentified.
The third LCDS draft reflects the outcome of almost a year of review and consultation within Guyana, and climate change negotiations at the United Nations and other global climate change initiatives.
“Today we are shifting into implementation mode”, President Jagdeo announced, thanking members of the Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committee (MSSC) for their invaluable work in helping to advance the LCDS to this stage.
“It has been truly valuable and will be badly needed in the months and years ahead”, he said of the group that comprises representatives from all sections of society.
The LCDS, first launched in June last year, sets out Guyana’s strategy to forge a new low carbon economy over the coming decade, outlines priorities for 2012-2015 and lays out the framework for further consultation and strategy development on the country’s long term low carbon development.
The strategy has been hailed as a national scale model that can be adopted by other tropical forest countries seeking to forge a low deforestation, low carbon, climate resilient economy.
Norway has agreed to provide Guyana with US$250M in support for the LCDS up to 2015 and in the foreword to the revised strategy, Mr. Jagdeo said this country has identified the investments it will make with the payments from Norway. The Guyana-Norway agreement is the largest national-scale agreement of its kind in the world.
The President noted that the elements needed to start forging new economies are being identified, but this will require international resolve to make them a reality.
He said Monday that Guyana was reaching out to other progressive countries around the world and has been working with France and Norway on establishing an interim partnership for REDD+, the name given to efforts to establish a global scheme to reduce greenhouse emissions by preventing deforestation and degradation, and enhancing forest-based carbon stocks.
REDD+ was the one of the areas of climate negotiation that saw the most progress at the Copenhagen, Denmark climate conference in December last year and President Jagdeo has said that Guyana can take much credit for gaining this advance because of its LCDS model.
Drawing on the LCDS, Guyana has made significant inputs into forging the interim REDD+ partnership with more than 30 other countries and believes that the global replication of its model can help reduce global deforestation and forest degradation by 25% by 2015 for less than 25 billion pounds sterling in total.
A fast-track process towards an interim REDD+ partnership has been initiated by France and Norway following the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark last December and President Jagdeo announced that he will be at a Paris-Oslo conference today in Oslo, Norway, hosted by the government of Norway.
The purpose of the meeting is to establish an interim partnership arrangement for REDD+ and Mr. Jagdeo said he hopes it will see the commitment of US$5 billion for the process from the international community.
This partnership would aim to ensure rapid implementation of a global coordinated effort to preserve the world’s tropical forests, in line with UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) decisions.
President Jagdeo said the LCDS implementation priorities identified for 2010-2011 are:
** equity in the Amaila Falls hydro-power company
** accelerating land titling demarcation of Amerindian lands
** creating an Amerindian Development Fund
** expanding the fibre optic digital infrastructure
** micro finance for small and medium enterprises and vulnerable groups
** establishing an international centre for biodiversity research
** more resources for a monitoring, reporting and verification system and supporting individual investments for 2012-2015.
The President said three overarching areas have been set for the period – further strategic economic infrastructure, particularly opening up non-forested lands that are currently inaccessible, including opening up savannahs for large-scale agriculture; facilitating investments in high potential low carbon sectors building on the priority diversification opportunities outlined in the National Competitiveness Strategy; and clean transport and a transportation programme to determine how transportation-related emissions can be reduced.
In parallel, in light of the continued absence of an international climate change agreement, Guyana’s key priority in 2010-2011 will be to seek adaptation funding in line with the commitments in the Copenhagen Accord reached at the Copenhagen summit, Mr. Jagdeo said.
He stressed too that the National Assembly will be “fully involved” in these projects with Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh to provide parliamentarians with project details for monitoring by the National Assembly.
“As we move towards implementation, consultations will take place on these investments and progress reports will be issued regularly. As we have done throughout this process, we remain committed to openness and transparency and wide stakeholder input and involvement”, he assured.