HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday said that Cabinet has noted the recent assertion by President Donald Ramotar that the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) was Guyana’s most important developmental initiative in the 21st century.

The president last week launched an update on Guyana’s LCDS, which provides a summary of the country’s progress towards delivering on the ambitions set out in the initiative.
“Cabinet noted the successfully held recent State House activity that updated Guyanese on developments with the LCDS. President Ramotar’s presentation to the wide cross- section of stakeholders was deemed by Cabinet a comprehensive one,” Luncheon said at his weekly post-Cabinet press conference at Office of the President.
Cabinet has also recognized the “accuracy” of the contention that the LCDS propelled Guyana into new heights in the international arena, and has rejected efforts that sought to engage others in maligning the motives of the Jagdeo-led administration in the development of the LCDS initiative.
In 2009, former President Bharrat Jagdeo set out a vision to forge a new low carbon economy in Guyana over the coming decade. The vision was translated into a national strategy in Guyana’s LCDS – after over a year of review and consultation within Guyana, coupled with input from climate change negotiations at the United Nations.
In 2008, when he set out his vision of a new economy to achieve these goals, Jagdeo had said that Guyana would aim to meet the following three inter-linked challenges: how to make forests worth more alive than dead; how to stimulate future growth using clean energy and non-deforesting economic activities; and how to protect against climate change.
Since then, Guyana has started to solve the first challenge through creating the world’s second largest Interim REDD+ Partnership with the Government of Norway, earning US$115M to date.
This revenue, combined with domestic resources and private investment, is generating the capital to invest in the other two challenges, which were the focus of President Ramotar’s remarks at the LCDS update launch.