GUYANA is actively engaging its Middle Eastern partners including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar to explore opportunities in biodiversity services, as the country positions itself at the forefront of global environmental markets.
President, Dr. Irfaan Ali made this disclosure on Tuesday during a broadcast interview following several engagements on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last week.
“…The Middle [Eastern countries] are also setting up a market-based mechanism, a payment mechanism for biodiversity services. So, we are already engaging with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, some of the partners, as to how Guyana, how we can pursue the opportunities in biodiversity services, especially given the fact that they have already advanced a payment system, a payment mechanism for biodiversity services,” President Ali said.
Recently, Guyana hosted the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit in July 2025 that brought together over 140 countries and institutions. The resulting Georgetown Declaration called for biodiversity to be treated as a global public good, fully integrated into climate strategies and financial frameworks.
The country has been championing environmental stewardship for decades. Its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) has been viewed as a leading framework to conserve its forest, while driving economic development.
“When we are attending these meetings in terms of climate and biodiversity, we are not attending these meetings as participants. We’re attending these meetings with the world and all stakeholders, recognising that Guyana is providing great leadership on these issues, and it is coming at a time also, you know, when there must be a balance in the conversation, because energy, for example, and this was a big debate we had among bilateral partners and all stakeholders,” the President added.
Over the decades, the LCDS has evolved from a pioneering 2009 framework to the current LCDS 2030, which aims to align domestic development with global climate and biodiversity goals making Guyana a notable example for other nations.
While being an oil producing nation, Guyana has made multiple efforts to remain focused on forest conservation, environmental preservation and carbon neutrality through the LCDS, boasting world-renowned success in maintaining over 95 per cent of its tropical forest and earning from same through carbon credits.
“This is part of that economic diversification. This is part of building out our economy so on forest, climate change, biodiversity, we are not a listener. We listen all the time, but we are a leader. And the world recognises Guyana as the foremost leader in this sphere,” President Ali said.
During July’s summit, President Ali had outlined five pillars of the alliance, first to advance the global goal of conserving at least 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030; secondly to embed biodiversity in national and corporate planning through measurable indicators.
Its third pillar will be focusing on unlocking innovative finance, including biodiversity credits, green bonds and debt for nature swaps.
Fourthly, the empowerment of Indigenous Peoples and local communities is crucial, alongside the establishment of institutionalised monitoring and transparency mechanisms, such as the Global Biodiversity Product and the Gross Biodiversity Power Index.
Building on the goals outlined in the summits and discussion held on the sidelines of the UN, President Ali said too that Guyana is defining its position as it prepares to join leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly known as COP30 set for November in Belem, Brazil.