Dear Editor,
Peter Persaud (`LCDS consultations were monitored by a credible organization approved by Norway’, (SN March 18, 2010) has not appreciated that it is the application of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), not the principle, which is mentioned repeatedly in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples issued in September 2007, and to which Guyana is a signatory. If some one or some group is not sufficiently informed about the nature and implications of an issue, then it cannot be said that FPIC has been applied. Some nine months after the issue of the first draft of the President’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, his Office of Climate Change has still failed to explain exactly what ‘opting into’ or ‘opting out of’ the LCDS means for traditional and commercial activities in privately owned land; that includes titled Amerindian Village Lands.
Secondly, any REDD scheme or project will require attention to the unsettled Amerindian land claims, under both the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the UN-REDD.
The first and second versions of the LCDS are essentially shopping lists of development projects mainly in the coastal plain, presented without reference to background economic or ecological studies to demonstrate that they are top priority, have greatest potential net social value, or are practicable with Guyana’s climate and soils.
Correspondence in the independent Press has repeatedly drawn attention to the need for the basic data on which the LCDS ideas are founded to be placed in the public domain, in accordance with Article 13 in the National Constitution.
It is entirely unreasonable for Peter Persaud/Office of Climate Change to be angered by the reasonable notes from the recent meeting of the Amerindian Peoples Association that the Government has failed to provide information repeatedly requested. Government should be supplying that information without having to be prodded by the citizens.
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan
