Dear Editor,
I have read the Low Carbon Development Strategy on GINA’s website and read the text of the presentation at the Conference Centre. The document is beautifully written with numerous fancy graphs. It is a magnificent masquerade of fiction. The President’s speech is as usual, full of hype and promise, empty on fact, empty on vision. It is a three-card monte game with Norway as the captive bettor. I do not speak Norwegian, but most of us are aware of the Latin words ‘caveat emptor,’ or buyer beware.
The document makes the following proposition to Norway and the developed world:
Pay the Guyana government US$580M per year and it will ensure that none of Guyana’s 15 million hectare rainforest will be disturbed, because if we were to disturb this pristine forest suitable for timber extraction, post-harvest agriculture and significant mineral deposits then the deforestation that would accompany this development path would reduce the critical environmental services that Guyana’s forests would provide to the world, such as biodiversity, water regulation and carbon sequestration. Conservative valuations of the economic value to the world suggest that left standing, the forest can contribute US$40B to the global economy every year.
First the misrepresentations. On page 6 of the document, the following statements are made:
“Guyana has experienced positive growth in almost every year over the past two decades –growth rates in 2006, 2007 and 2008 were 5.1%, 5.8% and 3.1% respectively (growth in 2008 was 5.9% if sugar was excluded).”
From the World Bank website, the following information is available in Guyana’s Country Report. Note well, the past two decades will cover from 1989 to 2008: “1991-97 marked a period of impressive economic performance in Guyana. Rooted in a comprehensive program of market-oriented reforms and liberalization, average growth reached 7 percent and inflation declined rapidly to single digits, while fiscal and external imbalances were drastically reduced. But by 1998, the initial gains of reform and stabilization seemed exhausted. The economy was also plagued by weak private sector activity, “brain drain,” sizeable fiscal and external imbalances, and setbacks in structural reforms. While financial stability was broadly maintained, growth averaged a meagre ¼ percent from 1998 to 2005.”
Enough said. The reason the government is peddling these falsities is in its argument, namely, Guyana is growing rapidly; Guyana has great management and stewardship of its economy; Guyana is ready for explosive growth and this will cause deforestation to the detriment of the world. Hence pay us to not go do this explosive growth in our economy so that we can fight global warming and climate change.
On page 5 of this dream document, the following can be found: “Guyana has transitioned to a multi-party democracy.”
What are the facts? Guyana is a divided nation and a one-party state where the opposition cannot even change a comma in the national budget. Where is this fictitious multiparty democracy the government is taking about? Surely the Norwegians would have read the McDougall Report. Surely, the Caribbean and the world know Guyana is in reality an elected dictatorship. Surely the world knows about torture, extra-judicial killings here. Guyana is a lawless society nurtured by executive lawlessness.
On page 7 of the document, there is the statement concerning “a young, educated and English speaking workforce.” Can anyone believe this statement? We have one of the highest levels of illiteracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Eighty-three per cent of out tertiary graduates migrate and English is a foreign language to most Guyanese at home.
The truth is well known. Guyana does not have the development framework, educated workforce, investment capital, non-monetary resources, technology, management or visionary government to grow 6 % per year, much less the 15-20 % growth rate necessary in our rainforests to really make an impact through deforestation on the global climate change architecture. The reality is that without being given a single cent, Guyana’s rainforests will remain what they are today and what they were 50 years ago for the next 50 years. Why would Norway or any other country give Guyana billions for something they will enjoy free anyhow?
The reality is different. Since 1970, Brazil has lost 232,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest. Guyana’s total size is 83,000 square miles or 1/3 of Brazil’s loss since the 1970s. Brazil is 3,287,597 square miles. Venezuela is 353,841 square miles. Guyana has 15 million hectares or 150,000 square kilometres of rainforest (1 sq kilometre equals 100 hectares). Brazil loses rainforest because of several reasons: land clearage for huge cattle farms, poor subsistence cultivators, commercial exploitation of forest resources, commercial farming and inappropriate government policies.
This plan will allow 80% of our country to be out of our control. Our sovereignty will be compromised. The Amerindian community, which is left out of this strategy but can join at their own will, has 14% of Guyana. This implies over 90% of our land and most of our water will be unavailable for national development. This implies that less than 10% of Guyana will be available for most Guyanese to live and earn a living. Much of this land is below sea level and with climate change, the disaster awaiting the East Coast will be upon us. Strangely, this report is conspicuously silent on moving the capital inland, a reality even the blind can see.
Moreso, there is a global food shortage that will only worsen with climate change. Guyana has the potential to meet some of these massive needs. Food production to meet the world’s needs would imply some type of deforestation. Is this trade-off appropriate? Food and employment versus begging for carbon credit funds? Instead of creating jobs, instilling national pride, reducing crime and promoting entrepreneurship and private initiative, this government wants to have a command and control communist economy where the private sector and other organizations are beholden to it for their survival. Is this the market-based economy the document boasts Guyana has achieved?
One of the key issues with Norway providing money to Guyana will be compliance. We have already seen the Guyana government and President Jagdeo at work in many different ways. The CLICO, NBS, NIS financial fiasco is slowly moving off the front pages, but the damage it has caused will rock Guyana for decades. Why would any country trust Guyana with funds for climate change? Don’t they know about the illegality with respect to the Consolidated Fund?
Guyana is a modern political tragedy. Now we are cementing our reputation as a country with tremendous resources and a modern economic tragedy. The government is bent on a new form of begging. From debt relief to HIV/AIDS begging, we are now promoting ‘climate change’ begging. We are again entrusting our total future to the whims and conditionalities of other nations. No longer will we be able to control or even plan our economic and therefore political destinies. It highlights the lack of vision and barren economic minds ruling us.
Guyana is blessed with abundant resources of water, land and oil, and an educated but expatriate workforce. Visionary leadership could make Guyana one of the most prosperous nations on earth. Instead we have a cock-eyed plan that enslaves Guyana to the whims of a few countries and a PPP government in power but out of office.
This plan is not even worth the paper it is written on. Let us get back to democratic governance and implement our National Development Strategy. Water is a scare resource and will become even scarcer with climate change. Food will become the most important element of global survival. And we are whistling in the dark with an ill-conceived and creative way of becoming the poster boy for global mendicancy.
This is truly a magnificent masquerade of alarming and dangerous consequences. Then again, the PPP have started their 2011 campaign armed now with Channel 28 and non-nationalist propagandists. Climate change has replaced drug smuggling and money laundering as our new development currency. Good Luck Norway. Good Luck Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
