Dear Editor,
The Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) wishes to correct some serious inaccuracies contained in an article by Janette Bulkan captioned ‘Carbon in the forests in Guyana’ in the Monday July 27, 2009 edition of the Stabroek News.
Firstly, Ms Bulkan’s assertion that “it is not possible to read about the feedback from the Government’s traditional outreach meeting with some Amerindian Communities in the hinterland” is totally incorrect.
The verbatim reports of these consultations have been posted on the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) website (www.lcds .gov.gy) and are available for public scrutiny as part of the transparent process to which the government has committed itself.
In contrast to the misrepresentation by Ms Bulkan, the LCDS does not speculate on how to spend unprecedented amounts of monies for climate change adaptation.
Careful reading of the document shows that the draft document states that if the financial incentives are provided, then these incentives can go to support a range of low carbon economic opportunities, as well as adaptation activities.
It was also made very clear in the consultations that there were no guarantees that the financial incentives would materialize. It was also stated in the LCDS draft document, that it was not expected that Guyana will get the sum of US$580M immediately. It is expected that the incentives and other payments would meet this sum by 2020.
Contrary to Janette Bulkan’s misinformation, the LCDS is a document that has been presented at numerous international meetings and is under serious consideration. It will also be presented at Copenhagen in December 2009. It is really unacceptable that Janette Bulkan is seeking to downplay such a visionary development-based strategy which seeks only to catalyze the positive development of Guyana. Ms Bulkan also misses the point that the LCDS is a development strategy for Guyana. The basic principles of seeking incentives for sustainably managed forests and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are spelt out in the document; this is a common position shared by all of the countries that are members of the Coalition for Rain Forest Nations. This is contrary to the position stated by Ms Bulkan that there is “isolation from mainstream discussion on climate change.”
The statement that the LCDS does not even consider a population shift is very ill conceived. The LCDS clearly identifies some of the Low Carbon economic opportunities in the intermediate savannahs, Rupununi savannahs, etc. Obviously, these economic alternatives can only be feasible if there is some movement of population over time.
Let us now look at the statement made on the “forest carbon budget.”
Ms Bulkan may not be aware but the GFC is already doing much of this work with the support of international NGOs. A simple phone call or email to the GFC could have provided this clarification.
Also, if she had contacted the GFC, she would have been advised that the GFC, Forest Products Association (FPA), Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are currently collaborating in most of the areas that she mentions eg, reforestation of degraded areas especially mined out areas, silvicultural studies – both pre and post-harvest, developing a forest fire management strategy for Guyana, providing training in Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) for stakeholders inclusive of communities.
Contrary to Ms Bulkan’s public misinformation, the GFC wishes to assure her and the general public that the GFC is seriously enforcing the forest legislation, rules and guidelines for sustainable forest management.
This can be attested to by many independent reviews of both our guidelines and their implementation which have all shown that they are comparable to internationally accepted best practices.
Yours faithfully,
T Khan
Forest Monitoring Division
Guyana Forestry Commission
