-Persaud tells Parliament committee
The proposal for a six-month notification period before mining can commence came out of a meeting of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GLSC) and the Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA), Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud disclosed yesterday.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Sectoral Com-mittee on Natural Resources, in response to a question by Committee Chair, Lance Carberry, he stated that it is not the GFC that is advocating this period. “This proposal came out of engagements between the GFC, the GGMC, the GLSC and the EPA”, he stated.
He noted that historically, conflict existed between foresters and miners. “What we sought to do about 13 months ago…we brought all the agencies together…and we looked at protocols that we can establish to reduce the conflict and to ensure that there is enhanced coordination”, he stated adding that these discussions predated the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
Persaud said that during those discussions, a number of proposals emerged including the notification period. “The fact that it is now being put to the stage of implementation and that’s where I think sometimes we get a bit of the misunderstanding in the public light”, he stated. The minister told the Committee that he and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds took a paper to Cabinet where the proposals that needed to be instituted to bring harmony and better coordination were articulated.
He noted that resulting from this, the President reached out to the mining community and a working group chaired by Transport Minister, Robeson Benn was set up. They are now fleshing out the implementation of the elements of the protocol that was developed, he said. According to Persaud, this was not an imposition by the forestry sector but rather came out of a collective desire to find a solution to the problem and “especially recognizing our commitments now and the greater incentives there are for us to utilize these resources and manage them well”. He asserted that the proposals before the Group are practical, functional and will provide a level of coordination that does not exist at this time.
Meantime, by October the “real” rate of deforestation in Guyana will be known. GFC Commissioner, James Singh said that currently they are working with an estimated 0.3% deforestation rate. “We are doing extensive remote sensing analysis. We are doing extensive biomass monitoring of plots and we’ve already set up 135 plots where we are doing the quantification of how much carbon is stored in the trees, their roots, in the soil etc. So come October 2010, we are going to have a pretty good idea of what is the real rate of deforestation in Guyana and then what will happen is that our financial incentives would be linked to that”, he said, responding to a question from Carberry.
Earlier, in his presentation, Singh had noted that one of the issues of concern for the GFC was compliance with sustainable forestry management guidelines which he described as satisfactory but which needed to be improved. Another area of concern was recovery rates, which he said were generally around 40% and also needed to be improved upon. The Commissioner had noted too that the GFC needs to undertake capacity building to meet its expanded role in REDD+ and the LCDS. He stated that there is a need to quantify the impact of mining on state forests and a team is currently working on this. A need to maintain or even reduce the current rate of deforestation and reviewing of key documents and possible upgrade are some of the implications of the LCDS and REDD+, he stated.
Further, he assured that sustainable harvesting will continue and if required guidelines will be revised. He noted that the operators in the sector will be subject to increased monitoring and with regards to processing; recovery rates and quality control will have to be improved significantly.
PNCR Member of Parliament, Mervyn Williams raised the point of the 100% post-harvest audit now required stating that this has affected some operators. Gavin Agard of the GFC explained that in the past a lot of monitoring was done on the larger concessions and random monitoring of the smaller ones but this year there is emphasis on 100% monitoring because of the legal verification system the Commission wants to implement. Singh added that the 100% monitoring has basically been made mandatory. He disclosed that at least 40 more persons will be employed for this.
Persaud and other officials from the Ministry are expected to re-appear before the Committee again since the Minister had indicated at yesterday’s session that he was only available for one hour.