Dear Editor,
The alarm bell has sounded that the likelihood of continuous flooding of our coastland has reached a crisis point. Measurements show that sea level in the region of Guyana is rising two to five times faster than the global average. Also, our average rainfall is decreasing while rainfall intensity is increasing. Global climate change is putting most of our population under increasing and immediate threat.
It is not fresh news that, in response to this global challenge, the United Nations and the international donor community have already set up their system of facilities and funds to intervene in countries considered most vulnerable. The Government of Guyana, well-rehearsed as it is to chase down international aid (give it credit), has already pulled in a fair portion of attention, approved projects, and promises of funding from several external sources, such as the World Bank.
The country now sits on the verge of a comprehensive overhaul of its sea and river defences, its water conservancies, its networks of drainage and irrigation canals, its coastal zone and its institutions that manage these infrastructures. Throw in the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and we can readily see that responding to global climate change will consume much of the country’s efforts in the near future. And it should.
As the government prepares the country to combat the effects of global climate change, what is disturbing is the almost complete dismissal of the University of Guyana. Little evidence exists to suggest that a major role is envisaged for the country’s primary research institution and producer of high-level human resources.
One therefore has to ask: where are the engineers, hydrologists, environmentalists, project managers, agriculture scientists, biologists, land-use planners, etc going to come from to make all these initiatives not just work but work continuously? Given the enormity and imminence of the threat to our survival as a coastland state, it is hard to explain the reluctance to urgently develop a local human knowledge base able to conceptualize, design, implement, operate and maintain the required interventions to beat back this threat.
Some may point out that most of these projects include a component for staff training within the concerned government agency.
This approach, however, is short-sighted and of limited effect. The government and the international donor agencies well know that high staff turnover quickly reduces several key departments to nothing. As a case in point, the document for the World Bank-funded Conservancy Adaptation Project (September 2007) bluntly states that it will not contemplate providing assistance to the Hydromet Office, one of the pivotal agencies in any country’s response to global climate change, because its high turnover, poor knowledge and other problems make the sustainability of such an intervention “highly unlikely.”
Several other government agencies, despite some efforts to boost capacity, are already suffering or are likely to suffer the same fate, such as the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority and other units of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Environment Protection Agency, Sea and River Defence Division of the Ministry of Public Works, the Lands and Survey Commission, and the Civil Defence Commission.
It requires little common sense to realize that the country needs to produce a constant stream of suitably qualified persons to manage the projects already conceived and designed and to conceive and design other projects from scratch. How are we to meet this need?
The double whammy of scarcity and high turnover of technical staff seems to naturally point to the University of Guyana as the best option to address this crisis in Guyana’s development efforts. The university, inexplicably, remains underfunded and under-regarded. And while several criticisms could be levelled at it, one of its faults has not been a lack of desire and effort to make a greater contribution.
It is time the government overcame its hang-ups and made the necessary investments in building the capacity of the university. It is foolhardy to pretend that the country can effectively confront the challenges of climate change without a purposeful process to produce quality human resources. The university cannot do this by magic nor can it do so on its shoestring annual budget. It can only do so through targeted investments aimed at delivering specific outputs. In this, a major priority is to upgrade the university’s own human resources.
Some may point to the university’s participation in consultancies and multi-stakeholder committees as evidence that the institution is not being overlooked. The seriousness of the climate change threat, however, requires a far larger and more structured contribution from the university. Government must act now.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe
