Considerable progress has been made in the Guyana-Norway forest partnership but the sloth of the funding mechanism is now the bigger challenge, according to a report prepared by the Office of Climate Change (OCC).
The third Annual Progress Report on the Guyana-Norway partnership documents Guyana’s performance as at June 2012, and covers ‘Year 3’—October 1, 2010 to December 31, 2011—of the partnership, which runs up to 2015.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Guyana and Norway in 2009, provides for the provision of REDD+ results-based payments from Norway. Guyana can be paid up to US$250 million for results achieved in keeping its deforestation and forest degradation below an agreed level.
Norway has already paid US$69.8 million into the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF), on the basis of the 2009 and 2010 performances. But the GRIF Steering Committee has so far only approved the disbursement of US$5.94 million of the funds to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for disbursement to Guyana for project-related activities and administrative fees of US$140,000. Norway also approved US$1.06 million to Conservation International for preparatory work as pass through funds for the Guyana Forestry Commission.
The latest progress report, which will form the basis for independent monitoring and verification of the governments’ obligations under the MoU and the third tranche of payment, has found that considerable progress has been made in the Guyana-Norway partnership, some constraints and challenges remain. Two issues, in particular, impacted on performance in the period under review, it said, noting that Guyana’s general elections last November meant that there was a slow-down in some of the Joint Concept Note (JCN) measures in late 2011, and an addendum to the JCN was not issued as planned. The JCN, which accompanies the MoU, describes a set of enabling activities that have to be satisfactorily executed in order to initiate results-based financial support from Norway. However, all the matters that were to be highlighted in the addendum were dealt with by March 2012, the report said.
“The sloth of the GRIF mechanism is now the bigger challenge of the Guyana-Norway partnership. The untimely flows from the GRIF means that (i) efforts to address the drivers of deforestation are not taking place as envisaged; (ii) investment in Guyana’s LCDS priorities are delayed; (iii) there is public cynicism about the functioning of the GRIF,” the report said. “However, both Governments understand the urgency of addressing the challenges of the GRIF and have given reassurance of moving swiftly to a comprehensive resolution of this long-standing issue,” it said.
The report noted that it is now approximately two and a half years since the signing of the Guyana-Norway MOU, and the two countries continue to demonstrate their commitment to the initial vision – whereby the two countries would identify and solve problems that would be of benefit to others across the world.
The partnership can be conceptualised as two separate processes: (i) earning the money, whereby payments are calculated; (ii) investing the money in Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy priorities, the report said. It stated that in 2009 and 2010, the partnership led to considerable progress on the first of these two processes. ‘For example, the advances on MRV, accurate measurement of forest status, and insights on degradation indicators, have led to globally relevant breakthroughs in knowledge. Furthermore, 2011 saw the acceleration of progress on MRV, coupled with broader progress on REDD Plus Enablers, and Guyana’s input into global processes such as Indepen-dent Forest Monitoring (IFM), the European Union’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (EU-FLEGT) initiative and the Extractive Industries Trans-parency Initiative (EITI),” the report said.
“With regard to the second process, the challenges to the GRIF mechanism have continued to receive attention from the two Governments, the GRIF Trustee and Partner Entities to find a solution to ensuring this financial mechanism functions in keeping with the vision of the partnership between Guyana and Norway,” it concluded.
The Rainforest Alliance, which verified the previous report, will again verify the 2012 report. The organization said that verification field work will occur during the period July 5 – 13 by a three-person audit team that will be in Guyana. Stakeholders may provide comments prior to, during or after this field work, with the deadline for submissions being August 15, it said.
At a minimum, the verification process will focus on processes and performance related to the following Enabling Indicators: Guyana’s LCDS Multi-Stakeholder Steering Com-mittee and arrangements to ensure systematic and transparent multi-stakeholder consultations will continue and evolve; enable the participation of all affected and interested stakeholders at all stages of the REDD-plus/ LCDS process; protect the rights of indigenous peoples; and transparent, accountable oversight and governance of the financial support received for: implementation of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), and, efforts in building capacity to improve overall REDD+ and LCDS efforts.
The verification will also focus on the initial structure for Independent Forest Monitoring (IFM) mechanism; stakeholder consultation on the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Government and Trade (EU-FLEGT) process will continue; continuing development of a national, inter-sectoral system for coordinated land use; stakeholder consultation on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and related results and conclusions; measures by the GOG to work with the forest dependent sectors to agree on specific measures to reduce forest degradation by these activities and; undertake mapping of priority areas for biodiversity in Guyana’s forests.
Meantime, there is concern about the period allotted for stakeholders to comment on the report. Senior Associate of the Forest Management Trust, John Palmer in an email to Maarten van der Eynden, an official in the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment in relation to the Year 2 MRVS Interim Measures Report for the partnership, which was done by Indufor, said that a comment period of only three weeks (15 June – 06 July 2012) for a 285-page technical report with no summaries in culturally-appropriate languages for civil society, Amerindians, miners and loggers in Guyana is a travesty of a consultation process. “This is especially so as there appear to have been no public explanations addressed to these categories of stakeholder in Guyana of the Indufor/Durham methodology, data collection, or analyses,” he said. The Indufor report was release recently.
Palmer also noted that the comment period also coincides with the request for input to the evaluation by Rainforest Alliance of progress on the Norway-Guyana MoU. “That double load is unreasonable in Guyana,” he said, while adding that “this failure in communication is another example of the lack of progress on the REDD+ Governance Development Plan in Guyana. At the very least the comment and input periods should be extended to a conventional 60 days.”
