The team from the forest consulting company, Indufor, here to engage with stakeholders as part of the independent verification for Guyana’s fourth year’s performance under the forests partnership with Norway is inviting stakeholders to make inputs.
The team arrived here last week and in a notice in the newspapers, the company noted that it will be conducting an independent verification in Guyana during the period August 19-31st on progress on meeting the enabling indicators in the Joint Concept Note under the partnership. “Indufor encourages interested stakeholders from Guyana to contact the independent verification team…for further information, to make comments/feedback, or to request an interview with the team during the independent verification period,” the notice said.
Those interested can email the team at majella.clarke@ indufor.fi or svjonesassociates@yahoo.com or call 227 8157 in Guyana.
In the fourth annual progress report on REDD+ Enabling Activities, which covers the period July 1st, 2012 to June 15th, 2013, government said that overall Guyana’s performance against the requirements of the Joint Concept Note (JCN), which sets out indicators to be met, has been strong and the country has fully implemented the majority of actions which the JCN targeted for completion during this reporting period.
However, government has complained again of delays in accessing funding through the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) mechanism and said that this demonstrates the need for further investigation of the functioning of the GRIF and options for its improvement.
The report was prepared by the Government of Guyana (GoG) to reflect its progress over the reporting period. Since the end of 2009, the GoG has published an annual report documenting progress in completing the enabling activities, as these are described, and on an annual basis updated, in the JCN. This is required under Guyana’s forests partnership with Norway, under which the country will receive up to US$250 million from Oslo in performance-based payments for the period up until 2017, based on an independent verification of Guyana’s deforestation and forest degradation rates and progress on REDD+ enabling activities.
