The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) says that the country needs a new relationship with water and it charged that environmental priorities are being eclipsed by an economic strategy of incessant exploitation of natural resources.
A press release from GHRA on Thursday marking World Water Day 2014 said “Although in Guyana our relationship to water is the most crucial single issue determining our future, the best ecological interests of Guyana are not receiving the priority they deserve”.
It said that the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) itself seems to have been a casualty of unregulated mining. Launched three years ago as the over-arching framework for development, thereby projecting the impression that Guyana was a leader in climate change strategies, the LCDS now appears relegated to a trading scheme for buying and selling carbon, with little public oversight.
According to the GHRA, this impression was reinforced last year with the decision to incur a US$20M penalty from the Norway project because profits from felling additional lumber were greater than what the REDD+ contract would compensate. That decision, it said, more smacks of economic ‘prosperity’ (ie economic growth) trumping ‘sustainability,’ (social, economic and environmental well-being) as the dominant priority.
It said that sustainable environmental goals involve sacrifice and restraint, which in undemocratic societies tend to be borne predominantly by the poor. Therefore, seeking environmental sustainability must focus not only on ecological resilience, but on how to achieve that resilience in a manner perceived as legitimate by citizens in a democratic society. Achieving this level of integration between science and governance requires a dialogue across multiple disciplines and a high level of political cohesion in the society.
According to the human rights body, flood-related events in Guyana which should prompt sustained, integrated and long-term responses simply come and go. It said that a series of seemingly ad hoc projects to plug holes, reduce erosion, and pump excess water did not add up to a constructive, integrated mitigation strategy.
It posited that whether the full page advertisement taken out recently by the Insurance Association of Guyana (IAG) warning about the risk to flood insurance would disturb this climate-denying complacency remained to be seen. It said that the IAG had pointed out that “when an event leading to loss is inevitable then risk becomes uninsurable. The inaction of the relevant authorities to correct this unsatisfactory situation will soon cause the risk of loss by flood to become uninsurable.”
GHRA maintained that flood scenarios in Guyana involve fundamental questions of life and livelihood for 90% of the population, going well beyond questions that environmental specialists alone are capable of addressing.
GHRA said that there was no profit to be had from pointing fingers or casting blame on this issue, the focus has to be on effective co-operate future action. It bemoaned that no sector of the society has taken environmental issues sufficiently to heart.
It said that the recent initiative by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy (MNRE) to host a stakeholders’ consultation on the Environmental Protection (Litter Enforcement) Regulations 2013, was a welcome first step in the direction of public discussion of the work of the ministry. However, the GHRA maintained that the orientation of discussions must broaden from natural resources being viewed solely as inputs to the economy, to include water-related priorities and the long-term future of the society.
The human rights advocacy organisation said that finding new forms of inclusive governance are as urgent as environmental solutions. It said that ways must be found to ensure continuity of agreements beyond electoral terms, supported by strong and growing civic and political coalitions. While the possibility of achieving an over-arching agreement of this nature in the present polarized state of Guyanese politics is remote, there is no alternative but to work towards this long-term goal, GHRA said.
In contrast to water as a threat, the other major area of strategic thinking urgently needed in Guyana relates to fresh water as opportunity. At a time when Trinidad, Barbados and the French Caribbean territories are considering rationing or importing water and Jamaican authorities feel the need to assure its citizens they possess adequate reserves, The GHRA said that it is not rocket science to foresee how valuable fresh water will become in the not-too-distant future. It warned, “We have seen wars fought for oil in the past decade and, according to UN estimates, wars over freshwater resources will begin as early as 2015.”
According to GHRA, citing the 2013 National Land Use Survey, Guyana’s water resources are adequate for a population of 142 million people, an abundance no doubt fuelling the complacency to pump billions of gallons of fresh-water into the Atlantic Ocean as a flood mitigation scenario.
It said, “We equally have little sense of water’s economic or strategic value. Pollution of headwaters of many rivers coming off the Guyana Shield by mining activity will simply destroy this asset unless adequate regulation is seriously enforced. The real costs of land and river reclamation are the most effective deterrent to this problem and failure to face up to this reality is another form of climate denial. Moreover, the scale of this particular challenge can be gauged by the inability to enforce in June 2012 even a temporary suspension of new river mining permits.”
The GHRA stated, “Simply raising these questions indicates the need for a new understanding of the society’s relationship with water, the need for an ethics of water, the need to learn to live differently with water and the need for a lot more learning about this problem. How do we adapt? How do we empower those who do not have the means to change livelihoods? How do we educate the society in a socially transformative way, linking the science to the governance of water? What kind of trade-off is acceptable between preserving Guyana’s magnificent natural beauty and mining?”
