Dear Editor,
Congratulations to President David Granger and the entire new government. New life is certainly flowing in all parts of the country. This definitely augurs well for renewed respect for Guyana throughout the wider world. We now have the right man for the job.
It is very early in the life of this widely focused administration. I am looking forward to seeing an imminent Cease and Desist order to Asian loggers. The recent past shows an activity which is more than detrimental to our natural environment.
It has to be ludicrous for anyone to believe countries in South America can satisfy the timber demand of China. Some people may have the ignorant belief that the forest is just another canefield and we can get two crops in a year. Obviously they know nothing of the size of China. They, I am sure, see Guyana as a Jurassic park compared to their forest.
The much rumoured wish and hope of a wood products factory being put in by the Chinese is a vanity. What sort of factory would this be in terms of output, volume, etc? How many wood factories are there in China? Thousands, you can imagine. If China was to wait for Guyana to supply wood products they would all die waiting. The point here is that should you ever be in a position to supply wood products, the total cost would be prohibitive. I can contest unequivocally that China can produce wood products using our logs and send them back to Guyana cheaper than we can make them ourselves.
Their preferred products are mainly floors, walls and doors. The same would be true of India.
From their perspective they only need the raw material (logs) to be distributed to their numerous wood producing factories where they are all eaten up, figuratively speaking, not even the sawdust escapes.
The bottom line for Guyana is that this logging is nothing but an act of futility. We have to live at our rate of production. Trees are fresh air producers, not factories, and China needs fresh air. Therefore the Low Carbon Development Strategy cannot co-exist with large-scale logging.
Yours faithfully,
John De Barros
