City Hall’s hope of tapping the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) to support environmental management within the city is unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon, according to Governance Minister Raphael Trotman, who has oversight of the management of the nation’s natural resources.
Last week Monday, the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) of Georgetown at its statutory meeting made public its desire to access a portion of the fund.
Town Clerk Royston King had explained to Stabroek News that as the council moves to implement a carefully managed urban forestry programme, it will be contributing to the scrubbing of the atmosphere and keeping the country’s carbon footprint down. This project as well as the “greening” of municipal buildings through the use of renewable energy, King believed, qualified the M&CC for a portion of the fund.
While Trotman has expressed approval for the proposed projects, he had explained that a detailed process needed to be pursued before the council could access the fund, which is being supervised by the World Bank.
“We are presently in the process of resuscitating a multi stakeholder committee,” Trotman told Stabroek News, while adding that specific requests for large sums from the GRIF will have to be presented to that committee.
Trotman noted that presently there are small scale requests being made for micro and small business enterprise development.
The new government, he said, is willing to entertain requests for larger sums, however these requests cannot be approved until the stakeholders’ committee has been reconvened.
Asked when the committee is likely to be reconvened, Trotman noted “there is no timeline; we want to review the relationship with Norway before we move forward.”
The minister explained that there is to be a meeting with the Norwegian Minister in early December, after which decisions will be made.
The GRIF is a fund for the financing of activities identified under the Government of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
Under the agreement, which was signed in 2009, Guyana has received performance-based payments based on an independent verification of Guyana’s deforestation and forest degradation rates and progress on REDD+ enabling activities.
Of a possible US$250 million, Guyana has so far earned US$190 million under the agreement, which ends this year. Of this, US$69.8 million has been transferred to the GRIF, while US$80 million has been transferred to the Inter-American Development Bank for the delayed Amaila Falls Hydropower Power Project. Of the US$69.8 million, US$39.4 million remained up to the end of March, according to the latest World Bank report. The rest has been disbursed for various projects. These projects are the Cunha Canal Rehabilitation Project, a Micro and Small enterprise Development project, the Amerindian Land titling project, institutional strengthening of the agencies involved in the implementation of the LCDS and the Amerindian Development fund.
