Although in my ongoing presentation of these articles on Guyana’s forests it has not been so far singled out for attention, it should be clear from last week’s contribution that the international forest agenda is directly driving much of the agenda items framing Guyana’s forests and land use policies, as the country goes forward. This situation is readily recognized, especially when one considers that several of the indicators, which I have introduced in recent weeks, focus on the central roles of 1) the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 2) the United Nations Convention on Bio-diversity (UNCBD) 3) the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and 4) the policy “alignment” of Guyana’s National Action Plan (NAP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 10-Year Strategy (2008-2018), in Guyana’s forest policies. To assist readers in understanding this phenomenon and the Vision behind some of the global agenda initiatives, these matters will be briefly addressed in the next Section.
Before turning to that task, I bring to readers’ attention that the principal outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit held in Brazil was to identify 1) biodiversity reduction/loss, 2) desertification, and 3) climate change as the greatest challenges to the sustainable development of global society.
The Aichi biodiversity targets
The 1992 Earth Summit has spawned the establishment of the UNCBD, whose global vision is to secure: “By 2050 biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a