Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency, Joseph Harmon, says the cost of maintaining Guyana’s sea defence is a major drain on Guyana’s resources, as he emphasised a need for policymakers to consider removing important aspects of the country’s public infrastructure to higher ground.
“We live in a low lying coastal State…one of the priorities for low lying coastal States is to look at how best you can re-locate to higher ground.
Harmon’s statements were made in response to questions during a post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday.
On Thursday evening, during the 21st installment of the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen and Tain Talks event, Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson, said that the issue of rising sea levels, overtopping, and battered sea defences had engaged the attention of Cabinet.
He further stated that it was determined that $14 billion is needed between 2020 and 2022 to effect “urgent” repairs on 32.9 kilometers of Guyana’s sea defence, failing which, locations across the coast will suffer a fate similar to what Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara, has been seeing in recent weeks.
Asked whether Cabinet had decided whether it would make the funds available providing the coalition government returned to power, Harmon did not specifically say that the money would be offered. He did say, however, that “some money will be required in the first phase, and between now and another year or so and there is another sum required as we go along.”
Harmon noted, though, that “our sea defence is a major sap on the resources of this country. On the budgetary allocations that are made.”
He also took the opportunity to clarify that Patterson was “…just looking at one aspect, which is the hard sea defence…”, adding that “there are some areas in this country where there is nothing other than mangroves,…There are some areas where there is just an earthen dam which separates the Atlantic Ocean from the coast and so that is a major challenge for us to take care of the sea defence”.
In light of these realities, Harmon said, “…there is some conversation already started about removing some…public infrastructure facilities away from the coast, because you cannot get away from the fact of climate change.”
Harmon further said that “…you cannot escape the fact that there will be rising sea levels. Every time there is a high tide in Region 3…the seawall is here and the water is meters above the seawall. So unless you keep building the wall higher and higher and higher, we must at some point in time begin our consideration, what we are going to do…”
Noting, however, that the results of the March 2nd, 2020 general elections stands between the current administration and this and any other ambition, Harmon, on an optimistic note, said that “after March 2nd, It is our intention to focus a little bit more on that and in fact to deal with the urgent issues along our coasts.”
During the discussion at the Turkeyen and Tain Talks event, the possibility of relocating coastal settlements, and related issues, was also discussed.
