Comparing the present-day challenges of environmental security with the long-standing threats to territorial security, Former President David Granger urged the Government, citizens and civil society to adopt common positions as Guyana prepares to participate in the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 26, in Glasgow, Scotland next week.
Mr. Granger thinks that, just as the entire nation resisted the threat to the country’s territory over past decades; it should resist the threat to the integrity of the environment which the current climate crisis poses to the entire world.
According to a press release by his office, Speaking on Friday on his television programme – The Public Interest – the Former President expressed dismay at the PPP administration’s decision to wait until Thursday 28th October to publicise aspects of its intended presentation to COP 26 and to launch a four-month long consultation process. This gave the public little time to comprehend the proposals and to recommend changes to the strategy before the Conference takes place.
Mr. Granger expressed satisfaction at the Administration’s adoption of the Coalition’s ‘Decade of Development’ approach which he articulated last year to plan for the country’s growth. Naming its plan ‘Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030’, the Administration cherry-picked ideas from the Coalition’s Green State Development Strategy Vision 2040 and combined them with its own outdated Low Carbon Development Strategy 2009 version.
Comparing the two strategies, Mr. Granger said that the original LCDS was opportunistic and cash-motivated while the GSDS was holistic and development-driven. Given Guyana’s complex environment – comprising the coastland, grasslands, highlands, islands, wetlands, rainforests, rivers, waterfalls and lakes – which are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in different ways, he urged that there should be careful consideration of the causes of the country’s two worst catastrophic floods, in 2005 and 2021, both under PPP administrations.
The entire country, Mr. Granger advised, needs to pay close attention to what the administration was saying and to insist on wide, prior consultation and consent to the so-called LCDS 2030 which will affect us all for decades to come.
Guyana signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992.Guyana’s President Granger was the first Head of State in the world to be congratulated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for signing on to the Paris agreement on Climate Change in September 2016.
