President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday clarified his statement made at the opening of the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting on Monday when he spoke about deploying the country’s forest in the fight against climate change, noting that he didn’t mean that ownership of the forest would have been transferred.

“What we’re saying is that we would in Guyana ensure guaranteed sustainable forest practices as well as focus heavily on conservation if there is economic reward for that and that we’re prepared to work with bilateral donors, as well as commercial entities to put this to the market or to guarantee a financial flow to the country,” the Government Information Agency quoted the president as saying to media personnel.

He said that this needs to be done ahead of 2012 since currently, there is no provision for standing rainforests in the Kyoto Protocol and “we don’t want to be left out of any financial flows from which our country could possibly benefit.”

The President said that the Government is hoping that in the post-Kyoto Protocol there would be a framework for standing forests and a mechanism for rewarding countries for conserving their rainforests.

He said that in the interim work needs to be done with bilateral donors so they could guarantee a particular financial flow to the country and then possibly use carbon credits that could be derived from standing rainforests if they are assessed to offset carbon emissions.

He said that preserving the forests not only combats the effects of climate change, but also preserves biodiversity.

Asked about Guyana’s logging practices, the President said that Guyana has highly sustainable harvesting practices.

He said that a flyover of felled areas of Guyana’s forest shows no loss of the canopy. (See other story on page 10)