Dear Editor,
The Eliasch Review is now available to the public. This Review commissioned by the Brown Government in the UK is meant to guide the British government’s policy decisions vis-a-vis Global Warming and Climate Change.
Preparation of this important Review was the responsibility of Johan Eliasch an Anglo-Swede business tycoon and Climate Change guru who also has the responsibility of advising the British government on Global Warming and Climate Change.
The Eliasch Review recommends that a Global Fund be created to reward owners for keeping rainforests safe —- safe, as in uncut. A global carbon market would pay the tropical rainforests’ owners, and, or inhabitants to save and maintain the trees in order to protect and enhance their function of storing carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas and serious contributor to climate change.
Guyana’s forests provide an excellent service in trapping the earth’s greenhouse gases and allowing the world to breathe.
The Eliasch Review, if it becomes policy, will pave the way for Guyana to earn billions of dollars annually, simply by keeping its forests intact.
Realising these significant forex capital flows has been given a lot of Presidential focus and priority as “we are willing to place almost our entire rain-forest—- which is larger than England—- under the supervision of an international body to ensure compliance with world-class forestry standards” to quote directly from GINA’s recent publication on “Guyana’s low carbon development vision.”
In my view, stakeholding represents the political economy that government lacks to support its value and vision of the low-carbon economy. It is not problem-free. Consultations in the forestry sector are now overdue.
Stakeholders, ranging from the large logging concessions to the chainsaw loggers to eco-tourism and forest-based tourism operators, need to know what is expected of them when this new revenue base kicks in probably around 2015 and in the preceding years. What will be GFC’s role?
No “international body” worth its salt will want to subordinate its role in supervising forestry standards to that of a local government agency like the GFC. Will there be overlapping?
More subtle still is the need for stakeholders to know what is expected from them in managing the relationship with the “international body” when it is appointed overarching custodian of Guyana’s forests.
Stakeholders also need to know if they will, themselves, at some stage be allowed to benefit from the global fund and from trading in carbon credits on their own account.
How vigorously will government defend stakeholder interests when the international overlord presses for more and more forests to be subsumed under the conservation banner?
Many stakeholders are required to prepare and submit detailed 5-year forest plans to GFC. How can these plans be meaningful and have purchase if stakeholders are left in the dark concerning critical developments in the sector?
Yours faithfully,
F. Hamley Case
