President Bharrat Jagdeo was recently nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts on behalf of climate change, this newspaper has confirmed.

Stabroek News learnt that the nomination information and package have already been sent to Oslo, Norway.

Bharrat Jagdeo

Sources say President Jagdeo was nominated by author, Professor David Dabydeen who is currently Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick.  When contacted in the UK yesterday, Dabydeen told Stabroek News that he could not speak on the matter at the moment but provided his email address and asked that this newspaper make contact with him.

President Jagdeo has spearheaded a campaign to fight climate change which has as its centrepiece the monetizing of the value of Guyana’s forests. He recently secured a pledge from Norway of US$250M for the preservation of Guyana’s forests in advance of the Copenhagen Summit on climate change which is expected to see a major push for financial assistance for developing countries with forests. He has also campaigned extensively overseas on behalf of climate change as adumbrated in the Low Carbon Development Strategy which his government presented recently.

In October this year, US President Barack Obama was nominated for and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.