Director of Norway’s Climate and Forest Initiative, Ambassador Hans Brattskar says that recent talks with President Bharrat Jagdeo included trying to advance the memorandum of understanding the two countries have signed on a rainforest deal and the amount of financial aid this country could get for its programme.
Ambassador Hans Brattskar and three other team members on Tuesday  met President Jagdeo and top administration officials for talks on a climate change deal, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.

Brattskar said also that Norway and Guyana share the goal of including reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests in developing countries in a new climate regime.

And he noted that Jagdeo has been a leading voice in the international lobby to include this aspect as part of the solution to the international climate crisis in the new climate regime, GINA stated.

Meanwhile, under the memorandum of understanding, President Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg had signed in the Norwegian capital Oslo in February, Guyana will be getting significant backing, including financial support, from Norway, for its model to push saving rainforests as a central platform in the global plan to avert climate change disaster.

The document, according to GINA,  said that they have agreed on the need to keep climate change firmly at the top of the international agenda, underlining that it is essential to reach an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen in December.

Efforts are underway for an effective United Nations global climate deal in Copenhagen to succeed the current Kyoto accord that expires in 2012.
Guyana and Norway have agreed that if the world is to prevent irreversible climate change, it is essential that greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are drastically reduced, given that deforestation and forest degradation currently cause about one-fifth of the global emissions.

“To achieve this vital objective, they agreed that determined and concerted action is needed. They emphasised that efforts under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) towards Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) efforts must be properly designed to ensure that deforestation is significantly reduced in countries where it is already occurring, and avoided in countries where deforestation rates are still low,” it said. Barattskar said there has been good progress on a comprehensive REDD and is hopeful that this could be included in the new climate regime coming out of Copenhagen, GINA reported.