-cites need for new paths to development
President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday renewed Guyana’s offer of its rainforests in the battle against climate change and at a Conservation Inter-national global awareness campaign in New York said rainforest countries need new development paths that do not rely on unsustainable forest exploitation.
Expressing delight in supporting the “Lost There, Felt Here” Campaign, he said there is also need to recognize the vicious circle of des-truction that links climate change and deforestation.
“While climate change policies might result in Euro-peans and North Americans having to pay more for an SUV, in poor countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, climate change is literally a matter of life or death, the difference between able to eat or starving, or the cause of destruction of the livelihoods of entire communities,” Jagdeo said.
“Deforestation causes global challenges of an immense scale that are not only felt here, but across all parts of our planet, in rich and poor countries, large and small countries, in those with and without forests. Even those who do not share the view that there are anthropogenic causes of climate change support the contention that tropical deforestation should be addressed to avoid loss of medical advances, erosion of bio-diversity and the disappearance of freshwater resources, the Guyanese leader declared.
In these circumstances, he added, nobody can say with a clear conscience that communities should not seek to utilise the resources that are present in their forests.
“It is these all-too-human reasons that must be addressed if we are to preserve the world’s forests – we must make it more valuable to leave our trees standing than to cut them down,” he urged.
He suggested three pathways to achieve this.
