A World Bank team is here to engage stakeholders and determine whether Guyana is sufficiently ready to initiate an active phase of preparation that would enable it to receive financial incentives from the international community to reduce deforestation.
The team will examine several issues and there will be particular focus on indigenous peoples. “We are going to the field to listen to the communities”, said Laurent Debroux, the team’s leader. He said that the team’s mission is to discuss Guyana’s participation in the Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) with government and other stakeholders.
This is the second visit for the team this year. Debroux recalled that Guyana had submitted an initial proposal (the Readiness Preparation Proposal or RPP) to the FCPF in June. He said that the Participants Committee of the Facility asked the Bank and Guyana to work closely together; examine the social and environmental dimension of the proposal and see if things are sufficiently ready to initiate an active phase of preparation. This, he said, would involve Guyana carrying out more intense consultations with villages, designing strategies to reduce deforestation, designing a system to share benefits with the local communities so that maybe in the future, it could be one of the first countries to receive financial incentives from the international community through a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) scheme.
At the end of this visit, the team will compile a report on their findings. “We will put in writing, our views on this RPP and why we believe it should be supported and what are the key issues that are on the radar screen and that will continue to require full attention during the preparation phase; maybe some issues that have not been sufficiently highlighted in the RPP so far and that will need to (be) take(n) into account more actively as we move forward”, Debroux said in an interview with Stabroek News.
“Part of our mission is also to see or to ensure that public participation mechanisms are in place so that all parties concerned can have a say in the systems that will be designed during this preparation phase”, he added. The team along with non-governmental organizations and the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, will visit the clusters of Nappi, Iwokrama, and Kamarang to see whether the communities are aware and support Guyana’s participation in the scheme.
Land tenure in indigenous communities is one of the critical issues. “What we want to make sure as part of our preparation … is to understand the relations, the situation of land tenure and land management in the country but particularly in the forest areas”, the World Bank’s Senior Land Administration Specialist, Malcolm Childress said. During the team’s last visit, he said, they received a lot of background information about Amerindian land issues. “We want to really understand more at first hand about the land situation particularly from the indigenous communities themselves, to be able to understand how that land situation will help to structure what’s foreseen as the strategy for the whole country”, he said.
Childress noted that some of the NGO’s that represent Amerindian communities have registered their concerns about the “unfinished agenda” for indigenous land titles and these concerns have also been echoed by international NGO’s.”At this moment it’s one of the reasons we are interested in trying to understand those issues in more depth”, he stated.
The World Bank’s Chief Counsel in Environmental and International Law, Charles Di Leva is also a part of the team and he said that they will also be looking at what kind of arrangements would be created to ensure that the benefit sharing is done in a way that is acceptable as far as international good practices are concerned. He noted that the international community is looking at these projects to determine whether international finance is transferred to tropical forest rich countries to preserve the carbon in those places but it has to be done in a way that is acceptable to them.
Noting that there are at least 45 countries globally on a list that want to be able to obtain benefits from the REDD process; Di Leva said that Guyana’s case is very visible and it is an important learning opportunity. ”It has the potential to be very important but as well the international community has to back up this whole system”, he stated.
Meantime, Debroux said that it may take some time to complete the preparation activities. “It’s a lot of work for a country to get ready to engage in this carbon exchanges… It requires a lot of measurements, monitoring”, he said adding that it is advanced work, not easy and Guyana is opening the way so it is completely normal that it would take a little time. “It requires some sort of a consensus at national level to move ahead”, he stressed. He noted that it is a great opportunity both in the environmental and social aspects for the people of Guyana and it is important to ensure that the benefits, once they materialize, are shared equitably between all the users of the forests and others.
As to the question of when Guyana will be able to access the US$3.5M from the FCPF to implement the RPP, Debroux responded that it was hard to say, stating that is probably not the main issue. “The main issue is we share a vision to move forward. When the first dollar becomes available, it’s not the thing that counts the most…I think what is important is that we have a shared vision, consensus, a good agenda and the willingness to make it work for the good of the Guyanese and for the good of the global environment”, he asserted.
This trip is part of the due diligence that the Bank performs before disbursing any money. “It’s important that everybody’s on board, understands and support the agenda. It’s an opportunity for all parties to win, to win-win potentially but it needs to be done right for Guyana and for the countries that will follow”, Debroux said.
