Norway is paying a pittance for telling us what to do with our forest

Dear Editor,
I wish to inform the general public that the idea of carbon trading was that of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan and not Mr Bharrat Jagdeo.
Myself and the late Dr Jagan discussed and talked about this in my house on the Pomeroon River on a number of occasions prior to 1992. The idea came about while discussing how we can get real money from our forest by just not cutting trees and processing them into lumber.

Dr Jagan came up with the idea of trading our vast forest for carbon credits; I told him the idea sounded really great and that he should really work on this idea, but at the same time we must not allow the foreigners to control our forest and dictate to us about it, like what is happening today. In addition, people who are making a decent living from the forest should be able to continue doing so without any additional restrictions that will hamper their livelihoods.

Norway is one of the largest polluters on the planet, a very wealthy oil-producing country; today Norway is telling us what to do in our forest, and paying a pittance to the country. Because of the restrictions in the forestry sector, there is a great shortage of lumber on the local market, and we cannot even meet our export demands. This is causing local lumber prices to escalate.

If a survey were carried out with all the stakeholders in the forestry sector, one would know about the serious problems they are facing, because of the number of restrictions in the forestry sector. All of this is because Norway makes the decisions on how we should manage our forest.
Guyana‘s forest cover will remain until the end of time. We were taught by the British how to do conservative forestry (logging), and that is what we have been doing for the past 150 years.

Today there are so many restrictions and regulations many stakeholders are being forced out of the business.

If one travels around this country, they will see how many sawmills are closed. Our government needs to ask themselves why?  If they care.

Norway is giving Indonesia US$1 billion for restricting the cutting of trees, and the issuing and renewal of permits. But this money is not given to the government to squander; the money goes to the stakeholders so that they can start new ventures, to sustain themselves, families and workers. Why did our President not do the same for Guyana?

In closing I wish to say that if Dr Cheddi Jagan was alive today, he would have never agreed to the demands of the Norwegians for our forest.  He would have told them to pay up the real money or get out.

Dr Cheddi Jagan will always be remembered by the people who really knew him and what he stood for.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)