In 2010, Bharat Jagdeo was honored by the UN with the prestigious award of “Champion of the Earth” for his vision and leadership in pioneering Guyana’s low carbon development strategy (LCDS). Even though President Irfaan Ali is in his first term, he has already accumulated multiple prestigious international awards. This column is confident that among the many more international awards that President Irfaan Ali will accumulate will be the UN’s “Champion of the Earth”. We have no doubt that sooner than later, President Ali will become Guyana’s next UN “Champion of the Earth”.
President Irfaan Ali is already renowned for his food security and blue economy leadership and is now also making a mark for leadership in biodiversity conservation. These presidents from the PPP, together with the PNC’s President Desmond Hoyte who added Iwokrama to Guyana’s Protected Areas Systems, have made remarkable contributions to Guyana’s growing reputation as a nature-friendly country.
During the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly, HE President Irfaan Ali announced that Guyana with other global partners will launch a Biodiversity Alliance in 2025 for more and better conservation of our terrestrial and marine biodiversity. As expected, the naysayers are frothing from their mouths saying it is another crazy gimmick. But they said the same thing when President Jagdeo launched the LCDS. He insisted then that Guyana could earn more from our forest keeping it intact, rather than cutting it down, ending the policy of the forest as a non-renewable extractive resource, transforming it to permanent resource. This allowed Guyana to earn significant foreign currency while contributing to the growing existential crisis of global warming and climate change.
Jagdeo’s carbon credit “gimmick”, as some deemed it then, has earned Guyana a billion US dollars, $US250M from Norway and a sale of $US750 M to Hess, with much more on the horizon. In the same vein, President Ali has called for a fair monetization of our biodiversity assets.
In 2009 when the LCDS was launched, it was clear that the LCDS was also about preserving our biodiversity. Almost 15 years later, President Ali stood in front of the world and declared Guyana is taking up the mantle of leadership in global biodiversity conservation.
Guyana is pursuing a genuine nature-based development strategy. In 2009, the focus was on the green component – preservation of our forest with its enormous capacity for storing almost 20 giga tons of carbon and sequestering about 135 million tons of emitted carbon annually. President Ali has accelerated the second component – the blue economy – by accelerating efforts in mangrove restoration and driving unprecedented growth in aquaculture.
Now Guyana is set to lift biodiversity to greater prominence with the 2025 launch of a biodiversity alliance with other countries and global institutions. One of the goals is to create a program for biodiversity credits, similar to the carbon credit program. It is another visionary approach to development.
There is, in fact, a Biodiversity Credit Alliance, a partnership facilitated by UNDP and UNEP, which has been working to develop a credible and scalable biodiversity credit market, based on a framework of high-level, science-based principles. In alignment with global biodiversity priorities and goals, such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the Leaders Pledge for Nature, the objective is to incentivize biodiversity conservation efforts as part of national development strategies.
PPP Governments under different presidents have always demonstrated an ability to develop and promote visionary strategies that have propelled Guyana from being a highly-indebted poor country (HIPC) to now a high-income country. Consolidating our biodiversity assets and its conservation into a revenue stream is a prime example of this thinking outside the box approach that have made successive PPP regimes successful. In fact, scaling up our biodiversity efforts is based on science, the link between biodiversity and climate change and is consistent with global agreements, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Diversity Framework (GBF) which was agreed to at the 15th COP of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2022.
The GBF established four long-term goals to 2050 and 23 action-oriented targets for 2030. Among these 2030 targets are to protect 30%of the earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters and to restore 30% of degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
In optimizing and situating its biodiversity assets in its socio-economic development, Guyana is set to double the 8.4% of its land acreage under a National Protected Areas System (NPAS) to 17% by 2025 and has committed to increase this to 30% by 2030. The expanded NPAS will comprise of terrestrial and marine protection, framed by international biodiversity targets like the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, the Leaders Pledge for Nature and in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals and the CBD.
Guyana is situated in two of the world’s most biodiversity-rich zones: The Amazon Region and the Guiana Shield. This unique region extends to Suriname, French Guiana, and parts of Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia. Studies indicate that this region’s geographical formation is more than two billion years old and spans 270 million hectares. Guyana’s many ecosystems, including our forests, savannahs, rivers and wetlands contribute to an ecosystem which provides habitat for hundreds of species of flora and fauna.
Guyana’s Sixth National Report to theCBD indicated that current estimates for the major group of biodiversity, exclusive of other groups such as Arthropods, Fungi, Nematodes and Algae is estimated to be 13,229 species. But this is expected to grow as more research is conducted.
Even with further work required, already we know that nearly 100 of the vertebrate species found in Guyana occur nowhere else on Earth. These include75 endemic fish species, such as the armored catfish (AncistrusKellerae), only from the Kuribrong River below Kaieteur Falls;19 endemic amphibian species, such as the globally-endangered Kaei Rock Frog, only from Maringma Tepui; and four endemic reptiles.
While Guyana’s aquaculture program is designed to add to the food security strategy and provide economic and livelihood opportunities for our people, the aquaculture program also adds to Guyana’s work on protecting and promoting our biodiversity. For example, the Satyadeo Sawh Research Center for Aquaculture in Mon Repos has been working for more than a decade in culturing the mighty Arapaima fish. Guyana is seeking to ensure that this endangered species of indigenous fish is not lost to Guyana and the world.
The Arapaima, sometimes referred to as the Amazon codfish, is the largest freshwater fish in the world. A native of the Amazon, it brings benefits both to the ecosystem it inhabits and the local fishing communities in Guyana and Brazil. It is a large fish and may be up to 10 feet long and weigh between 100 and 200 kg. It has two breathing mechanisms, gills for breathing in the water and a modified respiratory swim bladder that works as a kind of lung and enables it to breathe in air.The species inhabits lakes and tributary rivers with clear waters and temperatures between 24 and 37ºC, The Arapaima is not found in waters with a strong current or those heavily laden with sediments.The Arapaima is omnivorous and can feed on plants or animals. Its varied diet may include fruits, worms, insects, molluscs, crustaceans, fish, amphibians, reptiles and sometimes even aquatic birds.
The risk of extinction for this species stems from predatory fishing practices that have been going on for years now. The fish’s natural rhythm of reproduction is insufficient to replace the number of Arapaimas being caught each year. But Guyana has taken steps to prevent its extinction and to remove it from a threatened species.
Guyana has made tremendous progress in rearing the mighty Arapaima as one of its aquaculture products. In addition, Guyana has already harvested cultured Arapaima from cage-culture technology. For example, Amerindians in Capoey in Region 2 are rearing and already harvesting Arapaima from cage-culture.
Guyana’s pursuit of biodiversity and for preservation of our biodiversity genomic wealth is serious. This is what planning, vision and leadership can do. In PPP leadership, Guyana will always be a leader in visionary program. The world has not failed to recognize and acknowledge this.
There are examples of various biodiversity credit projects around the world already, including Colombia’s Bosque de Niebla, Malayia’s BioBank in Malaysia, the Rhino bonds in South Africa and Zambia’s Tondwa Game Management Area.
Guyana has been acknowledged for leadership in food security, climate and environmental security and energy security. Now we can add leadership in biodiversity conservation. Before he completes his terms as President of Guyana, President Irfaan Ali, following in the footsteps of President Bharat Jagdeo, will be conferred with the title “Champion of the Earth”.