Climate change may bring new industries to coastal Guyana

Dec 02, 2008 News

Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Office for Investment (Go Invest), Geoffrey Da Silva, has said that while climate change may force industrial activity to inland areas, it will also bring about new industries.
He said that a lot of companies are seeing the need to look at the Linden Highway and Linden as a whole for industrial projects, since the land is much higher there.
It is projected that climate change will cause rising sea levels and increased rainfall, which could be detrimental for Guyana’s coastal area.
According to Da Silva, if a change in weather patterns causes flooding, as happened in 2005 when prolonged rainfall resulted in severe flooding in several parts of Guyana, mainly the coast, it may affect some business residences.
However, he said, economic activity will continue on the Coast, but it will be of a different sort, and one that is more compatible with the ocean.
“That is happening now in a number of countries where people are developing agriculture and aquaculture using sea water.”
Da Silva said that there is a major project currently underway in Mexico done by a company called Sea Water Foundation, and they have shown that a number of agriculture crops can be grown using salt water, and there can also be salt water aquaculture.
“So I don’t see that there will be an abandonment of the coast and everything moving inland.”
He pointed out that climate change has to be taken seriously, since it is not something that is going to go away.
Da Silva said that it also means that, since the President has been carrying this fantastic fight for a low carbon economy, there is going to be new opportunities in terms of alternative energy and not just the bio-fuels but bio-diesel, from palm oil in particular, solar and wind.
According to him, Go Invest has been encouraging a number of local manufacturers to use all three sources of energy. “I think that is the best way to build a sustainable business now.”
He noted that, as climate change will bring about new industries which will accelerate rapidly in the United States and China, Guyana can get into some of those activities as well, and encourage some investors to invest in Guyana in clean technology projects.
Climate change is any long-term significant change in the “average weather” that a given region experiences.
Average weather may include average temperature, precipitation and wind patterns.
It involves changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over durations ranging from decades to millions of years.
These changes can be caused by dynamic processes on Earth, external forces, including variations in sunlight intensity, and more recently by human activities.
(Nadia Guyadeen)

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Climate change may bring new industries to coastal Guyana

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