Latest update September 22nd, 2026 10:30 AM
Move Capital in LCDS
The Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is intended to integrate our development plans within the overhanging global threat posed by climate change induced by global warming. While it is not the subject of this editorial, right off the bat, we would wish to disabuse a few of the notion that the expected payments for preserving our forests, is a form of “mendicancy”.
While one may disagree with some of the premises of the strategy to be compensated for providing a service to the rest of the world (sequestering carbon) is the very essence of what economic arrangements are all about.
While there are those that may want to continue to be free riders, there is rising awareness that each country will have to pay their way in the coming years. It is only a matter of time and it appears that the time has arrived.
With this preliminary matter behind us, we can proceed with the subject at hand, a subject that we have raised on more than one occasion in this space – the planning and launching of a new capital located in the interior of our country.
While the LCDS focuses on the economic opportunities of climate change in the near term, we cannot ignore the dangers that it poses to our country. And right up there among those dangers is the threat that rising seas pose to our capital.
In 2007, the World Bank released a study it had specially commissioned: “The Impact of Sea Level Rise on Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis”. Guyana was ubiquitous in the report which noted that the loss of ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets had recently been shown to be greater than that expected even a few years ago.
More ominously it stated that “recent research and expert opinion indicate that significant sea level rise may occur earlier than previously thought.” It was not a coincidence that a grant project to protect Guyana’s sea walls was the first to be approved under the WB Global Environmental Facility’s Special Climate Change.
The LCDS draft document has a very excellent graphic, captioned “Flood Map of Georgetown” and the text spells out the implications quite starkly: “Guyana’s coastal regions, including Georgetown, lie below sea level, and a large part of Guyana’s population (39 percent of its population and 43 percent of its GDP) live in regions exposed to significant flooding risk. As such, flooding is a major adaptation challenge for Guyana.”
However, the adaptation measures estimated at US$1billion only go towards ameliorative efforts such as buttressing sea-walls and conservancies; building codes, flood insurance etc.
The problem with this approach is that with Georgetown not only housing one-quarter of our entire population, but all our corporate and financial headquarters, Ministries, communications infrastructure, warehouses, etc. we are certainly putting too many of our eggs in a basket by the inexorably rising Atlantic Ocean. With all the best laid plans within the LCDS and without, we risk them all being washed away by the time they really start to deliver the expected goods.
We have to bite the bullet and this as good a time as any, maybe even better. The extra sensitivity to the impact of climate change with the UNFCCC coming up can also redound to our benefit.
Our new capital can take into consideration the imperatives of Low Carbon Development in all its ramifications and demonstrate to the world not only in industrial development, but in housing and shelter, that a poor country can lead the way to an environmentally sustainable future.
The new capital does not have to be constructed in one fell swoop. The gradual development of Boa Vista right across the Brazilian border is a good example and model to follow. Laid out decades ago, the city grew and continues to grow at a pace driven by the development of the surrounding countryside, but catalysed by the governmental activities housed there.
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