LCDS - transparent or not?

LCDS – transparent or not?

Aug 25, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
I have been following the online discussions on the LCDS and trying to learn as much as possible about the process involved in developing this strategy.
I would like to commend Janette Bulkan for undertaking the recently concluded 10 part series for the SN, a great crash course which I have since uploaded for easier access at http://www.jouvay.com/lcds/.
Given the public commitment to consultation and information dissemination, might I recommend to the LCDS office or the international organisations that help support it, to commit the relatively minor resources necessary to transform the valuable data contained in this series into an educational resource for the country that can be broadcast and shared in various media.

As a regular visitor to the LCDS website, my own take is that although it is filled with reports from the various consultations, it offers little or nothing to acquaint the general public with the various issues with which we must make informed decisions.
I am also writing to request clarification on a few matters. Firstly, given the investment at this time in consultations with the Guyanese public, I would be grateful if someone could explain the proposed management structure for the LCDS, and in particular why it appears to include three bodies that are all directly linked to the government, instead of making space for non-governmental organisations/civil society to be centrally involved in ways that encourage citizen participation.

Secondly, I understand and fully applaud the importance of transparency that has been stressed throughout this process. To this end, over a week ago, I submitted an online request on the official LCDS website simply asking how much the McKinsey consultancy group was paid for work done on the LCDS report.
To date there has been no response from the “LCDS Information Centre”. Last week Wednesday when I received e-mails about the LCDS consultation on capacity building, I e-mailed the contact persons from The Consultancy Group on the flyer with my inquiry and was told that they would forward my question to the Office of Climate Change as they did not know the answer.
Not knowing where else to go for answers to a question I am assuming is a legitimate one (given the emphasis on transparency noted above) I finally submitted a request to the Clinton Foundation.
I would be most grateful if those with the answers can remind us precisely what the McKinsey group was contracted to do, let us know how much they were paid (perhaps this information has been published before, if so can we be directed to where we might find out), and what was delivered.
I went through every document on the LCDS website and if someone can show me the full McKinsey Report I would be grateful.

Finally, I would like to propose that the transparent submission forum discussed in the conceptual framework of the LCDS (http://www.lcds.gov.gy/images/stories/Documents/conceptualframework.pdf) be made available for feedback from those unable to attend public consultations currently underway. The minutes of the LCDS steering committee (is there a reason why the educational sector is not represented on this committee?) suggest that the LCDS information was translated into at least two, perhaps five different Amerindian languages.
The LCDS consultation and awareness session reports indicate that Guyanese would like to understand the LCDS better and that these materials will be developed.
Are these documents finished and if so, can they also be uploaded to the website?
If they have not been completed, it seems unfair to have these sessions when people don’t understand what is being proposed and are even being referred to the “McKinsey report” when asking such questions as how the numbers were derived.

We can end up with sessions that are less consultations and more information dissemination, which is not what has been publicly promised or supported.
Many Guyanese have worked tirelessly and with little or not recognition for the things being proposed by the LCDS that can protect our forested lands and forest communities.
For example, to my knowledge WWF-Guianas was the only agency that actually invested in mercury monitoring equipment in the country over the last five years. Similarly, Conservation International – Guyana, is as far as I am aware the only agency that has invested in the training and equipping of Amerindian communities to start their own water quality monitoring programmes.
The recent government attention to environmental and capacity building issues because of the LCDS will hopefully see some more attention being paid to, and investment in local training programmes, facilities, and formal and informal curriculum that truly complement our natural resources development needs.
Maya Trotz