Guyana calls for clarity on World Bank’s forest money release

Jun 29, 2010 News

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– cites changing goalposts, benchmarks as concerns

The Government yesterday called on World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) to ensure that there is even-handedness in the timely release of monies for eligible countries involved in the fight to protect the world’s forest.
The comments were made yesterday by the country’s Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, at a key four-day meeting of the FCPF’s Sixth Meeting of the Participants Committee which was launched at the Pegasus Hotel.
More than 100 representatives from some 40 countries and organisations are attending the sessions which are supposed to update on progress made so far on the measures taken.
According to the Minister, Guyana’s formal engagement with the FCPF started since 2008.
“Since then, we have met and even exceeded in some cases, what we were required to do. We have completed multiple revisions to the Readiness Preparation Proposal (RPP) through a most open and transparent public process; we have also accommodated four due diligence missions by World Bank staff and have been advised that there may now be a follow up to the last mission of April 2010, in September 2010.”
Guyana is the first country to publicly declare that a democratically elected indigenous people’s organisation, the National Toshao’s Council, would lead the consultations in the indigenous villages with interpretation in the relevant local dialect.
“I am also proud to say that we will be allocating US$70,000 from the initial FCPF grant of US$200,000 to support this. Expectations, especially in indigenous communities are extremely high. It is indeed unfortunate that we were only able to have the grant agreement for the initial US $200,000 available for signing in May 2010, even though we were told that this would have been available soon after the Readiness Plan Idea Note was approved in June 2008.”
The official noted that while several countries received grants of US$200,000 earlier this year and Guyana is happy to learn of this “we obviously have concerns from a process point of view since these countries would have had their R-PIN’s approved after the Guyana RPIN.
Specifically, we would like to know if the same level of due diligence that is being applied to Guyana was also applied to these other partners. After all, we constantly talk of the need to ensure that there is transparency and consistency.”
Persaud stressed that Guyana is not being critical of the World Bank’s FCPF procedures.
“On the contrary, we reaffirm again our commitment to meeting the objectives of this initiative. But there must be a clearly defined process so that we know what the next steps are. We must not be subject to changing goalposts and benchmarks.
“For example, we must know what conditions we have to satisfy for disbursement of the remainder of the FCPF monies.”
Unless this is done in a transparent manner, it makes a mockery of the planning process; it also offers no motivation to pursue implementation of the RPP in the aggressive, comprehensive manner that the multiple stakeholders have indicated, Persaud pointed out.
“As an example, the LCDS awareness and consultations cost the Government in excess of US$200,000. The FCPF initial grant is in the sum of US$200,000. What guarantees can we get that the disbursement of the remaining US$3.4 M will be done in such a manner that ensures continuity of the process?
“I am also sharing this perspective to put other members FCPF on alert.”
He challenged the FCPF to provide guidance in a “more structured manner” so that countries are well informed and prepared for the next steps.
“It is also important for the FCPF to help catalyze the provision of additional funding to help countries not only in the implementation of the RPP but also in helping to integrate it in a country’s low carbon growth model. In this regard, I hope the discussions on multilateral co-operation on REDD+ and the update on the Carbon Fund will provide much needed guidance to countries.”
But a cautious Persaud warned that whilst stakeholders maintain a focus on Forest Carbon; they must try to establish linkages with other Environmental Services.
“Just as REDD+ is now considered as an integral component of a country’s national low carbon development path, in the same manner we must be prepared for the potential that at some point in time we will no longer be talking about forest carbon in isolation from other environmental services. We must be prepared for this eventuality.”
The Minister argued that Guyana is and always has been committed to the global consensus that reduction of global warming and climate change are absolutely necessary for the well-being and survival of the planet.
“For us in Guyana, the principles of REDD+ is not something new or novel to us- we have been implementing practices nationally that are consistent with REDD+ initiatives even before this concept became formalised.” He noted that it is important to point out also that initially, REDD+ was focused primarily on forests.
“However, as discussions progressed, the FCPF and the rest of the world realised that REDD+ could not be done in isolation; its scope was much wider than forests since it also had to address social issues, good governance, land use planning, capacity building across all sectors, drivers of deforestation and forest degradation and alternative low carbon livelihoods to combat these, clean energy – in short, REDD+ had to be part of country’s national development strategy.
Guyana has again been a pioneer in this respect.”

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