Leading forester slams Jagdeo’s IUCN’s appointment

Mar 23, 2012 News

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-says illegal logging increased under his Presidential watch

“A small number of Jagdeo’s crony capitalists and an increasing number of Chinese national log traders have become wealthy while prime commercial timbers are being overcut by 30 times the natural rate of regeneration.”

A leading forestry official is protesting a recent announcement that former President Bharrat Jagdeo has been appointed as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ‘High Level Envoy for Sustainable Development in Forest Countries’ and ‘Patron of Nature’.
IUCN, an organisation which is dedicated to finding pragmatic solutions to pressing environment and development challenges, last week announced Jagdeo’s appointment. The organisation cited Jagdeo’s work in climate change and his vision to “show how progress is possible”.

Also cited was his work on Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, which sets out on a national scale, a replicable model to protect Guyana’s 18 million hectares of forest, and to provide insights on how to curb the 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions that result from deforestation and forest degradation.
However, on Wednesday, John Palmer, Senior Associate, Forest Management Trust sent a letter to Stewart Maginnis, Head of the IUCN Forest Conservation Programme, protesting the appointment. Copies were also sent to Julia Marton-Lefevre, the Director General of IUCN, and the Acting Director of IUCN South America Regional office, in Quito, Ecuador.
According to Palmer, who has had 40 years in the forestry field, and would write regularly on the Guyana situation in local press, Jagdeo’s 12-year presidency saw a drastic increase in illegal logging and exports of unprocessed logs.
“I wish to place on record my protest at IUCN’s appointment of ex-President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana as IUCN High Level Envoy for Sustainable Development in Forest Countries. During his 12 years as President of Guyana, the National Forest Policy 1997 and National Forest Plan 2001 have been comprehensively ignored, exports to Asia of unprocessed logs from natural tropical rainforest in Guyana have increased greatly (against all national policies), illegal logging has increased and so has gold mining in forested areas and illegal trade in those logs has been facilitated by the prevalence of corruption originating at the apex of government.”
Cronyism
Palmer went further.
“A small number of Jagdeo’s crony capitalists and an increasing number of Chinese national log traders have become wealthy, while prime commercial timbers are being overcut by 30 times the natural rate of regeneration. All this information is in the local press in Guyana and could easily have been checked by IUCN.”
However, Palmer pointed out that there is no credible threat of deforestation in Guyana.
“Perhaps IUCN was swayed by the presence of Jagdeo at international meetings, calling for fast disbursement of donor funds for avoided deforestation? But in Guyana there is no credible threat of increased deforestation because the hinterland soils are among the most infertile in the world, not having been subject to rejuvenation by volcanism or marine transgression; the Guiana Shield landscape has been stable for millions of years and leaching has left impoverished soils.”
A proposal by prominent consultant, McKinsey & Company, in 2008 to Jagdeo, based on the notorious McKinsey carbon cost abatement calculations, utterly ignores the infertility of the soils and the associated absence of any agronomic trials to support the 90 per cent forest clearance and crop replacement suggested by McKinsey as the default proposition, the forestry official said. “Based on this 2008 study, Jagdeo called for international donors to provide him with around US$580M per year for avoided deforestation. Only Norway responded, apparently in furtherance of its commitment towards carbon neutrality by 2030, while continuing to pump oil and gas from its massive reserves.”
Palmer noted that although Norway has transferred US$70 million to a World Bank trust fund, no money has yet been disbursed from that fund, at least in part because the “Office of the President in Guyana has been incapable of putting together project proposals which are rational in terms of national development or which comply with WB environmental and social safeguards.”
The letter stressed that under ex-President Jagdeo, Guyana has made no explicit commitment to reduce emissions of carbon from deforestation or forest degradation, in spite of being one of the earliest countries to submit critical documentations.
“Cuss down” President
“No FCPF (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) money has been released to Guyana, which wanted the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to handle the transactions. Both IDB and World Bank have been ‘cussed down’, as they say in Guyana, because Jagdeo left his presidential office in December 2011 without receiving the FCPF and Norwegian money.”
Palmer also noted that there is a mass of allegations in the local press about the corrupt diversion of national budget and donor monies on instruction from the apex of government.
“So far, the new President, who appears to be still under Jagdeo’s direction, has cancelled only the most challenged of the disreputable contracts arranged by Jagdeo. My guess is that this will be the ‘sacrificial lamb’ to divert attention from much larger scams.”
The forester is referring to the US$15M road project to proposed Amaila Falls Hydro-Electric site, Region Eight, which was awarded to Synergy Holdings under controversial circumstances. That project was taken away from the contractor after he fell behind schedule and amidst much public outcry.
With the Guyana President constitutionally the one to appoint the senior judiciary, a flood of prosecutions for corruption is most unlikely against Jagdeo as he has immunity from criminal prosecution even after leaving office.
“The IUCN appointment is very handy to Jagdeo, allowing him to travel at IUCN expense, but you might check his travel arrangements/routes very carefully. I should also say that although only 47-years-old, Jagdeo draws a post-presidential pension which is essentially unlimited in amount and is much more generous than that of the US President.”
He urged IUCN to be more careful in future.
The IUCN supports scientific research, manages field projects all over the world and brings governments, non-government organisations, United Nations agencies, companies and local communities together to develop and implement policy, laws and best practice.
IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network – a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organisations, and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries.

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