Minister to be blamed if Guyana loses US$20M from Norway

Nov 04, 2013 News

– APNU MP

The government this past week admitted that it could lose an estimated US$20M from its forest-saving deal with Norway and according to A Partnership for National Unity’s Joseph Harmon, Minister of Natural Resources, Robert Persaud is to be blamed.
The possible loss of the funds comes as a result of increased deforestation in Guyana.

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Robert Persaud

In laying the blame at the feet of Minister Persaud, Harmon said that it is his Ministry that is responsible for the issuance of the various licences to log and mine in Guyana’s vast forest.
According to Harmon, it is Persaud’s responsibility to ensure that lawful mining and logging activities are kept within sustainable and agreed criteria.
He said too that when it comes to illegal mining or logging, it is also Persaud’s responsibility to ensure that the laws are enforced and measures put in place in order to curb it, “so, yes, it is his fault.”
Under the five-year forest-saving deal with Norway, Guyana needed to monitor the amount of the forest cut down, and to keep it at a level agreed to by the two countries.
Once Guyana kept its end of the deal, it would bank US$250 million, but now a chunk of that could be lost.
The reason is that under the agreement with Norway, the number of trees being chopped down, or what is called deforestation, was set at 0.07 per cent, but a monitoring and evaluation exercise found that last year, the level of deforestation was 0.079 per cent, more than allowed under the agreement between the two countries.
When that percentage is converted into actual forest loss, it means that more than 36,000 acres of forests were cut down in 2012 and that was about 9,000 acres more than that cut down the year before.
In announcing the possible loss of money from Norway, Persaud said, “If what we have is accurate…somewhere in the range of about US$20M or thereabouts could be lost.”
The Minister said that a University contracted by the Guyana Forestry Commission, plus an independent team from Norway has to verify the report and the increased level of deforestation has to be confirmed before it could be said with certainty that the Norwegian funds could be lost.
Jagdesh Singh, Deputy Commissioner of the Guyana Forestry Commission, said that those two verification processes could be completed by the end of this month.
The new deforestation figures are contained in Guyana’s third national report on deforestation rates under the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system – a mechanism under REDD+, the UN programme for saving the world’s rainforest.