Preparation begins for Guyana’s Climate Resilience Strategy

Dec 15, 2015 News

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Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, yesterday said that Guyana’s Climate Resilience Strategy and Action Plan (CRSAP) will put to rest any leeway of disaster due to a lack of proper planning.
Harmon was addressing the final stakeholders’ consultation workshop for the CRSAP at the Regency Suite Hotel in Hadfield Street yesterday.
He stated that the newly concluded Climate Resilience Strategy and Action Plan document further advances Guyana’s vision for a green economy and strengthens work done over the years in the area of climate change and goes on to identify key climate risks and priority resilience building actions.
The CRSAP is being implemented by the Office of Climate Change (OCC) on behalf of the government, with support from Norway. The facilitating entity for the project is Conservation International Guyana while Acclimatize, a UK based consultancy firm, has been contracted to develop the action plan.
The action plans aim to provide a comprehensive strategy that creates the overarching framework for climate change adaptation and resilience building in Guyana. Thus the workshop is set up to present key aspects of the CRSAP to stakeholders; to allow for additional stakeholder feedback on climate risk and resilience measures and validation of resilience measures; to provide a space for additional stakeholder contributions to the CRSAP and to facilitate consensus-building with respect to the CRSAP for Guyana.
Harmon stated that the document is truly an all-inclusive, futuristic policy document that will for the next five years, steer the country on advancing projects in sectors that are prone to extreme climate effects: Agriculture, Drainage and Irrigation, Health and Sea Defence.
He added that the plan also provides a set of building actions that will enhance capacity for national adaptation planning and becoming climate resilient.
“I therefore urge you to engage fully on the key tenets of this document to ensure that they are consistent with our reality,” he said, insisting that it will ensure that projects could stand the severity of extreme weather events.
“I am very confident that our national policy for facing the issues of Climate change in their entirety will put to rest any possibility of catastrophe due to the lack of proper planning. I am convinced that the action plan that will engage our attention here today is a positive step in the right direction for Guyana with regard to climate change,” he stated.
The CRSAP project follows the recommendations contained in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change National Adaptation Planning Technical Guidelines.
To date, stakeholders have actively participated in key initiatives under the project including the inception mission on November 4, 2014, the stocktaking for National Adaptation Planning workshop over two days from November 27, 2014, through electronic and telephone exchanges associated with a request for information in January 2015 via the Climate Vulnerability, Risk and Resilience workshop from 8-10 April, 2015, the Priority Concept Note Consultations from April 2015 and through Policy Shapers’ meeting from September 21-25, 2015.
The final two-day stakeholders’ workshop will see presentations of findings from the project and providing opportunities for stakeholders to provide inputs to the CRSAP before it is finalized and submitted for Cabinet approval.
Harmon stated that without immediate action the impacts of Climate Change, which is already manifested through increased rainfall and other environmental anomalies, will become more frequent and occur with greater intensity.
“This will have lethal effects on every sector of our economy and undermine our growth prospects. Therefore, the ‘do nothing’ alternative is not an option for us,” he charged.
He further said while awareness on the impacts of climate change is admirable, knowledge without an understanding of how to reduce risks posed by the changing climate is counter-productive and will literally ‘sink’ the country.
Equally, he said it is important for Guyana to have a clear understanding of its vulnerability vis-a-vis our wider development context and work to bridge them in order to boost the well-being of citizens as the positive impacts of development projects would be maximized, which could in turn reduce impacts of Climate change for all people.
He added that the plan will also help the country achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and other internationally agreed development goals without compromising the environment and the country’s natural resource base.
Recently, the government initiated the Green Bartica Project to create Guyana’s first green town. It is their aim that lessons learnt from the project would serve as guidance for the scaled up National Green Economy Plan and possibly a replica for the wider Caribbean Region.

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