Protecting our patrimony

Jun 04, 2017 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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By HE David Granger
(on the 5th Anniversary of the Protected Areas Commission, May 24, 2017)

Imagine Guyana without its mud-lands on the coastland, its hinterland grasslands, its

wetlands, its majestic highlands, its islands and lake-land of the Essequibo, its rainforests, its rivers and its waterfalls. What a barren, blighted and boring place it would be!
Guyana, by the grace of God, is not barren or blighted. It is a beautiful, blissful and bountiful land. These very geographical places are teeming with animal and plant life. These are the habitats of our giants – the anaconda, arapaima, armadillo, bat, caiman, capybara, eagle, jaguar, tapir and many more.
Guyana is located in the centre of the vast Guiana Shield which, with its pristine forests and largely uncontaminated aquatic and other intact ecosystems, is essential to enriching and replenishing earth’s biodiversity.
The Guiana Shield’s biodiversity provides ecosystem services such as food, freshwater, medicinal, timber and non-timber products. It aids in the regulation of the water cycle, water quality and pollination.
Its biodiversity reduces soil degradation and enhances soil nutrition. Its forests provide storage for carbon and mitigate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. Its environment is important to the earth and must be protected.
The Cooperative Republic of Guyana, therefore, inspired by the vision of protecting its biodiversity, signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity twenty-five years ago. The Convention (at Article 8 (a)), obligates contracting parties, “as far as possible and as appropriate,” to:
…establish a system of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken to ensure biological diversity.
The Protected Areas Commission Act of 2011, nearly two decades later, provided for the establishment of a Protected Areas Commission of Guyana that is tasked with establishing managing, maintaining, promoting and expanding the protected area system. It is required, inter alia, to:
… identify and evaluate areas that are of ecological significance and make recommendations for the establishment of new protected areas.
The Protected Areas Commission has a huge responsibility. It has played, so far, a defining role in identifying, evaluating and managing the protected areas system. The Commission’s work has furnished the framework for establishing the ecological and environmental integrity of those dedicated geographical spaces which Guyana needs to achieve the long-term conservation of its ecosystem.
The Protected Areas Commission is expected to play an essential role in the transition to Guyana’s becoming a ‘green state’ – one that involves development at the household, community, regional, national and international levels. The ‘green state’ development strategy will allow:
– projection of the protected areas system into every region;
– protection of wildlife and the preservation of our territory; and the
– promotion of eco-tourism and eco-educational tourism.
The Protected Areas system will be regionalised countrywide. Protected areas will be established on the coastland and the hinterland. Every region will be a ‘green’ region, administered by a ‘green’ capital town and, eventually, will have at least one legally-designated, regional protected area.
The establishment of these areas will devolve greater responsibility for conservation and environmental protection, to our regions. It will allow, also, for every citizen to exercise stewardship over his or her region’s protected area.
Biodiversity conservation is the cornerstone of Guyana’s ‘green’ agenda which places emphasis on the protection and preservation of our luxuriant flora and abundant biodiversity.
The Commission’s work, therefore, is expected to intensify the pace of our transition towards the ‘green state.’ Conservation:
– ensures sovereignty over our national patrimony and is one of the means in which we exercise control over our territory;
– ensures the survival of the Guiana Shield of which Guyana is a part and which, as one of the world’s last remaining intact areas of pristine rainforests, is home to a significant portion of the world’s known biodiversity and freshwater supplies;
– ensures that these forests provide climate mitigation services to the earth and facilitates regulating services such as water storage and pollination; and
– ensures environmental sustainability by preventing the destruction of natural habitats and the degradation of the land.
Guyana is committed to achieving the target set under United Nations Convention on Biodiversity. It is committed to placing at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas under a system of protection. It will, under the nationally determined commitments of the Paris Agreement on climate change, also, place an additional two million hectares under conservation.
The Protected Areas Commission, by enlarging, extending and expanding the National Protected Areas System, will ensure that these targets are met.
The Protected Areas Commission will work with the Department of the Environment to identify areas to be placed under conservation and protection in fulfillment of our international commitments.
The Protected Areas Commission will be expected to be the engine of ‘green’ growth. The success of the ‘green’ agenda will be determined by the efficacy of the Commission’s work.
The Protected Areas Commission, as it celebrates this significant anniversary, is encouraged to ensure that, for the good of generations yet unborn and for the earth itself, Guyana does become the ‘green state’ that we sing proudly about:
[a land] of rivers and plains
Made rich by the sunshine, and lush by the rains,
Set gem-like and fair, between mountains and seas…”

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