Finance Minister says relocating coastal residents complicated, costly

Nov 11, 2021 News

Gov’t responds to climate change recommendations…

Kaieteur News – One day after the World Bank recommended that Guyana should invest bigger in sea defence or relocated its coastal population, Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh said that the wholesale relocating of coastal residents will be complicated and costly.

The purple shade represents Guyana’s low coastal plain.

While attending the sod turning of the US$32.2 million Hyatt Place Hotel located at Providence, East Bank Demerara, the Finance Minister was questioned on the recommendations that were embedded in the most recent World Bank report “360° Resilience: A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks.”
While speaking with reporters, Dr. Singh said, “The coast comprises the vast majority of Guyana’s population, the vast majority of Guyana’s economic activities, the vast majority of Guyana’s administrative structure, our parliament, institutions, corporate headquarters and so on…moving away from the coast in a wholesale manner is going to be prohibitively costly and complicated.”
He noted that the reality is that a lot of the country’s economic activities are located on the coast, and acres of agriculture lands. As such, Dr. Singh stated, “So moving away from the coast in a wholesale manner is not by any stretch of the imagination a simple or trivial thing.”
Kaieteur News had reported that in light of the escalating drastic impacts of climate change, including ocean and sea level rises, Guyana has been identified as one of three Caribbean countries that needs to urgently, in the absence of appropriate funding and asset management systems for adequately maintaining coastal protection infrastructure—consider alternative strategies, including natural barriers and managed relocation.
The World Bank warned that Guyana must invest better in sea defence or relocate coastal residents as it listed Georgetown among nine cities to be flooded by 2030.
Nonetheless, on Wednesday, the Finance Minister alluded to the fact that this is not the first time the concern is raised and noted that it is also not new to those occupying lands in the coastal regions on Guyana. According to the Minister, Guyana has been doing its part in addressing the issues in multiple ways to protect its coastland and the activities, which take place along that belt.
Moreover, the World Bank report stated that climate change will in future damage the coastal infrastructure and sandy beaches; sea level rise is expected to increase coastal flooding and accelerate coastline erosion.
The World Bank report released on Tuesday comes on the heels of a similarly worrying report done by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which noted that Georgetown—Guyana’s Capital City—and eight other cities worldwide are forecast to be under water by 2030, due to the rising sea level stemming from climate change.

Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh. [DPI photo]

It was reported that the area projected to be under water by 2030 is where 90 percent of Guyana’s population resides.
For centuries, Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, has relied on sea walls – or, more accurately, one gigantic, 280-mile long sea wall, for protection.
The sea wall functions as Georgetown’s main defence because most of the coastline is between 0.5 and one metre below high tide levels. With more than half of the country’s population in danger, it was stated that the country will need to bolster its sea wall substantially if Georgetown’s central areas are to avoid massive damage.
The Climate Central map was created based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2021 report. According to that report, Guyana’s initial national communication to the UNFCCC states that the sea level, along the Atlantic Coast, is projected to rise by about 40 centimetres by the end of the twenty-first century. This means the sea is rising at a rate of two – four millimetres each year, counting the entire century.

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