Consuming fossils for food

Sep 04, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – “‘We cannot eat oil and gas’…South Africa fishermen, environmentalist force Govt. engagement over oil and gas impacts” (KN August 30). The position of South Africans applies everywhere, for Guyanese also cannot consume fossil fuels in place of food. This is the challenge and puzzle, which drives some citizens to rise up against the other side of oil, the sector’s consequences on human activity, on life itself. The visible face of oil in nations is government, and leaders are the ones that concerned citizens press for answers, honest answers.

We look at South Africa with symbolic protest unfolding, and see parallels in Guyana, as this country races ahead with oil and gas production. A small band of South Africans are publicly pressuring their Government to sit across the table and engage them with open talk, plain talk, and straight talk. It seems that we Guyanese have been clamouring for all of that right here, and all we have for our efforts are half-truths, short stories shortchanging locals, and what are nothing but rank deceptions. We are plastered daily with the glittering positives of our oil riches, which still leave the thoughtful inquiring, as to why we remain so trapped in poverty.

Any country anywhere would desire to be in our position, even though many of our brothers and sisters are hungry and hurting, chronically short of money to the daily trials to make ends meet. Our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is among the grandest globally, our economy is growing at a greater rate than the beanstalk (in the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale) that reaches the heights in no time; and our oil production per Guyanese is forecast to be the best in the world. In every statistical calculation, Guyana comes out as the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, and the best, over and over, and hands down. No wonder we are the envy of our peers, and the rest of world, and this is from the numbers from calculators and spreadsheets alone.

There are those numbers, and then there is reality. The former is magical, the latter representing local conditions is numbing, even frightening. The bottom line is as the South Africans say, and has been said here before: ‘we cannot eat oil and gas’ and ‘we can’t eat infrastructure. For one, our fishermen are not managing like before, and we should all know their alarming story of dwindling fish catch. It is alarming on several counts because the thinking of many citizens is that the Government of Guyana has not been clean in the narratives and postures that its principal spokespeople have shared.

It is alarming because our fisherfolk are hurting, with scarcity following and fish prices skyrocketing. It is doubly alarming because the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is claimed to have reported no connection of fishing woes, while ExxonMobil itself, in its documents, points to a possible relationship between its offshore operations and the struggling fishing sector. What is still more alarming is that the Hon. Minister of Agriculture made a swift sweet speech about the absence of any relationship (per the FAO) between fish and fossil fuel operations. Yet he has conspicuously lacked the convictions to present the same supporting FAO to persuade Guyanese, particularly fisherfolk, that the issue is as he boldly asserts.

Guyanese don’t have as many fish to work with, to choose from, or to eat, but they still don’t know the full truth. Citizens don’t have access to daily consumption basics, but there is this oil miracle with projections to prove how prosperous we are, and will be. Locals don’t know how to afford, or cope with, soaring cost-of-living, but they observe the massive billions spent on infrastructure, which they can’t consume.

South Africans call for “meaningful consultations” with Government, we haven’t had either meaningful or honest ones. South Africans press for constructive “co-existence” with upstream oil activities, Guyanese are still waiting on their Government. Engagement, consideration, recognition, and the human element are all spotlighted in South Africa. Honest Government, and caring leaders also, both of which Guyanese have never known, and even more today now that there is oil. People must always come before profits, as remote as that looks.

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