Guyana’s LCDS and REDD+ model promoted at IUCN World Congress in Korea

Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy and REDD+ model has been cited by former President Jagdeo at the IUCN World Congress in Jeju, South Korea as one of the working examples to achieve conservation of nature and address global climate change while creating livelihood opportunities at the national and local level. Mr. Jagdeo was one of the feature speakers at the first in a series of World Leaders Dialogues at the Congress and spoke on the topic Nature + Climate: can nature save us?  The forum recognized that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only long term answer to stabilizing the global climate but as a global climate agreement remains elusive nature based solutions such as REDD+ are increasingly being recognized as urgent priorities for affirmative climate action.

In the discussions, Mr. Jagdeo recognized the important role the scientific community has played in bringing the issue of climate change to international attention and recognition but emphasized that we need to move now to addressing the issue and finding solutions and this requires collective action by the public and private sector, civil society and the academia and research community. He emphasized the important role of protecting forests for its ecosystem services and biodiversity and that this represents the largest climate change action and an immediate low-cost abatement solution. Mr. Jagdeo pointed out the need to scale up pilot initiatives to national scale models and cited the work of Guyana through its LCDS and REDD+ model with Norway as a working example of helping to address some of the issues surrounding making REDD+ work and giving the assurances that are needed by both developed and developing countries in areas such as sovereignty over forests, financial accountability, social and environmental safeguards and measuring and addressing the drivers of deforestation.

The session was moderated by Ms. Sally Ranney, Journalist and IUCN Patron and among the panelists were Mr. Henri Djombo, Minister of Sustainable Development, Forestry Economy and the Environment, Republic of Congo; Dr. Maan-ee Lee, Former Minister of Environment of Republic of Korea, Ms. Ruksana Mirza, Head of Sustainable Development, HOLCIM and Mr. Marvin Odum, President of Shell Oil Company, Director Upstream Americas of Royal Dutch Shell.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress is the world’s largest and most important conservation event held every four years. The 2012 Congress is being held in Jeju, South Korea and brings together leaders from government, the public sector, non-governmental organizations, business, UN agencies and social organizations to discuss, debate and decide solutions for the world’s most pressing environment and development issues. Mr. Jagdeo is attending in his dual role capacity as IUCN High Level Envoy for Sustainable Development in Forest Countries and IUCN Patron for Nature. Also attending is Adviser to the President and Head of the Office of Climate Change Mr. Shyam Nokta who is also Chair of the Board of the Protected Areas Commission.

While at the Conference, former President Jagdeo and Mr. Nokta also had meetings with the new CEO of GEF Ms. Naoko Ishii and Minister Yoo Young Soo from the Korean Environment Ministry. Korea is one of the global leaders on green economy and has taken the lead on the establishing of the Global Green Growth Institute to which Guyana is a participant member. At the recently held Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Guyana joined sixteen other industrialized, emerging economies and developing countries in signing the agreement on the establishment of the Global Green Growth Institute which is dedicated to pioneering a new model of environmentally sustainable economic growth, known as “green growth.”

Mr. Jagdeo was also guest speaker at the Conservation International’s 10 year anniversary of the Global Conservation Fund (GCF). The GCF was the source of CI’s financial support for Guyana’s Conservation Trust Fund that was established with a contribution of U.S$3.5 Million and which will support Guyana’s efforts to establish and management its Protected Areas System. This endowment will be rolled into the statutory National Protected Areas Trust Fund under the Guyana’s Protected Areas Act.

While at the Congress Mr. Jagdeo will participate in the meeting of the IUCN Patrons that will review IUCN achievements to date and consider its new Programme of activities for the next 4 years.