Ms. Bulkan has emerged again from her cocoon

I wish to refer to a letter in the Stabroek News under the caption “Almost nine per cent of Guyana’s budget this year hangs on the  POYRY -  Guyana Forestry Commission Report” in its issue of Thursday February 3, 2011.
Ms Janette Bulkan, a known critic of Guyana’s forestry sector, Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and the REDD + Initiative has again emerged from her cocoon for fresh air which our intact forests are providing as an ecological service to the world. Yet Ms Bulkan, a Guyanese who lives overseas and who does not care about Guyana’s development and the damaging effects of global climate change, wants to see the failure of Guyana’s LCDS, our strategy to fight against global climate change.
But the Government of Guyana has nothing to hide where the implementation of the LCDS is concerned and moreso, the funds received from Norway for such implementation will be effectively managed by the Guyana Redd + Investment Fund (GRIF), where the accountability and transparency in the usage of such funds are concerned.
Ms Bulkan lives abroad and is definitely not playing a constructive role in helping to promote Guyana’s LCDS, but rather a destructive one designed to have Norway block funds for the implementation of the LCDS. But the nature of human beings is of such that continued persistence in bad or irresponsible habits would one day result in a boomerang that would result in a sommersault moving away from retrogression to progression.
Ms Bulkan’s mischievous letter states “on this POYRY – GFC report hangs, in part almost nine per cent of Guyana’s budget this year, worth a close look by citizens of Guyana, and the taxpayers of Norway.” Unfortunately Ms Bulkan did not state in her letter what the US$70M, being forest funds from Norway, is going to be spent on and quite irresponsibly gave the false or bogus impression in her on-going attempts to mislead the people of Guyana and the international community about the accountability of such funds when she said that the Norwegian money being reflected in the national budget is “worth a close look by the citizens of Guyana and the taxpayers of Norway.” Such a claim by Ms Bulkan is nothing but ignorance on her part, since the reflection of Norwegian money in our budgetary process is one way of demonstrating transparency and accountability of such funds by the Government of Guyana.
Definitely, Ms Bulkan has a problem of interpreting the technical reports of the GFC report, since it is not known if she is actively engaged in the forestry sector of any country and its related field work. In this regard, it is said that theory without practice is useless since it carries limitations. This is worth having a closer look by the citizens of Guyana and the taxpayers of Norway.
But what is important to note by the international donor community is that Guyana’s LCDS has been subjected to both fair and unfair comments even by politicians and persons who oppose the government of Guyana. This is a healthy discourse on the LCDS. But what is also equally healthy is for international assessors to objectively analyse comments from stakeholders who oppose the government of Guyana so that objective analyses on Guyana’s LCDS and REDD + Initiative can always be given