Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo today emphasised the importance of ensuring the involvement of locals as well as the international community in advancing Guyana’s biodiversity initiative model and building on past and ongoing strategies.
He was at the time addressing officials at the launch of Guyana’s inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit, held at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre in Georgetown.
“It is about the focus, I was thinking about what resonates most with whom. That’s how it’s going to be effective in the model building,” he said.
“The next issue is about involvement of locals in the solution, and making it clear that sustainability cannot come at the expense of prosperity. The two have to be linked together,” he continued.
Dr. Jagdeo further emphasised that in order for the biodiversity strategies Guyana is advancing to work, international collaboration is necessary, as he pointed to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Guyana and the Yale Center for the establishment of an International Centre for Biodiversity Research to advance biodiversity efforts as an example.
“We are here to get financial support for the initiatives. So two things — political support and financial support…it’s important that we understand what resonates most with whom,” he said.
He added that it is important also for the global community to benefit from the work, noting that it must not come at the expense of their future.
“We have to make sure that we keep the focus and that we observe some principles that we can sell the model on. The next thing is that we can get buried in the science. Lots of work has been done, great quality work, for decades on biodiversity and its preservation. So if we are not careful, we get buried in the science,” Dr. Jagdeo warned.
He noted too that a lot of developing countries have limited capacity to strengthen their legislative framework, and Guyana has been able to provide assistance.
“This is a modest beginning for me, but it’s bigger than what we’ve had before. It’s because of the passion, leadership by our President and many others that we’re here today,” Dr. Jagdeo said.
