VP Jagdeo challenges unfair rankings of Guyana, other small countries — says indexes ‘stacked against’ such nations

VICE-PRESIDENT, Dr

Bharrat Jagdeo has challenged unfair rankings of Guyana and other small countries, noting that indexes are often “stacked against” such nations although they might be performing well in the area under review.

The Vice-President pointed to those occurrences during a discussion as part of CERAweek 2023 held in Houston, Texas, United States of America by S&P global.

Jagdeo specifically referenced an environmental and sustainability index done by Yale and Columbia, which ranked Guyana at 105, while the United Kingdom was ranked number two.

“The United Kingdom is number two on the index and Guyana is 105, so just imagine how could you produce any matrix or set of matrices that a country that has cut down all of its primary forests will be number two in the world in terms of environmental sustainability,” he said.

As opposed to Guyana, where a majority of the country is covered with forests. Against this backdrop, he said that a lot of the indexes are stacked against small countries like Guyana.

One other index he referenced was the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index, which marks down countries with malaria.

In this case, he said coun- tries would already have a higher mark based on the size of their economy and as such countries like the US would be ranked number one all the time.

Guyana, Jagdeo related, is doing quite a lot in terms of sustaining its forest and pushing forward in environmental protection. Just last year, the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) issued the world’s first TREES credits to Guyana. This marked a milestone as the first time a country was issued carbon credits specifically designed for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets for successfully preventing forest loss and degradation — a process known as jurisdictional REDD+.

Following completion of an independent validation and verification process and approval by the ART Board of Directors, ART issued 33.47 million TREES credits to Guyana for the five-year period from 2016 to 2020.

Guyana, through this achievement, paved the way for other governments to explore carbon-market financing for success in protecting and restoring forests.

In January, Guyana received its first payment for carbon credits under an agreement with the Hess Corporation. Some US$75 million was paid and was the first payment in the agreement said to be worth a minimum of US$750 million up to 2030.

That payment was a result of the Government of Guyana’s commitment to recognising the role that Guyana’s forest plays in the development of the country and combatting climate change globally.

That process was guided by the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030, which sets out a vision to monetise the climate and ecosystem services provided by the country’s standing forest while also accelerating Guyana’s economic development.