Dear Editor,
There are more delays in Guyana’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) REDD+ Readiness project since there seems to be little or no movement in the implementation of this project by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in collaboration with the Natural Resources Ministry. On the occasion of Guyana’s 50th independence anniversary, I wrote regarding Amerindians being denied benefits due to slothfulness by the IDB in discharging its responsibilities and hence causing delays in resources being made available to the Amerindian people (approximately US$300,000 is budgeted for the National Toshaos Council (NTC) and Indigenous organisations). This placed a dark cloud over Amerindian celebration for Independence.
At the commencement of the 2016 Amerindian Heritage Month activities, NTC Chair Joel Fredricks made a passionate plea for this project to kick start and bring benefits to the Amerindian people of Guyana.
From then to now, a few administrative activities have been done but as far as I am concerned, no substantive progress has been made on the FCPF project at least not to the point of discharging benefits to Amerindians. This I believe is very unfortunate and the Amerindians continue to wait in frustration due to the IDB’s inaction and bureaucracy.
I believe the Ministry is making every effort to have the project on stream so where exactly is the bottle neck; one can only think it’s the IDB’s inability to properly administer this project and hence causing unnecessary delays and hardship to hard working Amerindians, whose hopes are fading with every passing day, so much that it will be another blue Christmas for Amerindians in the fight against climate change and its dangerous consequences.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Persaud
