Leaders within Indigenous and hinterland communities in Guyana will now have access to additional funding to propel their development with the US$22.5M in carbon credit funds that were paid to Guyana.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has since announced that some 240 Indigenous communities will receive payments ranging from $10 million to $35 million.
Community development, however, cannot be done without great accountability for these funds, which have been earned through the sale of Guyana’s forest carbon credits to Hess Corporation. Therefore, we support the Vice President when he said to leaders gathered at the Arthur Chung Conference Center (ACCC) this week: “You can’t draw down this money until you name your Finance Committee and complete your Village Development Plan, (which) must be endorsed by the village, and share the minutes of the meeting in which the village endorsed the Development Plan.”
The Inter-American Development Bank, in one of its reports, had stated that Indigenous Peoples represent almost 10% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean – 53 million people from over 800 cultures. Despite their cultural richness, the IDB has said, they are 2.7 times more likely to live in extreme poverty than non-Indigenous people, and have less access to essential public services, quality education, formal employment, and financial services.
Here, in Guyana, much progress has been made over the years to minimize that gap. Therefore, with these new funds, in which only 15 per cent of US$150 million is earmarked for distribution to these villages, there must be community participation to determine the development projects.
If one can recall, immediately after taking office in 2020, the new Amerindian Affairs Minister conducted a brief review of the work done by the then Indigenous Peoples’ Ministry during 2015 to early 2020, in relation to land titling and other development-related issues for Indigenous peoples. What was found was not surprising, compared to the other sectors of development under the then APNU/AFC Administration.
Like in other sectors, no real effort had been made to embark on projects which would have resulted in real development occurring in communities. For example, based on media reports, the Minister discovered that the unit designated to fast-track the Amerindian land-titling project had produced little to no results while exhausting large sums of money. As a result, communities are still waiting for their titles to be issued.
In essence, there is little outcome to show for the work done within the last five years in relation to the land-titling issue. It was reported that, for almost one year, the project had been put on pause, as the Amerindian Land Titling Board did not facilitate any meetings to discuss or move forward with their plans.
The new Government will now have to return to the process and bring the project back on track, as Amerindians have been waiting for years to have their lands demarcated and titled. The Amerindian Land Titling process was facilitated by the Amerindian Act of 2006, which catered for land titling and extensions. This led to establishment of the Amerindian Land Titling Project, which commenced in 2013 and was scheduled to end in 2016. This was a US$10.7 million project.
It is clear there was the absence of a proper vision by the previous Coalition Government in relation to Amerindian development. Prior to 2015, several crucial development-related projects were started under the PPP/C Government, but were either put on hold or disbanded altogether after 2015. Besides land titling and demarcation, there were quite a few other initiatives aimed at improving and reviving village economies, improving healthcare delivery, improving access to education, providing electricity through the distribution of solar panels etc.
It is quite unfortunate that the then Coalition Government did not see it fit to continue some of the projects in Amerindian communities, even though many of those projects were proven to be successful, and funding had been allocated to see their completion.
That said, we believe that the relevant Ministries, such as Amerindian Affairs and Labour, along with the representative Amerindian bodies and responsible NGOs, also have a role to play in seeing the development of Amerindian communities.
