Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit 2025: Guyana calls for support to avert global biodiversity disaster

…“We can be wildly successful if we stay focused.” – VP at summit

The Government of Guyana is urging increased political and financial backing – both locally and internationally – to prevent a looming biodiversity disaster and fully realise the targets outlined in the country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030.

Speaking at the Global Biodiversity Summit on Wednesday, the Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, highlighted that while Guyana remains a global leader in forest preservation and climate resilience, achieving the ambitious goals of the LCDS requires sustained support.
“We’re here now to look at how we get political support for the initiative, how we can marshal all of these things that have been done before and that we will do into clear, concise arguments that will allow us to get more political support globally. And the political support is necessary if we are going to achieve the target of 30 per cent by 2030.”
“For it to be effective, we need to be focused. I think we can be wildly successful if we are focused. Like, we had to keep that focus very, very tight when we were building our model with all sorts of distractions coming along the way. But if you keep the focus tight, we can come up with a product that would be useful, we can get the political buy-in, and we can get financial flows at a scale that would allow us to avert a biodiversity disaster,” the VP said.
The Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030 is a national framework aimed at fostering a low-carbon economy and sustainable development in Guyana and the globe, reinforcing the need to preserve and protect the planet.
According to the vice president, Guyana’s biodiversity ambitions are vast, pointing out that the initial US$250 million forest carbon deal with Norway laid the groundwork for Guyana’s climate and biodiversity finance framework. That deal – once hailed globally – sold forest carbon at US$5 per tonne and was intended to fund key projects, including a biodiversity centre that was never completed due to several challenges.
To confront the challenges posed, Jagdeo emphasised that the strategy moving forward must consider targeted biodiversity protection rather than requiring full jurisdictional scale like carbon credits.
Against this backdrop, he called on international partners to help strengthen legislation, frameworks, and technical capabilities in countries with limited capacity, acknowledging that many developing nations have strong intent but require institutional support to deliver effective biodiversity conservation.
“For this to work, we have to have international collaboration. We’re signing an MOU with Yale. People have to feel that the work is done and that they can benefit from the work. The global community would benefit from the work, but they too can benefit from this work, and it would not come at the expense of their future prosperity… I just don’t want us to get caught up back in the science all the time. We’ve had a lot of science done. We need to do the science. A lot of the countries, the developing countries who may be in here, have very limited capacity to strengthen their legislation, the framework. We have to assist them in doing that. We have to assist them in many initiatives,” he explained.
The inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit 2025 is being held in Georgetown from July 23 to 25.
Through the Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit, Guyana is looking to rally and lead efforts to preserve and protect the world’s diminishing biodiversity resources, which President Irfaan Ali says is a necessity.
The inaugural summit is a strategic two-day event that brings together world leaders, biodiversity experts, key stakeholders from various sectors, and the local community in Guyana to have tough conversations on biodiversity preservation.
Among regional leaders in Guyana for the summit are Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gonsalves, President of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader Corona, and former Colombian President Iván Duque.