Pres Ali bemoans inequity of global policy-making on climate action, financing

President Dr Irfaan Ali has reiterated his dissatisfaction with the unfair manner in which developing countries are treated when it comes to climate action and financing for adaptation measures.
During a recent interview with the New York Times, the Head of State spoke about how Guyana is balancing its nascent oil and gas industry while being a global leader in climate change.

Responding to a question about whether the global community is actually making the financing available so that developing nations like Guyana can undergo the energy transition, President Ali declared outright, “Absolutely not.”.
“It’s ridiculous sometimes to listen to the pledges, because none of the pledges is actualised,” the Guyanese leader added.
He explained during the Q&A-styled interview that when developing countries are asked to adopt measures to limit their impact on the climate, they have to transition to cleaner and renewable energy while still grappling with major issues like energy equality, energy poverty and energy access.
This, he added, is further compounded by developing nations also being asked to function in a digital world.
“So, they are already suffering from immense poverty because they were never able to adapt to the Industrial Revolution. Now, they are moving into the digital revolution with AI (artificial intelligence) that they will never be able to catch up with. And at the same time, basic things like clean water and access to electricity – major segments of the population don’t have this. This is something that has severely impacted the quality and equity of global policy-making. And there is no clear path and no clear plan as to how we are going to address these issues,” President Ali contended.

Calling out developed countries’ failure to fulfil pledge
The Guyanese Head of State, in the past at global platforms, had called out developed countries over their failure to fulfil the US$100 billion per year pledge to assist developing nations’ fight against climate change and to achieve sustainable development.
In the absence of this critically needed climate financing, Guyana has been pursuing oil production offshore, where some 11 billion barrels of oil have been discovered and more exploration activities are ongoing, to support the development of the country as well as its energy transition plans.
But even with its burgeoning oil industry, Guyana still remains at net zero emissions, mainly due to the country’s massive forest cover. In fact, through the locally crafted and globally recognised Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS 2030), Guyana has been earning revenues for keeping its forests intact.
Back in 2022, Guyana was issued with 33.4 million tonnes of ART-certified carbon credits – the first jurisdictional-scale programme in the world. The country has since entered into a historic US$750 million deal with United States energy major Hess Corporation for the sale of the high-quality carbon credits during the period 2016 to 2030. The Government has committed to inject 15 per cent of all proceeds from this carbon credit deal directly into local Indigenous villages to finance their development.
Moreover, President Ali has recently embarked on a mission to put biodiversity preservation and conservation on the table. In fact, Guyana recently hosted the successful inaugural Global Biodiversity Summit and will be presenting the outcomes from that summit to the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP30 is slated to be held in Brazil from November 10 to 21, 2025. Set for the city of Belém, in the Brazilian State of Pará, this will be the first time the global climate change summit is held in the Amazon region, the world’s largest tropical rainforest – parts of which run through Guyana.
With a tropical forest that takes up 86 per cent of its landmass, Guyana has the second-highest percentage of forest cover on earth and one of the lowest deforestation rates. The forest stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon and sequesters more than 153 million tonnes annually.
But with many developing countries still experiencing energy insecurity and energy poverty, President Ali had previously pointed out that a world without fossil fuel cannot happen by 2050 – an objective set out in the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero.

”We can’t be naïve”
This position was iterated by the Guyanese leader during the New York Times interview.
“For us, it’s quite different… We have this standing forest that has been there for all our lives, which the world does not see a value in. It’s easy. If the world says, “We’re going to pay a fair-market rate for the forests that have ecological and biodiversity sources that also have a price,” then it will allow countries like ours that are forested to then use the revenue from that to protect our land, to invest in health, to invest in education, human development and infrastructure, to remain competitive and to build a strong and resilient economy.”
“So, the moral question is: Who can produce what the world needs in the least environmentally damaging way? Because let’s be clear on this too, we can’t be naïve. The world will need fossil fuel a long time into the future,” Dr Ali stated.
According to the Guyanese leader, if Guyana did not have the revenues it is now earning from its oil and gas industry, then the country would have been thrown into heavy debt.
“It would have meant destruction. It would have meant our economy just falling apart. Guyana is a new oil producer, but we are using the resource to finance our energy transition, to build resilient infrastructure, to support the region that we are in, and to invest in livelihood options that will keep our forest standing, which stores many gigatons of carbon. We’re investing in solar farms, hydro, natural gas, wind and biomass, all aimed at transitioning to a low-emission energy grid. We are building off-grid systems, solar farms, and wind farms for the hinterland community, where the Indigenous people live,” President Ali noted during the interview.