UK to join President Ali’s Global Biodiversity Alliance – outgoing British diplomat

Outgoing British High Commissioner to Guyana, Jane Miller, has announced that the United Kingdom will be joining the Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) – an initiative crafted by President Dr Irfaan Ali that seeks to accelerate international financing and technical expertise to conserve the world’s biodiversity resources.
“…the UK has made a decision to join His Excellency’s Global Biodiversity Alliance. We believe this is a really important initiative for slowing down the global biodiversity loss, bringing great people together, and bringing institutions, countries, and organisations to really see progress,” High Commissioner Miller revealed while speaking at a farewell reception on Friday evening at her residence in Georgetown.

The British envoy will wrap up a four-year tenure in Guyana at the end of the month. She referenced the strong partnership that the UK and Guyana share – something that will be further strengthened through the Biodiversity Alliance.
“You have the most beautiful country… I’ve had the privilege of being in every region of the country, and that has been a real highlight of my time here. Seeing the country’s incredible biodiversity, meeting the people, seeing the rivers, the rainforests, and the way that you do your sustainable forestry, you do the most incredible job in this country. And it has been an honour of my career to spend time here and to learn about what’s going on. And it feels right that we should join the Global Biodiversity Alliance,” the outgoing diplomat stated.
President Ali is expected to travel to the UK later this week and will be engaging officials there to have further discussions on the country’s plans to join the Alliance.

The Global Biodiversity Alliance
The GBA is a new platform launched by President Ali last year that seeks to elevate biodiversity on global agendas. Stemming from the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit held in Georgetown in July 2025, the GBA Secretariat will be set up in Guyana and will work with key stakeholders to advance its priorities, which include the designation of new protected areas and securing the necessary funding and resources for managing them effectively.
At the end of last year’s summit year, 14 countries had joined the Alliance as founding members and agreed on a concrete action plan. The first meeting of the founding members will be hosted this year ahead of the second summit.
President Ali had previously indicated that he intends to significantly increase the Alliance’s membership by the 2026 summit. In fact, Dr Ali took his biodiversity conservation model to world leaders during the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) summit held in neighbouring Brazil last November.

On the side-lines of COP30, the Guyanese leader appeared on a panel discussion alongside regional leaders, during which he explained that the Global Biodiversity Alliance aims to build an international coalition with every stakeholder given a seat at the table.
“In the last two days, we have spent a lot of time talking to different leaders and organisations on the Global Biodiversity Alliance. And I am convinced that by the time we get to the second summit in Guyana, we want to have at least 60 countries signing on. We are pushing hard at this. We want everyone, every voice, to be part of this,” Ali had noted on the side-lines of COP30.
While in Brazil, the Head of State engaged leaders from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany, Ireland and Norway on signing on to the Alliance.
Citing the fact that more than 70 per cent of the world’s biodiversity has already been lost, President Ali had impressed on world leaders the importance of putting this ecosystem on the COP agenda.
“According to the WWF Living Climate Report of 2024, there has been a catastrophic 73 per cent decline in biodiversity…over the last 50 years. Freshwater populations have suffered the heaviest decline, falling by 85 per cent, followed by terrestrial, 69 per cent, and marine populations, 56 per cent.”
“95 per cent of biodiversity loss was recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean… And we know that the Caribbean is exposed to the greatest climate events and destruction, and we have 95 per cent biodiversity loss in Latin America and the Caribbean,” he had pointed out.
In pushing this agenda globally, the Guyanese Head of State had explained that it was important to raise awareness, build solidarity among all the stakeholders in understanding the importance of biodiversity, and highlight the critical role everyone has to play in conservation efforts instead of calling for financing at the initial stages.
But according to President Ali, he is now ready and willing to make the investment necessary to have a global Centre of Excellence for biodiversity in Guyana. In fact, Guyana is already working with United States-based Yale University to establish this centre and to build a global mechanism through which the facility would be the hub for research, development, policymaking, education, marketing, and developing financing models.
The Guyana Government signed the landmark collaboration agreement with the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change during the GBA summit last year in Georgetown.
Under this agreement, Yale – through Map of Life, their global biodiversity intelligence platform– will work with Guyana to support the Global Biodiversity Alliance and help design a world-class International Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity Research here. The university will also build a national biodiversity information system, with maps, dashboards, and data layers, and guide the application of cutting-edge biodiversity science to decision-making processes.