Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Re­port­ing from Guyana

The Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit opens to­day in Guyana where lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tists, glob­al lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty will con­vene for three days to chart the way for­ward for bio­di­ver­si­ty around the world.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana, it is a strate­gic two-day event led by Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali aimed at strength­en­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ment to bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion.

Ali will de­liv­er the open­ing ad­dress this morn­ing where he is ex­pect­ed to lead a call for ac­tion against bio­di­ver­si­ty loss across the world. The sum­mit comes five weeks be­fore Guyana heads to the polls for its gen­er­al elec­tion on Sep­tem­ber 1.

On the open­ing day, sev­er­al world lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er state­ments out­lin­ing their plans for pro­tect­ing species that are on the verge of ex­tinc­tion.

Guyana will be seen as a strate­gic lo­ca­tion for the sum­mit with the South Amer­i­can na­tion boast­ing high lev­els of bio­di­ver­si­ty. Forests cov­er rough­ly 85 per cent of its land area with an es­ti­mat­ed 8,000 plant species—half con­sid­ered en­dem­ic.

Among the ob­jec­tives of the sum­mit are the for­mal­i­sa­tion of a Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance, launch­ing in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial mech­a­nisms like bio­di­ver­si­ty cred­its, green bonds, and debt-for-na­ture swaps, and pro­mot­ing the 30x30 Goal—con­serv­ing at least 30 per cent of the plan­et’s lands and oceans by 2030.

Sci­en­tists have pre­dict­ed near­ly 40 per cent of all species may face ex­tinc­tion by the end of this cen­tu­ry as the harsh­ness of cli­mate change wors­ens.

While those who work in the bio­di­ver­si­ty are­na are hope­ful the sum­mit bears fruit, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Re­for­esta­tion Project Kem­ba Jaramo­gi told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day the Caribbean isn’t short of such con­fer­ences.

How­ev­er, she sees the ne­ces­si­ty of it in the Caribbean con­text.

Jaramo­gi said, “Our re­gion is so small com­pared to oth­er land­mass­es that we of­ten get mis­rep­re­sent­ed or lumped with oth­er re­gions or just by­passed be­cause we’re so small. We lit­er­al­ly have to have these kinds of fo­rums that speak to the Caribbean re­al­i­ty.”

Jaramo­gi works in­ti­mate­ly with re­for­esta­tion projects in T&T and has been high­light­ed in the Sun­day Guardian’s Women’s Em­pow­er­ment mag­a­zine. She said she was hap­py to see the con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in the Caribbean con­text.

One of the is­sues she hopes is tack­led at the sum­mit is the lack of da­ta present in this re­gion.

She fur­ther added the sum­mit could be a crit­i­cal step to­wards pre­serv­ing the green spaces of the re­gion.

“We have such a rich bio­di­ver­si­ty here, and it al­so will sup­port the call to ac­tion when we say we are de­serv­ing of re­sources to main­tain, to man­age, to re­gen­er­ate, to re­plen­ish our green spaces, our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment, be­cause we are so tiny, we could get erased.”

The en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist hopes the con­fer­ence doesn’t stop on Fri­day when it is sched­uled to end. In­stead, she hopes the rec­om­men­da­tions are se­ri­ous­ly ac­tioned through­out the re­gion.

Jaramo­gi ex­plained, “It’s im­por­tant to have this at the fore­front, not just as a pet project, but al­so to see how the call for bio­di­ver­si­ty and bio­di­ver­si­ty pro­tec­tion falls in­to city plan­ning. Do we con­tin­ue to build to run all the an­i­mals and birds, or do we plant some trees in our city to make it cool­er? “When we’re do­ing our school syl­labus for our pri­ma­ry school, sec­ondary school stu­dents, Caribbean stud­ies and all this, do we in­clude the im­por­tance of bio­di­ver­si­ty to help shape the con­scious­ness of the next gen­er­a­tion? It’s al­ways the right time to talk about bio­di­ver­si­ty. Now, it’s not just what we want to have come out of this, we want to have some com­mit­ments.”

She stressed on the need for all par­ties to com­mit to da­ta shar­ing, which she sees as a crit­i­cal tool mov­ing for­ward.

Among those ex­pect­ed to at­tend the sum­mit are pres­i­dent of the 30th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties to be held in Brazil lat­er this year An­dré Cor­rêa do La­go, di­rec­tor at the Of­fice of Cli­mate Change, Bio­di­ver­si­ty and En­vi­ron­ment at the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions, and chair­man of the Caribbean Nat­ur­al Re­sources In­sti­tute, Cle­tus Springer.