The 26th RedLAC Congress in St. Lucia, held from October 7-10, emphasised the importance of taking action to address climate change. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasises the need for action in regional programs to conserve 30% of biodiversity by 2030.
Pradeepa Bholanath, Guyana’s Senior Director of Climate Change, explained that her country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy is not only used to support economic growth through low-carbon activities, but it is also the result of extensive research on the country’s flora, fauna, watersheds, and forest carbon.
Guyana, a pioneer in forest monetisation, established a decade-long memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Norway from 2010-2020, worth an estimated USD 220 million in financing for Guyana’s low carbon development strategy. The MoU includes performance measures against important biodiversity targets.
“One of those key indicators,” Bholanath told reporters, “was maintaining forest cover, and maintaining intact forests.” In Guyana, intact forests are contiguous unbroken blocks of 50,000 hectares or more, which “ensures the protection of biodiversity corridors, key watersheds, and Indigenous peoples who live within those areas and enjoy the pristine nature of the forests.”
This creates a ripple effect. Forest protection contributes to biodiversity conservation and guarantees that populations that rely on these ecosystems may retain a fair level of living while still having access to the resources for which they are responsible.
Guyana’s recently discovered oil reserves necessitate low-carbon development and implementation linked with the 2030 vision, emphasising the importance of responsible stewardship.
“Expanding protected areas, climate change mitigation and adaptation goals that have to do with carbon markets [and] climate financing,” Bholanath continued, should all be taking shape by then. Guyana is expanding collaborations with NGOs and private-sector groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International Guyana. These groups are instrumental in fostering community participation and expanding protected areas in the country.
The German Development Bank has pledged to support biodiversity conservation initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean, allowing Indigenous people to participate in Guyana’s climate finance scheme.
Jens Mackensen, head of the bank’s Latin America Division of Biodiversity and Sustainable Resource Management, stated that they are explicitly striving to develop blended financing solutions that are suitable with the region’s varying conservation requirements. This strategy, he noted, is “a very good tool to ensure that public financing is combined with local efforts and local financing in order to achieve more scale,” and have a larger impact.
Mackensen argues that successful implementation of the global biodiversity framework will require collaboration between international financial institutions and local conservation trust funds to finance initiatives. In terms of execution, local communities must take the lead. Not only does this increase people’s interest in the conclusion, but it also provides active areas for the development of new ideas.
During the RedLAC Congress, the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund issued its fifth call for ideas under its ecosystem-based adaptation facility (EbA). The Fund, which has already produced several successful initiatives, promotes projects that focus on conservation and ecosystem services for livelihood and climate adaptation.
Ulrike Krauss, the Fund’s manager, was particularly impressed by a project in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (ICA). They collaborated with the private sector to address the issue of silt runoff and reef contamination caused by a quarry operator. Part of the approach was to plant vetiver grass beside the sedimentation pond to filter out the sediment.
With regional environmentalists and international donors now actively attempting to collaborate, she expects there will be many more.
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