Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 11, 2011 News
“A clean and safe environment is a right and not merely a privilege,” said Deputy Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ms. Chisa Mikami. Mikami was at the time making a presentation at the local launching of the 2011 Human Development Report (HDR), with emphasis on the key messages and information on Guyana.
According to the representative, the Report highlights Guyana as a country where environmental rights exist alongside the work of the nation as it relates to the rights of indigenous people.
“Also, the report sets into writing equity in the design, implementation and monitoring of policies as important,” Mikami said, even as she pointed out that larger structural changes are required.
With visual illustrations, she emphasised the importance of funding needed to help address the issue of climate change, low carbon energy as well as water and sanitation, even as the huge funding gaps that exist were highlighted. She also made reference to the need for the inclusion of innovative financial avenues, including the need for public/private partnership.
Mikami’s address preceded the formal presentation of the Report titled ‘Sustainability and Equity: A better future for all’ to Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, who received the document on behalf of the Government of Guyana, and described it as a tool to help guide policy-making processes.
According to UNDP Officer-in-Charge, Mr. Carlos del Castillo, although the global launch of the report was done about one week ago, Guyana’s ranking at 117 out of 187 was widely reported, and yesterday’s forum was designed to provide further details as it relates to Guyana in terms of the human development index.
The HDR, he said, is an independent publication commissioned by the UNDP and is recognized as an independent intellectual exercise and an important tool for raising awareness about human development around the world. The HDR is translated into more than a dozen languages and launched in more than 100 countries annually.
“The 2011 HDR focuses on the challenge of sustainable and equitable progress, human development which is about expanding people’s choices, builds on shared natural resources,” del Castillo pointed out, while noting that this is aimed at addressing sustainability locally, regionally and globally. This, he said can, and will be done in ways that are empowering.
Dr. Singh pointed to the fact that Guyana has been able to make, and continues to make, an extraordinary contribution to the global fight against climate change, not the least through the preservation of the standing forest. He disclosed, too, that because of the concept of oneness of the world, particularly as it relates to environmental issues and sustainability, the latter cannot exist in the Caribbean without relevant policies elsewhere in the world.
“Any policy anywhere in the world that ignores this oneness of the world, that ignores implication for others is by definition not sustainable…and I think the world today is waking up to this reality,” the Minister asserted.
He made reference to the notion that it isn’t only in the area of climate change that the world is waking up, but stressed that “I think that the global financial economic crisis illustrated this….There was a time when one may have felt that rapid and accelerated economic growth, rapid and accelerated financial sector development can happen in one jurisdiction, irrespective of and independent of developments in other jurisdictions…”
If there is one thing that the economic crisis taught us about it is the interconnectedness of our economy…”
According to the Minister, the concept of sustainability in its broadest of meanings juxtaposed with the concept of equity “we believe holds many very, very important lessons, in particular, the nexus between sustainability and equity.”
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