Environmental funding for Guyana must cater for mangroves too
By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, March 8,
2019 (IPS) -— For several decades,
Guyana has been using
mangroves to protect its coasts
against natural hazards, and
the country believes its mangrove
forests should be included
in programmes like the REDD+
of United Nations, in order to
access financing to continue
their restoration and maintenance,
as they complement
miles of seawalls that help to
prevent flooding.
In recent years, the seawall
barriers, which have existed
since the Dutch occupation of
Guyana, have been breeched by
severe storms. This resulted in
significant flooding, a danger
which scientists predict could
become more frequent with climate
change.
The seawalls must also be
maintained, and this is at an
enormous cost for Guyana
which has been spending an
average of 14 million dollars a
year to maintain and strengthen
the defences.
Joseph Harmon, minister of
state in the Ministry of the
President of Guyana, said given
the importance of mangroves,
they should factor more in discussions
about financing to
help countries build resilience
to natural hazards and climate
related risks.
“While we look at climate
change, while we look at sustainable
livelihoods, we have
a forest that is so inaccessible,
but the areas that are accessible
are also threatened,” Harmon
told IPS.
“The fact that we’re on a
low coastal plain, the issues
of environment and environmental
funding must cater for
mangroves as well.”
Approximately 90 percent of
Guyana’s population lives on
a narrow coastline strip a half
to one metre below sea level,
and Harmon said almost 80
percent of the country’s productive
means are on the coast
as well.
“We’ve actually started, several
years ago, with the establishment
of mangroves as a
form of defence from rising sea
levels,” he said.
“We would want to posit
that in the way in which forest
coverage calculations are
done, that mangrove protection,
which protects the persons
on the coast, that must
also be a feature of your forest
coverage because it does the
same thing as the forest in the
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hinterland.”
According to the Nature
Conservancy and Wetlands
International, mangroves
don’t always provide a standalone
solution, and may need
to be combined with other risk
reduction measures to achieve
high levels of protection.
As is the case with Guyana,
appropriately integrated
mangroves can contribute to
risk reduction in almost every
coastal setting, ranging from
rural to urban and from natural
to heavily degraded landscapes.
The benefits offered by mangrove
forests include timber
and fuel production, productive
fishing grounds, carbon
storage, enhances tourism
and recreation as well as water
purification.
Janelle Christian, the head
of the Office of Climate Change
in Guyana, said the mangrove
forests provide livelihood
opportunities for residents of
many coastal communities.
“There are a lot of coastal
community women’s groups
involved in beekeeping and
honey production,” Christian
told IPS.
“Along where many of the
mangrove forests are located
you also have fishing communities.
So, for us, it is important
both as a form of natural
protection and also because
of the livelihood opportunities
tied to that.”
In 1990, the total area of
mangrove forest in Guyana was
estimated at 91,000 hectares,
according to a country report
to the United Nations Convention
on Biological Diversity.
By 2009, this figure stood
at 22,632 hectares, notes the
same report.
But the country has been
on an intensive campaign to
protect and restore its coastal
mangroves. Christian said in
2010, Guyana started a mangrove
restoration project funded
by a partnership between
the Government of Guyana
and the European Union.
Mangrove trees grow along the bank of the Demerara River
which rises in the central rainforests and fl ows to the north
for 346 kilometres until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.
Inter Press Service / Desmond Brown
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