| The Guyana Forestry Commission through the Agriculture Ministry in collaboration with the Office of Climate Change yesterday hosted a two-day workshop on the development of a Monitoring, Reporting and Verification System (MRVS) for Guyana.In early September, a group of international experts, governmental and other stakeholders met at the Guyana Forestry Commission to discuss the requirements of a framework for the design of a MRVS for Guyana.The meeting culminated in the development of an overarching framework that outlined the key area of focus for an MRVS for Guyana. It took into consideration the requirement by the international community, including scientific standards for conducting such work as well as Guyana’s specific national circumstances.It was recognised that while some of the standards are still to be decided on by the international community, significant guidance is already currently available to enable the start of this process, such as the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Good Practice Guidelines, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), technical standards, decisions and draft guidance by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), as well as the internationally renowned scientific work done by GOFC-GOLD,Custom Juventus Jerseys, is sufficient to commence work on formulating a monitoring report and verification system.Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud, said that following the discussions in September at the experts meeting, a national workshop was held. It was attended by stakeholders from various agencies and groups.At the session, the framework was presented and discussions were facilitated on several aspects of the outline.He explained that among the key areas that came to the fore, were those of capacity, close networking among agencies in the process, and the need to move to add detail to the model in terms of defining each aspect of implementation covering both data inputs, outlining of processes to be executed and identification of desired outputs to operationalise the MRVS.The two-day workshop will further the discussions on the main aspects that are to be considered in the development of an MRVS for Guyana that is both IPCC and UNFCC compliant, and one that can easily be replicated for countries that have a high forest cover, but low rates of deforestation and forest degradation. “It is the hope, that having a wide cross section of individuals from the various segments of forest land management and utilization we will be able to successfully and efficiently achieve this objective,” Persaud said.At the workshop, participants will be able to develop a deeper understanding of the levels of capacity in various areas that would be needed to conduct monitoring and reporting.One of these areas includes the monitoring of change in forest cover over periods of time.At the national level, it will involve the use of remote sensing and GIS technology to conduct assessments at the national level for routine reporting, among other areas. “As we discuss over the next few days on these key issues, we need to keep in mind what already exists at the policy, administrative and technical levels. In this respect we need to carefully reflect on the significant deliberate policy and operational guidelines that Guyana has collaboratively formulated and has been implementing for several decades, and which have resulted in us having one of the lowest rates on deforestation and forest degradation, globally.”Minister Persaud reiterated that Guyana already has in place a credible chain of custody which is based on a national log tagging/log tracking system.The semi-autonomous regulatory agency is fully decentralized with 25 strategically located well staffed/well equipped forest stations countrywide and a very robust system of checks and balances.It was noted that all concessionaires must adhere to an annual allowable quota which is scientifically calculated using forest inventory, concession size, felling cycle and other relevant data.Monitoring of compliance is done using the latest technology complemented by very dedicated field ground truth. He noted that recently, a Legality Assurance System was finalized and will become operational before the end of 2009.“Testimony to our good stewardship of the forest resources is the fact that even though approximately 46 per cent of the state forest estate has been allocated as production forest, our rate of deforestation is recognized as being less than one per cent.” |
