Bharrat Jagdeo Foundation for January launch

One of Guyana’s longest serving Presidents; Bharrat Jagdeo, is establishing a foundation which will be operational from January 2, 2013. The Bharrat Jagdeo Foundation will be located at Lot 300 New Garden Street, Georgetown. Renovations are currently being undertaken on the Old Demerara House where the foundation will be housed.

Guyana Times International was told that the foundation’s work will focus on, among other things, policy issues and climate change. In a release, the Government Information Agency (GINA) said that Jagdeo was elevated to the helm of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration in 1999, after serving as Guyana’s finance minister, to succeed former President Janet Jagan. He later went on to serve in that position for two successive terms, after the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) emerged victorious at the country’s 2001 and 2006 national elections.
Under President Jagdeo’s leadership, Guyana achieved many successes. In 2010, he was named Champion of the Earth, and his Initiative on Avoided Deforestation, launched in 2008, has taken Guyana to the point where today it can boast of being on the map internationally.
Guyana has taken pioneering steps to address climate change under Jagdeo through its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and in the establishment in 2010 of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF), which has thus far received US$ 70 million in performance-related payments for avoided deforestation from Norway in support of the LCDS.
A historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Norway will see the country earning up to US$ 250 million in forest carbon payments by 2015.
The former president was named by TIME Magazine as a “Hero of the Environment” and in 2010, he was appointed by the UN secretary general on the high-level panel that also included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, to shore up climate change funding.
Under his leadership, Guyana co-chaired the Interim REDD + Partnership with Germany with the aim of scaling-up actions and finance for initiatives to reduce emissions from REDD+ in developing countries.
In 2011, he was invited to join the board of directors of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and was appointed roving ambassador to forest basins when leaders from countries in the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong met in June.

Major economic and social developments were undertaken in Guyana and, when he demitted office in 2011, Guyana could have boasted of its fifth consecutive year of economic growth. Under his tenure, Guyana was able to successfully host international events such as the Rio Group Meeting, Cricket World Cup (CWC) and the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA), and the fourth regular meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).