Government lashes out at Kaieteur News for inaccurate reporting on Climate Change Conference

The Guyana government has said that Kaieteur News has confused its readers with its reportage of issues surrounding the delay in the release of funding pledged by Norway for Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). 

In a statement issued on Saturday, the government said that Kaieteur News accepted international funding to attend the Cancún Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This could have enabled them to make an important contribution to the knowledge of all Guyanese on matters concerning climate change, by helping citizens to understand the vital international issues at stake, and, in particular, Guyana’s leadership role in helping to solve these issues. Instead of providing the people of Guyana with accurate information and informed analysis, the Kaieteur News has sought to bring its domestic prejudices to bear in its reporting of global issues, government said. It added that the readers of Kaieteur News deserved better. 

The state said the most recent example of the Kaieteur’s inability to demonstrate an understanding of global issues is its coverage of a public discussion between President Bharrat Jagdeo, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. President Barack Obama’s Advisor on Energy, Joe Aldy, and others concerning the role of multilateral institutions in addressing the challenges of climate change.

On Friday, the publication claimed that the reason for the delay in the disbursement of funds from Norway was the absence of prepared project submissions from Guyana. This is totally false, the government said. The delay occurred because it took a year to establish the Guyana REDD Investment Fund (GRIF). It is not accurate to imply it is a “misconception” that the World Bank   bears responsibility for this delay, and it is this point the president had raised in Cancún, in the interests of providing globally relevant lessons, the statement continued. 

President Jagdeo’s point was that the experience of Guyana and Norway could provide valuable lessons for how multilateral institutions like the World Bank could be modernised to provide the financial intermediary services required for climate finance.  The president declared: “Having a generous donor and a progressive forest country is not enough. When payments are being made from the developed to the developing world, we need institutions that are able to move beyond the old-fashioned ODA (Official Development Assistance) thinking, which does not have a good track record of delivering timely solutions.” 

Global institutions need to evolve 

He spoke of the difficulties experienced by Guyana and Norway in establishing GRIF, and said that if Guyana and Norway could not make it work, nobody could. President Jagdeo further said that global institutions needed to evolve quickly, if they are to play a critical role in helping countries to take action on climate change. Failure of these global institutions to act in a timely manner can undermine the political momentum and support for addressing climate change. Other journalists, for example, from the Economist, understood this point and reported it accurately, government pointed out. 

In the world’s second largest Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) agreement, Norway will pay up to US$250 million by 2015 to Guyana for the preservation of its 16 million-hectare forest. 

Norway has already released US$30 million of that money. 

At the conference, Prime Minister Stoltenberg spoke of there being three leading examples of REDD+ in the world – Brazil, Indonesia and Guyana. Norway has bilateral agreements with all three, and he spoke of the political leadership evident in all the countries. Minister Pak Kuntoro of Indonesia spoke about Indonesia’s progress on REDD and the need for forest countries and international partners to work closer, while President Jagdeo related how Indonesia and other countries would draw on Guyana’s experiences to determine which multilateral institutions were fit to facilitate climate finance payments. 

He said that this was why it was important for the World Bank and others to be ready to move beyond “old-fashioned tools” and modernise to meet new challenges, for climate finance offers them tremendous opportunities in the years ahead, as the world forges the necessary global climate agreement. 

It took the World Bank a year to establish a trustee bank account for Guyana, which was only finalised a few weeks ago, and, as a result, the process to release money from that bank account is only starting now. President Jagdeo said that a year of delays could not be sustained across the world, where the political commitment present between Guyana and Norway may be absent. 

Specifically to address the issues in investing the money paid by Norway to Guyana, President Jagdeo and Prime Minister Stoltenberg reviewed progress on the Guyana-Norway partnership on Wednesday evening. President Jagdeo described the meeting as “very focused, and we will both keep a very close eye on progress in the months ahead”. The work to release money from the GRIF will be the focus of the leaders’ attention. 

This will mean that in the coming months, the first investments from the GRIF will begin to realise the priorities highlighted in the LCDS. The initial priorities are to push Guyana’s low-carbon energy transformation, starting with the distribution of solar panels to indigenous communities; to accelerate the land titling process for indigenous lands, in accordance with the goal set out in the LCDS to address all requests for titling by 2015; and to support vulnerable groups in participating in the new low-carbon economy.

Disservice

Kaieteur News was aware of all these points, but chose to package globally relevant insights into parochial perspectives, the statement from government said. Instead of holding to task those responsible for the delay, the publication blithely reported inaccurate excuses for the delay. 

The World Bank has not commented on why it took a year to establish GRIF, and this is something that Kaieteur News should focus on, in the interests of Guyanese, the government declared. Rather than doing such a disservice to its readers, the administration lamented, Kaieteur News instead could have focused on the fact that Guyana was a driving force in reaching global agreement on a REDD+ decision at this climate change conference. Or the publication could have focused on the fact that President Jagdeo was highly influential in the progress made over the past year on global financing to combat climate change – the president was one of 20 global leaders asked by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to determine ways to raise US$100 billion in climate finance by 2020. Or the newspaper could have focused on the work to achieve a global deal at Cancún on the way to an internationally binding agreement later. Instead, Kaieteur News took domestic gutter journalism on tour to Mexico, the statement from government said. The readers of Kaieteur News should reflect on whether this is why they buy that newspaper, the statement concluded.