The Governments of Guyana and Norway met on Thursday in Oslo, Norway, agreeing to move their climate, forests, and sustainable development forward with speed and determination. “I am delighted that we now have strong agreement with the Government of Guyana on a way forward for our partnership”, stated Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway, Ola Elvestuen, after the meeting.
The two governments noted the impressive results of Guyana in maintaining its extremely low rates of deforestation, and President Granger’s administration’s strong push to maintain increasing parts of Guyana’s unique rainforests intact.
They also noted good progress on forest governance issues, in accordance with the letter and spirit of their partnership. The partners also emphasized the importance of the Government of Guyana’s determination to move towards close to one hundred percent clean and renewable energy supply by 2025, and its desire in that context to embark on a strong push to increase the amounts of solar power in Guyana’s energy mix.
On this basis both governments agreed to move as expeditiously as possible to enable the deployment of Norway’s results based contributions – both those currently held by the Inter-American Development Bank, and outstanding results based payments of 300 million Norwegian kroners – towards the realization of this ambition.
“We are enthusiastic about this agreement on the way forward for our partnership. This is important to Guyana and Norway, and will also provide an example to the world”, stated Minister of State Joseph Harmon.
Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman and the Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, also attended the meeting. “We will now move quickly to trilateral discussions between The Inter-American Development Bank, Guyana, and Norway on how best to deploy Norwegian funding to push our renewable power ambition forward”, stated Patterson.
Minister Trotman also took part in the meeting with Minister Elvestuen.
