Administrative discretion should be kept to a minimum in forest regulations

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article?id=56527922

Administrative discretion should be kept to a minimum in forest
regulations
Stabroek News
Friday, August 31st 2007

Dear Editor

With reference to the letter by Ms Amanda Joseph captioned 'The
government has consulted many stakeholders in drafting the forests
bill", (07.08.29), I wish to note the following:

1. Not all the changes requested by the World Bank to the 2004 draft
were made by the Government of Guyana.

2. Best practice internationally has moved on since 2004, especially in
response to the need for clearer definitions of 'legality' in the
context of Forest Law Enforce-ment, Governance and Trade, and to
counter widespread corruption and inequitable implementation of laws
and regulations in the forest sector.

3. The reduction in responsibility and oversight by a Minister and a
consequent increase in authority for the unelected GFC runs counter to
international best practice, especially in the absence of provision for
non-financial performance audit. I agree that the revised GFC Act 2007
provides more explicit direction for audit of GFC accounts, and I hope
that this will extend to all special funds.

4. The numerous instances of administrative discretion given to the
unelected GFC are deprecated in international practice because of the
absence of criteria for the use of that discretion. Best practice is to
diminish such discretion as one means of reducing corruption and
regulatory capture. 'Regulatory capture' being defined as: "a
phenomenon in which a government regulatory agency which is supposed to
be acting in the public interest becomes dominated by the vested
interests of the existing incumbents in the industry that it oversees"
(http://en.wikipe dia.org).

5. The tortuous language and the lack of editing in the Forest Bill
2007 makes it difficult to understand exactly what is being prescribed
or proscribed.

6. Specific points will be raised in the citizens' petition to the
National Assembly.

Ms Amanda Joseph's general point about giving credit to the GFC would
carry more weight if there was a sign that the GFC was implementing
thoroughly, consistently and equitably the procedures developed several
years ago. The procedures which she mentioned were developed or last
revised in 2002. The GFC Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting (second
edition, November 2002) is still not back on the GFC website, and the
1999 procedures for the timber tagging have never been on the website.
I was pleased to see the revised GFC Act 2007 and the Forest Bill 2007
belatedly made available on that site.

The global ranking of Guyana in relation to forest cover as a
proportion of national land area is a function of the extremely poor
and infertile soils in the hinterland, a consequence of the geology.
The low intensity, low technology agriculture and poor market access do
not put deforestation pressure on the forest as happens in most other
tropical countries which have better soils.

The Kyoto Protocol and its Clean Development Mech-anism were never
intended to cope with the unusual conditions of Guyana.

The current discussions on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in
Developing Countries scarcely deal with Guyana's situation of there
being little threat of deforestation.

However, these international discussions do not preclude private deals
between carbon emitters and Guyana, and perhaps that is what Go-Invest
is referring to in the article captioned "Wood products sector saw 63
investments in 18 months - Go-Invest" (Stabroek News, 07.08.29).

The Status of Tropical Forest Management 2005 report by the
International Tropical Timber Organization is scarcely complimentary to
Guyana, perhaps for lack of official response to the ITTO
questionnaire.

The anomalous position of Guyana in the Yale Environ-mental
Sustainability Index is also a consequence of the lack of data for
Guyana: values had to be imputed for 28 out of 76 variables, in the
absence of usable data.

Yours faithfully,

Janette Bulkan