The government has consulted many stakeholders in drafting the forests bill

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article?id=56527805

The government has consulted many stakeholders in drafting the forests
bill
Stabroek News
Wednesday, August 29th 2007

Dear Editor,

The Guyana Forestry Commission has had it new act passed in Parliament
and the revised forests bill is to be hopefully debated in Parliament
in October 2007.

This is another in a series of positive initiatives that the GFC and
the government have implemented recently.

When one looks at other tropical forest producing countries, Guyana
ranks very highly as shown by independent consultancies of ITTO and the
Environmental Sustainability Index.

A recent study done by Conservational International and published in
the public library of Science Biology Journal, lists Guyana as one of
11 countries that have avoided widespread destruction of their tropical
forests, but are still at risk of being left out of the emerging carbon
market, because the Kyoto Protocol and upcoming negotiations on carbon
trading failed to include intact standing forest.

And this is the crux of the issue. Janet Bulkan and her other
colleagues, if they are true patriots, should be addressing unbalanced
and inconsistent positions such as the reluctance of the international
community to pay carbon credits for these well managed and conserved
forests; they should be promoting all of the good things that Guyana
has done to encourage responsible forestry utilization such as the
development of codes of practice, guidelines for the preparation of
forest management plans, annual operational plans, inventory
methodology guidelines, the log tagging and log tracking system etc.

Rather than focusing on the negatives, the Bulkan contingent needs to
be more aggressive in publicizing the good things being done. It is
true that the GFC and the government needs to do more, but let us be
realistic, everything cannot be done overnight. Policies in the
forestry sector must be developed in a consultative mode, and this
takes time to get the opinions of all stakeholders. And this again is
the crux of the matter with the forest legislation.

Bulkan writes that the 2004 bill has been altered to arrive at the
revised 2007 bill that has been submitted to Parliament.

Let us look at the process that should be followed. Stakeholders are
consulted and give their views. These views would vary depending on the
particular interest group. The government, which is responsible for
formulating the policy then takes all of the stakeholders' views on
board and comes up with a position that best addresses all
stakeholders' concerns.

Janet Bulkan wants to give the impression that she and her group have
the best vision for Guyana in terms of the forest sector. She quotes
from some international documents that suit her arguments; however,
there exists other equally accepted international documentation that
goes contrary to her mode of thought. Bulkan here is however acting
like a spoilt child; it is either her way or no other way. Wake up
Janet, this is what democracy is all about, the consideration of all
relevant points of view to arrive at a document that is satisfactory to
all. In this case, we have a government that took on board the comments
of all stakeholders in the 2004 draft. This draft then went through a
process of final legislative drafting at the Attorney General's office
to ensure that it did not conflict with any other existing legislation.
What Janet Bulkan should also note is that this final 2007 revision was
also reviewed by the World Bank which recommended that some clauses
should be amended to include a higher degree of public participation;
these recommendations were accepted by this democratic government.

I join with the government and the Guyana Forestry Commission in asking
all parliamentarians to support this revised forests bill. As a primary
stakeholder, I recognize that the revised forests bill places
additional requirements on us, but also recognize that it is the only
forward in this challenging and environmentally conscious sector.

Also, I want to inform all stakeholders, especially Ms Bulkan that the
information on the process followed was obtained from the GFC itself. I
had absolutely no difficulty in getting access to it.

Yours faithfully,

Amanda Joseph