Petitioners support legislative reform which conform to international best practice

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/letters.html

Petitioners support legislative reform which conform to international
best practice
Guyana Chronicle, 24 August 2007

In her letter printed in your newspaper (Guyana Chronicle, August 23,
2007), Ms Samantha Griffith charges that ‘petitioners have their own
devious and clandestine agenda’ in drawing the attention of the
National Assembly to the unilateral replacement of the draft Forests
Act 2004 with the Forest Bill 2007, without explanation and with scant
justification for the deliberate removal of some, and insertion of new,
clauses which taken together weaken the Draft Forests Act 2004.

The Commissioner of Forests, Mr. James Singh, has stated with regard to
the draft Forests Act that “the real consultation period only ended in
2004” (‘The figure quoted as being earned by the country from forestry
investors does not take into account the employment provided and other
important spin-off activities’, Letter to the Editor, Stabroek News,
November 17, 2006).

This is the crux of the matter – the substitution of a Forest Bill 2007
in place of the earlier drafts on which stakeholders were consulted.

Neither the 2004 nor the 2007 version conform to best international
practice which has advanced as greater understanding of forest
criminality has developed (an excellent guide was recently published in
the Law, Justice, and Development Series of the World Bank/FAO, titled
Forest Law and Sustainable Development: addressing contemporary
challenges through legal reform by Lawrence Christy, Charles E. Di
Leva, Jonathan Lindsay, and Patrice Talla Takoukam).

Petitioners, including me, support legislative reform but that should
conform to best international practice as regards a fully participatory
process, and contents which use the simplest possible language and are
precise, transparent, equitable and reduce administrative discretion to
a minimum; administrative discretion being one of the key features
indicated by the World Bank and Transparency International as being
associated with government corruption and regulatory capture. As much
of the 2007 draft of the Forest Bill does not have these
characteristics, and so would not be conducive to implementation of
Article 36 of the National Constitution or of the National Forest
Policy 1997 or the National Forest Plan 2001, sending it back to the
participatory drawing board is in the best interests of Guyana.

Janette Bulkan