World Bank replies to Persaud’s protest

The World Bank yesterday said that it is replying to Guyana’s protest of a map of Suriname which included Guyana’s territory as used at one of its recent meetings.
In November, the government, through Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud, filed a protest with the World Bank over a map of Suriname that included part of Guyana’s territory, which was presented at an October meeting of the participants committee of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).
“Indeed, we have received Minister Persaud’s letter and we are in the process of preparing a reply,” Isabel Hagbrink, Senior Communications Officer with the Carbon Finance Unit of the World Bank Group told Kaieteur News.
Hagbrink refrained from going into details about that reply.
The FCPF assists developing countries in their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation—called REDD- by providing value to standing forests.
In the letter, the government also asked for the removal of Janette Bulkan, a forestry critic, from a technical panel of the FCPF, stating that the country has serious concerns over her ability to be an objective assessor in that body.
Bulkan was selected as an expert of the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) and she was a reviewer of the Suriname’s Readiness Planning Preparation Activities (RPP). Persaud said Bulkan’s appointments were “alarming.”
Bulkan has defended herself, saying she was not at the meeting.
“It is unclear what the Government hoped to gain from intervening in my employment outside Guyana on a task not affecting Guyana.  It can scarcely enhance Guyana’s international reputation for diplomacy or its wish to be seen as a leading country in forest-based climate change mitigation and adaptation,” she argued.