By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
July 29, 2022
Upon special invitation from the United States several officials from Guyana including its President, Dr Irfaan Ali met with US Secretary of State this week in Washington, D.C.
This is coming off the heels of meeting at the recently held Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, where the US government pledged some US$28M to food security in the region, an area the Guyanese president is leading the way forward in the Caribbean.
However, the meeting, according to the statement issued by the US Department of State, focused on ‘importance of creating a sustainable energy future, bolstering food and energy security, safeguarding the environment, and promoting good governance, shared prosperity, and inclusive growth’.
President Ali is said to be accompanied by a delegation including Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hugh Todd.
In his welcoming the Guyanese contingent, Blinken described Guyana as becoming a “very strong partner to the United States and also in many ways a global leader for working together in our region and beyond to try to find solutions to urgent challenges that include climate, to include food security, energy security. We’re working on issues together, and I think coming out of the Summit of the Americas in particular, there is a lot more energy in those efforts, including some things that we’re working on very actively right now that I know we’ll be sharing in the weeks ahead.”
Secretary Blinken said he “notes with something quite remarkably that something like 86 percent of Guyana is forests, it’s a remarkable contributor in that way alone to the challenges with climate change, but the United States is eager to continue to strengthen the partnership that we have on all these issues and more. Georgetown is also the seat of CARICOM and this for us is a very important and vital institution and one in which President Biden and Vice President Harris have a significant engagement at the Summit of the Americas. So I look forward to continuing the conversations we all started there and to deepening the work we have already been doing between our countries”.
As for President Ali, he expressed ‘he was very pleased to be there at a very important time in the development of Guyana, as it seeks to further strengthen our relationship with the United States, who it view as an important strategic partner’.
He added that “We just came out of a very successful Summit of the Americas in which we identified some critical issues for CARICOM as a region – that is food security, energy security, financing, and the issue of climate change,” he said.
Ali said, in all these areas, Guyana is “already providing leadership, and we are committing ourselves to continue to provide that leadership.
However in making it clear its stand on climate change, Dr Ali said “We are pursuing an energy path that seeks to balance our newfound natural resource of oil and gas, but we are not doing that at the detriment of our credentials on the environment and climate change”.
In reiterating points raised by the Secretary of State, Dr. Ali said “As you rightfully pointed out, our forests stores 19.5 kilotonnes of carbon. We are a net zero country and we look forward to discussing how jointly we can continue to work on the issues of food security, climate, financing, working in the region in terms of debt crisis facing CARICOM, but, more importantly, finding a balanced development strategy, and doing so staying true to the value system, principles that both of us believe so strongly in – that is democratic society where transparency, accountability, and strong governance support for the development of Guyana. So I am very pleased to be continuing this conversation from the Summit of the Americas and to work with you in this partnership”.
During the Summit of the Americas, Guyana was placed as the co-chair of the US-Caribbean joint committee on food security following the US pledge of $331M to the Latin American and Caribbean community’s food security plan. The move to designate Guyana also comes after it held and Agri-expo in May, taking the leadership of food security at the CARICOM level as it aims at reducing the region’s food import bill by 2025. Apart from food security, discussions are said to be centred on matters including climate change, security in Guyana and the rest of the region, and the debt crisis.