Georgetown: Guyana’s low carbon development strategy (LCDS) is an ambitious and lofty approach to development. It is an effort to show that global warming and climate change can be reversed and that even countries that played no role in the emergence of the calamity that face us today can contribute to the solution without deferring our development, according to Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Agriculture.
“The challenge we face today is enormous. We must be willing to respond with ambitions that are equally enormous in its scope.”
Ramsammy explained that climate change is here, but the destruction of the world and the loss of all of gains in fighting hunger and poverty are not inevitable consequences. ‘We can change the trajectory.’
Climate Smart Agriculture, he said can help us to increase food production, reduce losses due to weather disasters, become more resilient to climate change, reduce greenhouse gases and play a role in mitigation of climate change. ‘If we practice climate smart agriculture or conservation agriculture we can reduce water needs for crops by 30%, lower energy needs by 70% and increase carbon sequestration.’
Through a concerted effort to promote climate smart and conservation agriculture, Ramsammy said Guyana can look to a future where citizens can be fed forever.
“An Ever- Green Economy is not an option; it is an imperative. We ignore this imperative at great peril to humanity and to the world as we know it… I believe there is a call to action. Today, we declare that agriculture will not be part of the problem of global warming and climate change and a threat to food and nutrition security, but represents a robust solution, leading to adaptation and mitigation of the weather insecurity challenge…Ive said in the past that our future must not be determined by waiting to see what might happen. Our future must depend on what we decide to become, and on our zeal and commitment to create our own destiny, rather than leave it to chance.”
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