Photo of Professor Ivelaw Griffith courtesy Professor Griffith and used with permission. Guyana map image via Canva Pro.
When the Caribbean nation of Guyana – a country of 83,000 square miles (214,969 square kilometres) situated to the north of the South American mainland – produced its first oil in December 2019, economic growth predictions skyrocketed. With the Stabroek block widely regarded as the most significant oil discovery of the past decade, with more than 11 billion recoverable barrels of oil resources, Guyana has since surpassed all projections, and much more is expected from the world’s newest petro-state.
How will this extraordinary economic boon impact Guyana and its 835,000 people, and how does it mesh with the country’s well-known commitment to sustainability and climate change concerns? Professor Ivelaw L. Griffith, a former senior associate with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, fellow at the Caribbean Policy Consortium, and former vice chancellor of the University of Guyana, addresses these questions in his latest book, “Oil and Climate Change in Guyana’s Wet Neighbourhood: Probing Promise and Potential Peril,” set for release in late June.
I sat down with the Guyana-born, New York-based author of 10 scholarly books on Caribbean affairs, who was visiting Jamaica for a conference at Kingston’s Courtleigh Hotel.
Kaieteur Falls, located in Kaieteur National Park, central Essequibo Territory, Guyana. Photo via Canva Pro.
Emma Lewis (EL): The subtitle of your book points to two opposing factors, even as the Guyanese government asserts that it can create an environmentally sustainable economy while continuing to explore for fossil fuels. Is that doable?
Ivelaw Griffith (IG): The promise of oil relates to the extent of the find. It has only been five years since first oil, but there’s an incredible investment in infrastructure and an incredible set of plans for the future. So there’s a promise that the oil bounty will redound to the benefit of the Guyanese society at large, over time. Of course, the average citizen is asking, “What’s in it for me now?” You’ve got to allow some amount of time for the promise to be delivered […] already some of the deliverables are being realised in terms of investment in infrastructure. The potential peril [is] the climate change dynamic.
EL: What do you mean when you talk about a “wet neighbourhood?”
IG: Guyana [is] called “the Land of Many Waters.” There are hundreds of rivers, waterfalls … and 80 percent of the land is Amazon forest, which generates a lot of water. It is the second most highly forested country in the world, in terms of coverage, after Suriname, also a wet neighbourhood. Guyana has an Atlantic coast of 285 miles; parts of that coast [are] six feet below sea level, which means a constant battle with the Atlantic. With climate change, there is sea level rise.
For me, the potential peril has to do with the vulnerability of the coast, where 80 percent of the population lives. I tell the story – in detail – of the floods of 2005, the floods of 2021, the floods of last year. It’s a wet, wet, wet neighbourhood.
[T]he government needs [to] begin to plan to move Georgetown [the capital]. There’s the sea wall. As the sea level rises, you can’t build a high enough wall to keep the water out! That, for me, is the potential peril.
Guyana is building a new city called Silica City for 30,000 people. It can never become a substitute for Georgetown … if the sea wall breaks, where shall we move the city to? For decades, that’s been the conversation, but who wants to bell the cat?
So, you get what I call “Guyana living a paradox.” The paradox is Guyana is producing oil, creating fossil fuel contributions to global warming, and at the same time, it has a massive carbon sink, so you are helping to produce global warming, and you’re helping to fight global warming!
An aerial view of a section of Guyana’s rainforest, via Canva Pro.
EL: Can these balance each other out?
IG: Some [scientists] argue that the fossil fuel production over time will not be enough to damage the carbon sink, [that] there is more capturing of the “bad stuff” by the forests than the production of it by the oil.
EL: But the forests will have to work hard, won’t they?
IG: Yes. But Guyana has the advantage of having many economic bases for existence. It has gold. It has diamonds. It has manganese. Uranium. Rich agricultural lands. So the government is confident it doesn’t have to rely only on oil; the basis for that diversification already exists. Some of it has climate implications, so there’s anxiety [and] we need the diversification, but how? The answer I think is, there is [enough] of a diverse economic base.
EL: Guyana has an Expanded Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). It is the first country to issue ART-TREES carbon credits. There is also the REDD+ programme. It is a global leader in forest conservation. Can these ground-breaking programmes offset the ongoing oil exploration?
IG: Some scientists say yes, some say no. For me, the jury’s still out until we see over time how things develop. The LCDS long predated the discovery of oil. Guyana has built up a reputation over the years of environmental protection, climate mitigation…
St. George’s Cathedral, Georgetown, Guyana, via Canva Pro.
EL: Before all this started, Guyana’s poverty rate was quite high.
IG: It was considered the second poorest nation in the hemisphere, after Haiti.
EL: There are approximately 250 Indigenous communities across Guyana. Will they remain marginalised? How can they benefit from the oil boom?
IG: In terms of civic engagement and advocacy for First Peoples, I would say there’s an improvement. In terms of the benefits that go to their communities and the extent to which they have been incorporated into consideration (if not decision-making) of the issues, they would benefit over time with infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads … with all the critical socio-economic infrastructure.
But they also have been benefiting, like all Guyanese, from the cash grants. Each Guyanese person has been given 100,000 Guyana dollars, which is about USD 500, and early this year, the President announced a first newborn child grant.
EL: We cannot ignore the political and governance issues in Guyana. Elections are due this year. What if there is a change in the political administration? The 2020 elections were hotly contested and highly contentious, with long delays in producing results. There is also the factor of race combining in politics. Are the media and civil society doing a good job of explaining the complexities of the oil industry as well as the climate crisis?
IG: Elections must be held before November. There are complications in the political domain, especially in relation to race. It is very divisive, and it will surface again in the next elections. Recent developments — the controversial death of 11-year-old Adrianna Younge — have already begun to feed into the complexity [of local politics], and that is going to cloud any intention to have smooth elections. I am hoping we don’t have a “Version Two” of 2020, but I can anticipate some kind of discontent. The potential for divisiveness is already there, accentuated by the Younge case.
Map showing the locations of Guyana and Venezuela. Light green is the disputed Guayana Esequiba; Venezuela is shown in orange. Image by Aquintero82, own work, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
EL: Venezuela’s claims on the Essequibo region remain a destabilising factor. What are the implications for Guyana and its oil industry?
IG: If Guyana were to lose Essequibo, the capacity for developing Guyana with oil would be undermined significantly, dramatically. You can’t understand the wet neighbourhood [or] the climate change dynamics of Guyana unless you understand the Essequibo. That’s where most of the rivers, the waterfalls are. The Essequibo is the third-largest river in South America. That’s where the diamonds are, the gold, the uranium, the manganese. It also has onshore oil. The first exploration of oil in Guyana started there in 1916 …
Venezuela calls the Essequibo “the 24th state,” Guyana Essequiba. Even in the broader social space, Venezuelans have begun to think of Essequibo as belonging to Venezuela.
EL: This is the first book you have written specifically about your native land. Why now?
IG: Actually, I had no intention of writing a book about Guyana, although I had been writing articles about Guyana, oil and climate change. Once I got started, I realised you can’t simply write about oil; [you must also write] about environmental issues, politics, civic action, the diaspora, so the book became a larger project.
EL: You conclude with a note on inheritance, and with a poem by Guyanese poet John Agard. What hope do you have for future generations of Guyanese?
IG: The bounty, the promise, is not only for the “now” people. It’s a promise in regard to the people coming – the inheritance. And so, if you consider [those] who are going to be the inheritors of the Earth – of the Guyana part of Planet Earth – you have got to worry about the potential peril. I thought [the poem was] a powerful way to end the book.
