Guyana

Microcosm of Sustainable Development Challenges

Barry Munslow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138385115
• eBook ISBN: 9780429763458
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First published in 1998, this volume uses Guyana as an excellent, comprehensive case study to examine various sectors' operations, effects upon the environment and the ways in which the sector can impact upon the vitality and development potential of other sectors. The authors attempt to demonstrate how it is possible to adjust current sectoral activities for improved resource utilisation. They begin in the interior looking at mining and forest resource exploitation. Attention then moves towards the coast, looking at agriculture, fishing, human settlement and service provision. A review of industry, transport and energy follows before examining biodiversity, tourism and the Amerindian community. Finally, a detailed analysis is presented of the challenges to be faced in devising a sustainable development national strategy.

1
Guyana’s challenge

Guyana’s experience in the wider picture

Guyana as a case study has much to offer to illuminate some of the central challenges facing the World in the area of environment and development. For a start, Guyana belongs both to Latin America and to the Caribbean. Whilst its social, cultural and political orientation may be overwhelming towards the English speaking Caribbean, it is physically located on the Latin American mainland and its natural resource base has more in common with Brazil and Venezuela than Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands. With the people and the politicians hugging the coastline and looking out towards the Caribbean as their primary point of reference, it is perhaps little wonder that effective management of the vast natural resource base of the interior has been neglected.

Within the boundaries of this relatively small country some of the most critical sustainable development challenges facing the planet are to be found. Two stand out in relation to the natural resource base. Firstly, the complex issues surrounding the conservation and sustainable management of the tropical forest. Guyana contains a pristine section of the rapidly diminishing Amazonian tropical rain forest. As a result of economic stagnation and opposition to foreign capital during its radical socialist phase, exploitation of the forest resources of the country was restricted.

The Guyanese case is particularly instructive as it offers the relatively novel possibility in recent times of developing an effective management of a rich natural resource base that has not already been devastated or at the very least badly damaged. Most of Guyana is still vibrant Amazonian rain forest. Roads, logging and mining which have wreaked destruction on large areas of its giant neighbour, Brazil, have had a limited impact as yet. It is not yet beyond redemption. Yet with the liberalisation of the economy, powerful mining and logging interests are dramatically expanding their area of operations and it is essential to create an appropriate framework for the sustainable management of the forest resource. There is still time for effective management strategies to be put in place.

What is and is not being done and what lessons can be learnt? Guyana provides some clues. It is unique amongst the Caribbean countries in having an abundant natural resource base. Yet to date it has often failed to maximise the development opportunities in an effective manner.

A second area of global concern involves the vexed issue of coastal zone management. Guyana is one of the most threatened countries of all in relation to global warming and a potential rise in sea levels. The Guyanese situation is critical as nearly all of the population live right along the coastal strip and are dependent upon an elaborate system of sea defences and drainage channels. This area is subject to regular floods and devastation. Coastal sea defences were subjected to a long period of neglect and a sizeable investment is now required to restore the situation.

Guyana provides a very interesting case study for a whole number of reasons, not only in relation to critical natural resource management issues, although these will remain our central focus. It is more widely instructive for the broader comparative development experience on two accounts. It is a country which experimented for a considerable period of time with a radical socialist development model. It now shares the experience of going through a transition from state centred autocratic socialism towards becoming a free market oriented democracy along with the countries of Eastern Europe, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and a number of other former socialist states. It may indeed provide some pointers for a post-Castro era in Cuba. There is much to learn in both a positive and a negative sense from its particular experience. In addition, and providing an even broader comparative dimension, is its experience of undergoing structural adjustment and démocratisation, a set of circumstances shared with a great many states in the South.

If we take these latter two comparative dimensions together then what is the interest in the Guyana case study for the more general body of knowledge? Looking back over a forty year post-independence experience from a perspective at the end of the 20th century, Guyana’s cooperative socialism proved no more successful as a radical alternative development model than other variants on the same theme tried elsewhere. Indeed, it led the country into stagnation, bankruptcy, corruption and autocratic rule.

The turn around towards a new strategic direction has taken a long time. It began when President Hoyte replaced Burnham in the mid-1980s and accelerated with the first free elections held for a very long time in 1992 when President Jagan came to power. The democratic elections helped propel the structural adjustment agenda forward and there has been a constant period of economic growth ever since, throughout the 1990s. Yet there were groups in society who suffered considerably with the policy changeover and it would be wrong to ignore these costs. But evidence suggests that overall, the effects of both transformations offer positive long term prospects, certainly compared with the development cul-de-sac of past policies. Will Guyana provide a qualified success as a transition model? This is not in any way to minimise the hardship and suffering of those who have borne the brunt of the costs of such a monumental transition. Overcoming poverty still remains the central challenge. Yet is there sufficient evidence now both globally and specifically in relation to Guyana to suggest that the move to private enterprise offers a positive way forward?

One has to enter all of the normal caveats concerning potential comparabilities. Guyana, unlike so many other socialist countries, did not experience extensive and devastating destabilisation and civil wars. Guyana also never propounded a hardline Marxist-Leninist ideology, nor did it formally establish a one party state. Yet the ruling party manipulated the electoral process to guarantee one party rule for almost three decades. Moving from a sham to a genuine set of democratic elections marked a mighty turn-around from past practices. Its economic policies whilst emphasising cooperatives in the rhetoric, effectively involved nationalisations controlled centrally by the state. The problems of unpackaging a bureaucratic, indebted and inefficient centrally controlled economy were therefore very similar.

Guyana offers some hope that the new approaches may serve the country better. These policies are bringing economic growth, albeit at some early cost to the poorer sections of society.

A note of caution is required, however, in the post-Cold War political era of revived ethno-nationalist conflicts worldwide. The politicisation of ethnicity in Guyana is all too tangible. The winners and the losers of the new policy dispensation in the short term at least, reinforce ethnic fault lines. There is a danger that a growing underclass of Afro-Guyanese losers in the current policy and political climate will provide a breeding ground for increasing criminality, drug dealing and social unrest. The possible costs associated with the new development policy pathway is a broader issue posing a serious challenge worldwide. South Africa is looking down the barrel of the same gun. Whilst everything may be done to create an economic climate conducive to inward investment, the free market to flourish and so forth, leaving an impoverished underclass to ignite soaring and increasingly violent crime will have absolutely the opposite effect to that which the favourable macroeconomic policy climate is intended to generate. Crime and violence puts off inward investors and increasingly complicates the life of budding domestic entrepreneurs, unless as in Russia say, the criminals and entrepreneurs work together. The challenge facing Guyana into the 21st century is to prevent potential intra-ethnic conflict and to keep the lid on criminality. Some sharing of the benefits of economic growth is required if the current winners are not to create a climate which will ultimately undermine their aspirations and achievements.

A final observation of the more general lessons to be learnt from Guyana concerns the limitations of many of the theoretical lenses used to guide the research and policy thinking in the country in the past.

Guyana has been the recipient of various theories employed to explain a reality which singularly failed to comply with the precepts of the theories and failed to offer a viable alternative development agenda. Without being in any way definitive we can point to the overwhelming predominance of dependency theory, varieties of marxist, socialist and black power thinking which completely determined the spectrum of debate from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s. In retrospect, it is clear to most observers that these contributed to the developmental cul de sac into which the country fell.⁽¹⁾ The gender spectacles provide a further example. Alissa Trotz captures the dilemmas in this literature quite well in her paper which: “argues that analyses of patriarchy which prioritise gender at the expense of other social constructs through which women’s experiences are refracted, are ultimately unable to offer an explanatory framework which can adequately account for the production of similarities and differences among women”.(²) Trotz’s work demonstrates that the accepted notion that the household itself is a critical determinant in female labour supply is belied by the experience of Afro-Guyanese women, where it does not necessarily have any explanatory credentials. Hence Trotz warns clearly of the limitations of academic overemphasis on gender as an explanatory factor at the expense of other social relations.

In addition to the intrinsic interest of Guyana as a case study of a country facing the challenge of sustainable development, there are, in sum, broader lessons to be learnt for the comparative experience. Guyana is almost uniquely placed as a crossroads of currents in the South. The population comprises immigrants from Africa, India, China, Portugal and Britain as well as the indigenous Amerindians. Guyana is physically located in South America but its population primarily relates to the Caribbean community. The great global issues of tropical forest and coastal zone management are at the forefront of Guyana’s sustainable development challenges. These issues are being faced in the wider context of a profound transition from socialist central state planning to free market economics through a structural adjustment and démocratisation programme.

The challenges

Guyana is physically located in the north-east comer of the South American continent yet in the cultural perception of the majority of its peoples it is a part of the Caribbean island community. Both economically and socially there are family and friendship ties to North America and Great Britain also where so many Guyanese live and work. This has profound implications for the degree of environmental sensitivity of the majority of the population who live on the coast and who never venture into the vast forested interior where the only means of access is by foot, boat, hiring expensive light aircraft or taking the tortuous journey by lorry along the few poor roads that exist. Guyana borders on three neighbouring territories, but has no proper road connection to any of these. Guyana has poor international as well as internal transport and communications networks. It is most definitely a backwater.

The peoples of Guyana have travelled long and far. The original inhabitants, the Amerindians, originated in Asia. Centuries ago they migrated across to Alaska, down through North America, eventually to inhabit the dense forests of Amazonia. They are now only a tiny minority of the total population. The next significant human wave of immigrants came involuntarily. They were brought in as slaves from the African continent by European traders and settlers, to provide labour for the plantations. These are the Afro-Guyanese. They were followed by indentured labour from India, and this group, the Indo-Guyanese, came to make up the largest population group in the country. Chinese, Portuguese and British came and stayed as well, as influential minorities. The post-independence politics of the country as they have developed reflect these broad ethnic divides.

The British colony of Guyana was granted internal self-government in 1961 and the radical, predominantly Indo-Guyanese People’s Progressive Party (PPP) of Dr Cheddi Jagan was elected into office. This was perceived as a threat to Western interests in the region who successfully contrived to bring into power what was assumed at the time to be the more pro-Westem, predominantly Afro-Guyanese People’s National Congress (PNC) of Forbes Burnham in 1964 in alliance with the small business oriented, United Force Party which mobilised the Amerindian electorate. In 1966 Guyana became fully independent and four years later was declared a republic.

The PNC contrived to rig the political system in such a way that they retained power for almost three decades even though the Afro-Guyanese were a minority compared with the Indo-Guyanese. Yet to the great chagrin of the Western powers, the PNC underwent a radicalisation and in October 1980 declared the world’s first Cooperative Republic. In reality the main cooperative to benefit was the PNC cabinet, according to its critics. Soviet influence increased and Western aid and investment declined. The low point was achieved in 1985 when Guyana was expelled from the IMF.

The management of the natural resource base of the country in the post-independence PNC Burnham era was based upon an avowed socialist ideology, built upon the twin concepts of nationalisation of the natural resources accompanied by a verbal commitment to cooperatives. In reality, this meant a growing authoritarian one party supremacy over government institutions and an ever greater dominance in controlling the economy.

Burnham consolidated his rule by adopting a radical ideological agenda which stole the clothes of the opposition at a time when Marxism and black power were in the ascendancy in the 1970s, and he consolidated that power by building up the security forces, a task made easier by neighbouring countries adventurism at the beginning of that decade. Military expenditure grew almost fourfold from 3.2% of GDP in 1970 to 12.4% by 1986. More money spent on arms meant less resources for development.

The process of economic nationalisation proceeded fairly rapidly and by the late 1970s only one fifth of GDP lay outside of state control. Our key concern is to review what was the impact of the nationalisation on the management of the natural resource base. We will review its impact sector by sector in the book and the challenges facing the country in moving away from this complex historical legacy.

Guyana serves as an object lesson of the affect of a socialist development strategy in a poor country on the periphery of the global economic system. Its failure to develop the natural resource base proved to be a de facto environment conservation strategy. The result of this radical socialist historical developmental cul de sac creates both opportunities and constraints. The opportunities involve the chance to avoid the pitfalls of a rapid free-for-all pillaging of the resource base in order to actually guarantee a more sustainable usage. This is possible because the resource base was left relatively in tact through neglect and the absence of investment. The constraints centre on the temptation to cash in on the neglect of investment in the past and create a free-for-all in which social and environmental concerns receive nothing more than perfunctory appraisal, or become a further opportunity for rent-seeking activity by the state.

Guyana faces a formidable development challenge possessing the second lowest GNP per capita in the Western hemisphere after Haiti, $310 in 1989. It is the poorest country in Latin America. That development challenge is inevitably at the forefront of everyone’s minds as people try to improve their day to day lives.

This country of under 800,000 people had amassed a debt of almost $2 billion by 1990, which represented approximately $2,500 for every citizen, over eight times the per capita GNP. According to the World Bank’s World Debt tables, the following year the total external debt rose to over ten times the GNP. The economic decline began in 1976 and worsened considerably over the 1980s. GDP fell a dramatic 16% in 1982–83, stagnated in the mid-1980s and dropped more than 10% in the late 1980s.

The period of economic decline was undeniably associated with the socialist experiment undertaken at that time. In the light of this domestic experience, a changing global economic climate and increasing international pressures and following the death of Burnham in 1985, the stage was set for change. With Hoyte assuming the presidency, in the following year the government slowly began to change policy by encouraging foreign investment and the private sector. In 1988 an Economic Recovery Programme was announced in a proposed agreement with the IMF. But the IMF initially held back on funding to test the government’s commitment to the reforms. Divestment of the nationalised bauxite and sugar industries was set in train along with other areas of state ownership. An IMF monitoring agreement in April 1989 opened up a process of debt re-scheduling and the resumption of external capital inflows. In July 1990 a formal IMF stand-by and enhanced structural adjustments were finally agreed. The process of decline was halted and GDP grew by 6.1% in 1991 and by 7.7% in 1992. Full Western support remained dependent on the holding of free elections. After many delays these did eventually take place in October 1992, and the old government was removed from power. Dr Cheddi Jagan and the PPP took office and proceeded to consolidate the dramatic swing away from the old centralised state dominant model towards a market based policy.

To revive the ailing economy, new investment is required and a revitalisation of all the basic infrastructure, in particular sea defences, transportation, irrigation, drainage, communications, electricity and water supply. The greatest problem of all, however, is restoring the human resource capacity of the country. It is also necessary to strengthen institutions and reinforce environmental initiatives. Strengthening human resource capacity, institutions and the environment is particularly difficult given strong pressures to reduce government expenditure as a central part of the structural adjustment agenda.

This country’s government like governments the World over, is charged with the responsibility of providing the overall policy, legislative and institutional framework and conditions within which rising standards of living can be realised. It is all too easy, faced with such poverty and the uphill struggle for development, to forget the fact that the long term success of such an enterprise depends essentially upon the people...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms
• 1 Guyana’s challenge
• 2 Mining
• 3 Forestry
• 4 Agriculture and fishing
• 5 Human settlement and service provision
• 6 Industry, transport and energy
• 7 Biodiversity, tourism and the amerindian community
• 8 Towards a national strategy for sustainability
• 9 The institutional challenge
• 10 Reviewing progress in the 1990s
• Bibliography