Guyana’s new Green Sustainable Development Strategy is a long term strategy until 2040. Under the vision: "An inclusive and prosperous Guyana that provides a good quality of life for all its citizens based on sound education and social protection, low-carbon and resilient development, providing new economic opportunities, justice and political empowerment.", it has 3 key messages and 8 main objectives from which they established 213 policies.
The Green State Development Strategy: Vision 2040, provides the comprehensive development policy to guide public investment over the next 20 years. Its objective is broader than Guyana’s past development strategies and captures a more holistic view of the country’s social, economic and environmental well-being, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In particular, the Strategy is transformational. It not only aims to foster sustained economic growth that is low-carbon and climate-resilient (consistent with the Low Carbon Development Strategy) but also promotes social cohesion, good governance and careful management of finite natural resources in accordance with green economy (GE) principles.
An extensive national consultations process was held, featuring seven thematic expert groups comprising 136 private, public and civil society representatives, and 32 consultation meetings convened across Guyana’s ten administrative regions. The national consultations that lasted from January through September 2018, set the policy direction and priorities of the Strategy, thereby ensuring a ‘bottom-up’ participatory effort.
Guyana’s Green Economy Modelling Study (GEMS) has been conducted to assess the economic, social and environmental impacts of a selection of such green policies. GEMS makes use of System Dynamics modelling to test how a transfer of investments from Business-as-Usual (BAU) to Green Economy (GE) policies affects a range of economic, social and environmental indicators. For the purpose of elaborating the Strategy, four priority sectors were identified (agriculture, forestry, energy and road transport infrastructure), where the impact of selected green economy policies were evaluated to the year 2040. The transformation to a green economy requires certain enabling conditions, all of which are linked – directly or indirectly – to sustainable infrastructure. Indeed, the four sectors analysed in the model reflect the importance of infrastructure to Guyana’s sustainable development.