Guyana President Clashes with BBC Journalist Over Oil and Climate Change

Guyana’s President, Irfaan Ali, got into a rather fiery confrontation with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur over his recent discoveries of offshore oil and the impact that the discovery will have on climate change. He raised questions about what the country has in mind for these oil reserves in terms of carbon emissions. President Ali swiftly defended Guyana’s environmental efforts, highlighting the vast forests that store carbon.

Interrupting Sackur, President Ali foregrounded Guyana’s conservation efforts with its very low deforestation rate and questioned, daring even to lecture, about Guyana’s supposed failure regarding climate change. He continued his criticism of the developed countries’ hypocrisy and questioned Sackur about his stance, asking if it stemmed from environmental destruction.

This reflects the struggle that carbon imperialism poses when emerging economies try to adopt an attitude from Western nations towards making environmental concerns paramount. This, therefore, reflects the biggest debates over environmental responsibility versus economic development.

The discovery of huge oil reserves in Guyana is likely to drastically change the economic status of the country to a level of equity with developed countries such as Norway and Brazil. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) took note of Guyana, which has the fastest-growing economy in South America and reasonable growth projections, led by growth in oil deposits from an increase in per capita income.

The downside, however, is that it has an environmental impact through increased carbon emissions. These exchanges between President Ali and Sackur reveal the many faces of the dilemma of how to balance economic development against environmental sustainability in such a rapidly changing world.