Former President Jagdeo elected as first Chair of Global Green Growth Institute
Georgetown, GINA, October 24, 2012 -- Source - GINA
Government has extended it congratulations to former president, Bharrat Jagdeo on his election as the first chair of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), at its inaugural assembly and council meeting in Seoul, Korea. The duration of his tenure as chair is two years.
GGGI’s agenda is centered on the popularisation of the green growth model as alternative development strategies for emerging economies. At the- time of Jagdeo’s election, the Republic of Korea was honoured by being nominated as the host country for the secretariat of the Green Climate Fund.
This fund was established during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of Parties in 2010 with a mandate to channel funds from industrialised countries to developing ones to support adaptation and mitigation to climate change.
Former President Bharrat Jagdeo
At a press conference in Seoul on the day of his election, Jagdeo said that, “most countries recognise the need for new models of development, they know the old ways no longer work. However, they don’t yet see enough evidence of how they can transition to new ways of balancing prosperity with combating climate change and other environmental challenges. GGGI’s role is to change this situation through practical help for countries in the developing world as they forge their own pathways to a better, more sustainable development model than was used in the past.”
President of Korea, Lee Mung-Bak said that the GGGI must strive to become a global stronghold for efforts to provide the much-needed support to developing countries as it has the potential to emerge as a pioneering institute that not only outlines a vision for a better future, but also delivers on the ground to realise this vision.
The former Guyanese Head of State was nominated by Korea’s Ambassador for Green Growth, who cited Guyana’s national Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and was seconded by the Danish Minister for International Development.
Guyana is one of the founding members of GGGI, and was represented in Seoul by Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett. Moreover, former president Jagdeo was a member of the Board of Directors of GGGI since 2010. This board was responsible for steering the organisation from its initial role as a centre of excellence for green growth planning and implementation to the point where it was converted by law into an international organisation.
President Donald Ramotar represented Guyana at the GGGI signatory ceremony in June 2012, where he joined six other Heads of State and Government to start the process of conversion of GGGI into an international organisation.
At present, the GGGI has 18 members from the developed and developing world, including: the United Kingdom, Norway, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Denmark, Ethiopia, Paraguay, Qatar, Vietnam, Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates.
In addition to his new role as President of the GGGI Assembly, Jagdeo currently fulfils a number of other global leadership roles in the areas of low carbon development, green growth and sustainable development.
He is the Roving Ambassador for the Three Basins Initiative and is an IUCN Patron of Nature as well as the IUCN’s High Level Envoy for Sustainable Development in Forest Countries. He is also a Patron of the World Sustainability Forum and previously served on the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Advisory Group on Climate Finance, which explored ways to raise US$100B per annum by 2020 for investment in the developing world’s efforts to combat climate change.
The former president was named Time Magazine’s Hero of the Environment in 2008, and the United Nations Environment Programme Champion of the Earth in 2010.
