The challenge of climate change adaptation in Guyana

Climate change threatens to bring enormous infrastructural challenges for low-lying regions, and the capacity for adaptation is highly uneven on a global scale. Guyana, a developing country in South America, is highly susceptible to sea-level rise and flooding, because much of the population lives at or below sea level and depends upon old and decaying coastal infrastructure. This article examines the efforts of the Guyanese state to prioritize climate change adaptation, drawing from budgetary and documentary analyses and in-depth interviews with key informants in pertinent government ministries and non-governmental organizations. The Guyana government clearly recognizes the country's acute vulnerability to climate change - which has been accentuated by multiple recent flood events - and focuses on the need for vast infrastructural rehabilitation and enhancement as the main adaptation priority. However, while Guyana has emerged as a champion of climate change mitigation through averted deforestation, government investment in adaptation remains relatively small, and although a limited budget is one of the reasons for this, a number of other impediments complicate the issue. These include limited technical skills, low public awareness and the longer time-scale of threats relative to other national priorities. Ultimately, this case highlights some of the formidable challenges which poor countries face in prioritizing investments in adaptation.