The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) yesterday called on the government to suspend what it said was the “short-sighted investment” in the Hope/Dochfour Canal until a flood mitigation strategy has been developed within the framework of a national environmental consultation.The Ministry of Agriculture responded by saying that the claims of the Association are unsubstantiated. The Hope/Dochfour Canal is being constructed at a cost of $3.6 billion.The Association said that the work should be stopped until?the technical feasibility and social benefit of the Hope/Dochfour Canal is established as the best option to pursue, and a financial and social accountability mechanism is in place to ensure transparency in implementation of?whatever scheme is adopted.The GHRA chided the government for ignoring technical advice that the construction of a high-level dam from the East Demerara Water Conservancy to the sea-wall in the vicinity of Hope/Dochfour is ill-advised.“Why the Government persists with a project which presents formidable technical problems; is immensely expensive and is not considered the best solution to the problem it is intended to resolve, remains a mystery,” the GHRA stated yesterday.But the Ministry of Agriculture has said that it did not ignore technical advice. Following the 2005 flood, the Ministry had said that technical work done by a battery of local and overseas engineers recommended that the East Demerara Water Conservancy, in addition to its existing relief, must be supplemented by being drained through other means, if catastrophic flooding was to be averted.Later, the Ministry said a UK firm in collaboration with two local firms won this contract and proposed two engineering solutions, namely a high level northern relief, starting at Hope/Dochfour and ending at the Atlantic and a Flagstaff-Mahaica Canal.But the GHRA argued that farmers in the Mahaica and Mahaicony areas will derive relief from the proposed Hope/Dochfour canal is not necessarily true, nor adequate justification for not looking at the more obvious technical solutions (most of which involve the Western,Wholesale China Jerseys, not the Eastern end of the conservancy).Further, the Association charged that reacting to the 2005/08 floods as if they were a one-off, abnormal occurrence is global warming denial.The basic lesson emerging from the 2005 flood,Cheap Jerseys, reinforced by the 2008 floods, namely that rising sea-levels and global warming pose daunting threats to the future of the coastlands called for a comprehensive review of the major coastal drainage schemes, the GHRA posited.The Association said that the World Bank made financing available for precisely such a wide-ranging study and that review would have provided insights into the feasibility, the scope and scale as well as the cost and time-table of creating a viable environment for human habitation on the East Coast.Alternatively, of course, it may also have encouraged the conclusion that the East Coast has no long-term viability and that migration inland is the only feasible future, the GHRA pointed out.”Thus the recklessness in rushing into the Hope/Dochfour is not only dubious for the reasons noted above, it also postpones – at least in the short-term – a vital but politically inconvenient debate about climate change in Guyana,” the Association declared.The GHRA posited that the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) has eclipsed all other environmental debates.“As a preventative strategy the LCDS has much merit, but environmental action stands on two legs,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, conservation and mitigation. Mitigation with respect to coastal flooding is an immediate and present danger which is growing at a faster pace and, in purely national terms, is of greater urgency than the LCDS,” the body insisted.The GHRA agreed that Guyana’s responsibility to conserve its forests for global benefits should be acknowledged and supported by all Guyanese, but argued that on purely environmental grounds,wholesale nfl jerseys, the national priority must be mitigation of flooding,Wholesale Jerseys, otherwise, whatever financial benefits and developmental gains are gleaned from conserving forests will likely be absorbed by emergency responses to ever more devastating flooding.Now that the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) has been established, an important priority claim on it is a major national consultation on the future of coastal Guyana, backed by the technical studies which would allow people at all levels to make informed decisions, the GHRA said.It added that such a consultation should be ring-fenced against political propagandising of the kind which tainted the REDD+