Former Guyana president Jagdeo to keynote region’s premier sustainable tourism conference, STC-13

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The former Guyana president, Bharrat Jagdeo, will keynote the region’s leading and most important gathering on sustainable tourism development in April.

The former leader, whose term as head of the Guyana Government ended last December, will address delegates attending the 13th Annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development – otherwise known as the Sustainable Tourism Conference (STC-13) – which will be held from 15 to 18 April in Guyana.

“We are pleased that former president Jagdeo has accepted our invitation to keynote STC. The former president has gained international recognition and has developed a strong reputation globally for his relentless advocacy for action to avert the worst extremes of climate change,” said Gail Henry, the sustainable tourism product specialist at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), the conference organizer. “We eagerly anticipate a dynamic and highly relevant keynote presentation from him.”

As part of the plan to combat climate change, then President Jagdeo established an Office of Climate Change within the Office of the President, and a Low Carbon Development Strategy was developed, outlining Guyana’s approach to promoting economic development while combating climate change. A key element of the strategy is the deployment of the country’s tropical forests towards addressing climate change.

For championing the cause of developing countries in the fight against climate change, the former Guyana leader was named by Time Magazine and CNN as one of their “Heroes of the Environment” in 2008, and he was awarded the United Nations “Champion of the Earth” award in 2010. He also served on the UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance, and earlier this month, he was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University in New Delhi, India. He was presented with the honour by Dr. R.K Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Chancellor of TERI University.

STC-13, which has as its theme, Keeping the Right Balance: Sustaining our Resources, will be held at the Guyana International Conference Centre, and is being organized in collaboration with the Guyana Tourism Authority. For more information on STC-13, visit www.caribbeanstc.com