PRESIDENT MOHAMED IRFAAN ALI: It is well established that those bearing the brunt of the climate phenomena have made no contribution to the current crisis. Small island, developing and low-lying coastal states like Guyana are among the hardest hit and require adequate financing to address the attendant effects. The commitments by developed world, by the developed countries, including the pledge of U.S. $100 billion per year remain unfulfilled.
PRESIDENT ALI: My country, Guyana is blessed with the best of both worlds, that is the ability to lead on climate change. And the use of our expansive oil and gas reserves to contribute to the advancement and development of our country and region.So we're going to investigate today how that fact is changing both the country and the world. And I'm joined today by Amy Westervelt. She's an investigative journalist who covers climate accountability.
And then also I heard about some lawsuits that were being filed against the government invoking all sorts of different things. And I was interested in that litigation as well and how it had come together, and whether it was having an impact on both offshore drilling and how people perceived it in the country.
She also had an insurance related suit, which was pretty interesting. And actually, had an interesting outcome earlier this year, where she went after the government and then the government actually moved to add Exxon as a defendant as well, a codefendant with it, which kind of tells you a little bit about how close their relationship is.
They even got a World Bank grant to do that. And have not really done that yet. So that kind of leads into this whole fear that, look, we could be looking at another Deepwater, except this time in a country that has relatively little expertise in dealing with something like that. CHAKRABARTI: So in terms of the specificity of what's in the contract between the Guyanese government and Exxon, I will want to return to that because devil's always in the details, Amy. But I just want to quickly touch upon how much this money means for not just the Guyanese economy overall, but for the country's development, because it's about 800,000 people, one of South America's poorest.
Esan Hamer is a climate scientist and lecturer at the University of Guyana's Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences. He says prolonged drought is already plaguing Guyana's agricultural sector. The problem is even worse along the country's coast.The most imminent threat to Guyanese is the sea level rise.