Jul 05, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

(Kaieteur News) – Every conversation about Guyana’s economic future eventually arrives at a wall; a literal one, two hundred and eighty miles of seawall and sea defences holding the Atlantic away from a coastal plain that sits below the level of the ocean at high tide.

I want to write about that wall as an economic asset, because I do not think we talk about it that way nearly enough. Roughly 90 percent of our population lives on the coastal plain, much of it between half a metre and a full metre below sea level. About three quarters of our economic activity, agriculture, services, manufacturing, government and commerce, sits on the same strip. Which means the most important piece of economic infrastructure in Guyana is not a port, a highway or a power plant. It is the system of sea defences, kokers, drains, canals, conservancies and pumps that makes everything else possible.