Iwokrama International Rain Forest Programme: Meeting the Challenge of Sustainable Management of Forests and Biodiversity

Problem Overview:

Sustainable forest management

The challenges faced by Iwokrama and the inputs it provides are partially answers to question such as: how to devise sustainable forest management in face of crushing debt payments, growing population, an increasing technological gap, and dwindling employment opportunities. Poor countries often resort to unsustainable practices to ensure some income, they have inadequately controlled logging, some of it partly due to their allowance of large international companies to harvest timber, they have unplanned development, and wildfires. These result in an annual loss of nearly 16 million hectares of forest. Plunging themselves into more poverty and the whole world into an ecological crisis.

Background:

The Iwokrama Forest is located in central Guyana some 300 km south of Georgetown, the capital. The Iwokrama programme was named after the Iwokrama mountains which are a major topological feature of the site.

The challenges faced by Iwokrama and the inputs it provides are partially answers to question such as: how to devise sustainable forest management in face of crushing debt payments, growing population, an increasing technological gap, and dwindling employment opportunities. Poor countries often resort to unsustainable practices to ensure some income: they have inadequately controlled logging, some of it partly due to their allowance of large international companies to harvest timber; they have unplanned development, and wildfires. These result in an annual loss of nearly 16 million hectares of forest, plunging themselves into more poverty and the whole world into an ecological crisis.

Iwokrama’s fundamental objective is to define the extent to which sustainable utilization of tropical forest resources is compatible with their conservation and to determine the impact of such utilization on their biodiversity. Iwokrama’s rain forests are in this respect a ‘living laboratory’ for research on these issues.

Partners:

Government of Guyana, Commonwealth Secretariat, Overseas Development Administration (UK), UNDP/GEF, USAID, University of the West Indies, International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Activities:

To achieve its objectives Iwokrama developed three core programmes:
a. sustainable management of the tropical rain forest;
b. conservation and utilization of biodiversity; and
c. sustainable human development.

These core programmes are supported by two cross-cutting programmes:

a. forestry research; and
b. information and communication.

An innovative process is one of Iwokrama’s main activities. The Programme is based on an umbrella partnership of the Amerindian communities, environmental NGOs, the scientific community, funding agencies, and forest based industries under the umbrella of the Guyanese government to whom the land pertains. This partnership enables the programme to reach its objectives in research, development and disseminating of conservation techniques for biological diversity and sustainable management of tropical rain forest resources for Guyana and the global community. It also promotes links with educational and information organizations as well as the private sector and the policy community. Furthermore it is an active demonstration of how local forest resources are utilized to sustain communities, combining economics, culture and tradition with ecology in a day-to-day living model of sustainability.

Results and Replicability:

Iwokrama’s main outputs are:

• an inventory of forest resources;
• a forest management plan and its implementation through a local entity;
• research and training programmes
• an eco-tourism strategy
• mutually beneficial relationships (formal and informal) with industrial partners involved in biodiversity prospecting
• an inventory of the uses of flora and fauna by indigenous communities, and by women in particular, including medicinal and healing practices
• policy advice on biodiversity conservation and prospecting for Guyanese counterparts and the international community
• studies on the total economic value of the Iwokrama Forest (including the valuation of environmental benefits provided by the forest); and
• a system of indicators for sustainable forest management

Financial sustainability for the Iwokrama programme is achieved through timber and non-timber production, eco-tourism, mineral extraction, and royalties earned for forest products resulting from research and development activities.

Submitted by:

Contact: Nicholas Remple
GEF/UNDP, NY
Tel: (212) 906-5426
email: nicholas.remple@undp.org