ENVIRONMENT-GUYANA: Natives say Forest Conservation Deal Premature

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Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Dec 11 2002 (IPS) - An Amerindian group here is upset that the government has signed a deal with a U.S. conservation group without first dealing with some of their issues.

The administration of President Bharrat Jagdeo signed a memorandum of understanding last month with Conservation International (CI), the Washington D.C-based group that works in more than 30 countries around the world, to protect a huge chunk of tropical rainforest in the country’s southernmost region.

The agreement covers about 1.5 million acres, which officials say may contain dozens of undocumented species of flora and fauna that could be of immense value to Guyana and the international scientific community.

Under the agreement, CI will provide about two million U.S. dollars over the next seven months to help manage the largely uninhabited and remote area near Brazil and will seek private funding to further protect the area and ensure that the estimated 200 indigenous people living there can maintain their traditional lifestyles.

But Jean La Rose, a leading executive in the Amerindian People’s Association (APA) says that while her group is open to parts of the country being set aside as protected areas, it is not happy that such deals are being signed without a series of important issues being settled at the national level.

One is the question of land titles for native Indian groups. Countries like Guyana, with a rich diversity of flora and fauna, need to protect certain areas, says La Rose, but clear legislation, spelling out the rights of groups likely to be affected, must be in place before such agreements are signed.

”This whole question of demarcation of lands and the issuing of titles to Amerindian communities should be settled first. We are not at all happy with the way things are going now and, from what we know, the people in the area have not been consulted about what is going on in southern Guyana.”

Amerindians account for about six percent of the country’s population of 750,000 and live mostly in interior communities.

The area in question is occupied by the Wai Wai and Wapishana peoples.

Anxious to soothe the aboriginals’ fears, CI this week told a different story, saying that it did consult some of the communities.

The body also said that government officials were consulted before the MOU was signed, and that plans have already been drawn up for further consultations with stakeholders.

More importantly, CI says, some of the captains in the aboriginal villages even wrote the organisation, urging it to work with government to create the protected zone because they were encouraged by what they heard during briefings.

”What we have done is to sign an MOU with government, and studies will be conducted to determine what kind of protected area it would be in the future, whether it would be one that allows for some sustainable commercial work to be done like mining, or whether it would be left as a wilderness area completely. We don t know yet, as studies are to be done,” said CI spokesman Lennox Cornette.

The APA says it is also concerned that such deals are being signed before the legislation for national protected areas has been adopted.

The government and the local environmental community are working to include several other scientifically important regions of the country in the protected areas system.

These include the area around the Kaieteur Falls National Park in central west Guyana, the Iwokrama Rainforest Centre, which includes nearly one million acres in southern Guyana, a 100-mile stretch of beach in northern Guyana, where at least four species of marine turtles nest each year and the Kanuku mountain range near the border with Brazil.

The range is thought to contain more than 70 percent of the country’s flora and fauna and is known to as the home of more than 350 bird species found nowhere else in this former British colony, including the giant and endangered Harpy Eagle.

Even as the debate over land titles, Amerindian rights and the timing of legislation continues, CI appears to be moving ahead with its agenda.

In July, it signed an agreement with the government to tie off a 200,000-acre plot of land in southeast Guyana as a ‘conservation concession’. Cornette says that the deal is similar to those given to timber companies.

”That area is being treated as though we are a commercial logging operation. We are paying for the trees to remain standing for 30 years, paying all the royalties and other charges like commercial companies,” she said.