- The 371,000-hectare Iwokrama forest reserve was awarded FSC certification in October 2016.
- Iwokrama is renowned for its collaborative forest management approach with surrounding communities, including the Amerindian community of Fairview.
- Fairview is the only Amerindian community within the Iwokrama forest and is closely involved in a portion of its management.
IWOKRAMA, Guyana – It’s late afternoon in Fairview village, an indigenous Amerindian community in the heart of Guyana’s tropical rainforest. School is over for the day and children are playing outside. Neighbors stop to chat. A truck thunders by on the way to the village airstrip, which is being expanded to make way for bigger planes – and a visit from Prince Harry in early December. Suddenly there’s the roar of an engine and the village chief (or Toshao) comes around the corner, perched on a motorbike with a driver and a small child.
Lucy Marslowe, 30, is one of a growing number of female Toshaos in Guyana, but she leads a unique setup. Fairview is the only Amerindian community located within the Iwokrama forest – a 371,000-hectare reserve established in 1989. The village is also just a short drive from Iwokrama River Lodge – part scientific research center, part eco-tourism resort, and the frontline of the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development. The center carries out sustainable management of the forest – which includes timber extraction – as well as vital research and monitoring of its ecosystems.
Having such a powerful neighbor has its advantages.
“At the National Toshaos Council I hear a lot of Toshaos complain about people exploiting them with the mining and rivers,” Marslowe said. “But down here we don’t face that – even though we’re next to the main road and the river. We have Iwokrama there like a shield over us.”
In addition to a memorandum of understanding with Iwokrama, the village also has co-management over the forest, says Marslowe. “Seeing that we were existing here long before Iwokrama, they still seek advice, we work together and we do a lot of meetings and consultations with the residents before we do anything. They respect us and we respect them too.”
Iwokrama’s local connections don’t end at Fairview. The center also works with other indigenous communities through its community partner, the North Rupununi District Development Board. It was established in 1996 by locals concerned about the arrival of the Iwokrama center in their forest.
The close relationships that have since been forged formed a key part of Iwokrama’s recent application for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification – supported by the Caribbean Aqua-Terrestrial Solutions Programme, set up by German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit. This coveted seal of approval is given to well-managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits. It’s also increasingly in demand among buyers and consumers worldwide, keen to reduce their impact on the environment.
Iwokrama was actually previously awarded FSC certification in 2008, but voluntarily suspended it in 2011. “Something happened within the partner organization [Tigerwood Guyana Inc],” explains Raquel Thomas-Caesar, Iwokrama’s director of resource management and training. “It caused them to have a financial problem. Because of this they couldn’t pay us so we actually lost a lot of money. Eventually we had to just say, ‘Look, well, we won’t be allowing you to log anymore and it’s coming close to the end of the five-year agreement’, so we voluntarily suspended our certificate.”
In their latest assessment report, carried out on behalf of the FSC in January, auditors from Soil Association Forestry praised Iwokrama’s “impressive” involvement with 16 local communities (now 20), citing its work to pass on knowledge related to sustainable forestry management and caring for the environment.
“Capacity building is phenomenal with regards to indigenous people,” the report’s authors stated – although they voiced concern that such outreach work is limited by a lack of funding. Despite this shortcoming and other areas noted for improvement – such as better water-quality monitoring and correct disposal of waste wood – Iwokrama’s application was approved. In October, it was officially awarded FSC certification.
Sustainable logging
Carrying out sustainable tree harvesting is no easy feat. First, Forest Manager Kenneth Rodney and his team must divide up the forest’s net operable area, an expanse of just over 108,000 hectares deemed suitable for sustainable timber harvesting, into 100-hectare blocks. Then with the help of a machete, compass, GPS and marking pegs, two teams carry out an inventory of the block, mapping suitable trees and other important elements such as swamps, rivers and sites of special ecological importance.
Tree lists are then prepared according to commercial demand: greenheart, purpleheart, wamara and wallaba are most popular. The lists are then submitted to the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) for approval.
“Over a 60-year period the forest grows at the rate of 20 cubic meters per hectare, according to GFC figures,” Rodney explains, “so that’s what we’re allowed to harvest. And that generally works out to four or five trees per hectare.”
The approved trees are marked and then cut, processed and transported to the capital Georgetown by McVantage, the forest-sector subsidiary of Iwokrama’s new commercial partners, Farfan & Mendes. The Iwokrama team must then log all the timber for tracking, and later on carry out post-harvest inventories to note any negative impact on surrounding trees, flora and fauna.
Strategic moves
Some believe Iwokrama’s long history of practicing sustainable, reduced-impact logging raises questions about the need to go through the rigmarole of applying for FSC certification.
“It’s quite simple: money and the markets,” Rodney said. “Iwokrama is always scrabbling. We used to get a lot of donor funding, particularly from the Commonwealth Secretariat, that’s not coming in any more. We have some support from the government of Guyana, of course, but barely enough to keep us going from month to month on a very tight budget. That [certification] will alleviate that.”
Without income from sustainable forestry, tourism or external funders, Iwokrama cannot carry out monitoring and scientific research in the rainforest, nor develop models for sustainable forestry, run wildlife clubs and training sessions for local communities, or provide vital jobs to the local community.
“Before the mill site opened most of our residents used to go into the bush, in the mining area,” Marslowe said from her experiences as a Toshao and area resident. “Some of them would leave their kids to suffer months and months, and bad things used to happen. But now our young men get a job right here.”
Fairview also benefits from other income streams and practices. It requires a forest-user fee from visitors to Iwokrama, it gets fair market value for standing timber (taking into account that Iwokrama incurs all forest management costs), has access to Iwokrama’s Medex (trained medical experts), and it is making inroads into tourism in its own right. A thatched hut or benab for visitors is under construction in the village, and Marslowe outlined plans to offer activities such as fishing and jaguar spotting. A community restaurant on the highway is also on the cards, funded by the United Nations Development Programme, to cater for travelers waiting to have their ID checked at the police station.
Despite financial restraints, Iwokrama’s outreach work is already coming full circle.
“The population that we work with is between about 5,000 and 6,000 people,” Samantha James, Iwokrama’s community outreach manager, said in an interview with Mongabay. “If you look around, most of the people who are working in conservation or leadership in some shape or form have been a wildlife club member.”
Others, like Toshao Marslowe and Iwokrama’s tourism manager, have received ranger training.
Junior Tour Guide Marcia Johnny came through the NRDDB’s youth training center Bina Hill Institute, which teaches forestry, tourism, and other skills to young people who drop out or don’t get a chance to go to secondary school. Johnny has now been at Iwokrama for three years.
“There’s no other place like it….things that other people never get to see, we get to see them here. Like the jaguar, I’ve seen that four times. And the harpy eagle, plenty times,” Johnny said. “So when I go home I always boast about them and my other friends are annoyed and say ‘I want to go there!’”
Opposition and the future
Not everyone is 100 percent behind Iwokrama. In the FSC audit report, some residents were found to be “disgruntled by non-payment by [Iwokrama’s former logging partner] Tigerwood.” Others continue to flout Iwokrama’s subsistence-only rules on fishing, hunting and gathering of non-timber forest products. Even in Fairview, Marslowe has some convincing to do.
“Some people don’t see it, or they don’t understand, but I always tell my people that Iwokrama really teaches us a lot,” she said. “When I study my history from my grandfather’s days it was similar to Iwokrama. He had knowledge about protecting and conserving – now we see the value of that. Other communities are in a lot of trouble because they don’t think of the generation to come, but we’re trying to live up to that standard, because what we enjoy we want our children to enjoy too.”
Iwokrama has the same ambition for its work with local communities.
“When the people in the area start taking over those roles in management that’s when you know you’re doing something right,” Thomas-Caesar said. “At the end of the day that’s their space. I’m living in Georgetown, at some point I will not be at Iwokrama, but [rangers] Martin, Richardson, all those guys in the Rupununi they’re staying there. They’re the future.”
Banner image: Timber stack at the Iwokrama mill site. Photo by Carinya Sharples for Mongabay
Carinya Sharples is a Guyana-based foreign correspondent. You can find her on Twitter at @carinyasharples
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