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Countries Appendix GUYANA (94.4%) Guyana's rainforests are under siege by commercial timber and mining companies. Most of Guyana's extensive forests have remained relatively intact up until just recently (largely due to obsolete equipment and lack of capital), but lately the government has been pressured by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank to maximize exploitation of its resources in order to attract foreign investment to service Guyana's immense foreign debt of US$2 billion. Guyana is the Western Hemisphere's second poorest country after Haiti and its international debt is 10 times its GDP. The result from this economic burden is the rapid liquidation of Guyana's natural resources, namely its rainforest, for commercial logging and mining. In 1991 the Barama Company Limited, a Malaysian-Korean logging firm, secured a 50-year, 4.2 million acre (1.69 million hectare) concession of forest from the now-defunct dictatorship. Under the terms of the deal, Barama enjoyed a 10-year tax holiday, pays almost no royalties to the Guyana government, and was granted the right to log lands that have been inhabited by indigenous peoples for at least the last 400 years (Incidentally, Guyana is one of the only countries that does not recognize the land rights of indigenous and tribal peoples in direct violation of international law. Nor at the time the government have any sort of protected area system). With such favorable agreements, logging were flocking to Guyana, which had some of the lowest logging fees and royalties in the world-only 10% of what most African and Asian countries charge. In reaction to the invasion of foreign logging firms and in order to receive a loan, in May of 1995, the government issued a three-year moratorium on new logging concessions. Since the moratorium, the government has enacted environmental legislation and taken other measures to monitor logging. However, since the inception of the moratorium, the government has sought ways to get around it and has begun granting "exploratory leases" in order to keep investors interested in Guyana by promising huge concessions in the future. As new logging contracts have been put on hold, current logging companies proceed without supervision by the Forestry Commission which is understaffed and undertrained. For its part, Barama claims to be carrying out sustainable forestry and says it has no interest in devastating the forest. It maintains that it only takes two trees per acre and tries to minimize damage to the forest when the timber is extracted. Its operations are monitored by an independent research center that carries out studies to assess growth rates and logging impacts. With such a plan, the forest could, in theory, regenerate in 25 years. Barama claims it will stay in Guyana for its full 50-year concession. Barama and other foreign firms have complained of poor tree stocks and high harvesting costs in Guyana which may discourage some logging in the future. The government is making an effort to create a larger and more authoritative Forestry Commission which will enable the country to control logging activities and make the industry more profitable to the government which currently sees almost no revenue from the activities. By late 1997, the Guyanese government was preparing for a large increase in logging. On November 7, 1997, the minster of forestry announced plans to increased production by 400% over the next 3-5 years. The government also expanded the area declared as "state forests" to 28.7 million acres (11.3 million hectares) and passed new legislation allowing grants of exploratory leases which allow companies to develop infrastructure and make an inventory of commercial timber. The government is reportedly sending concession applications to Asian timber firms. In addition, in anticipation of the future massive increase in logging, new saw mills (one planned mill will increase capacity by ten-fold) and a plywood plant are under construction. A tremendous cyanide spill in Guyana's largest river, the Essequibo, made international headlines in August of 1995. The spill was caused by a break in the wall of the waste pool of the Omani gold mine. Four billion liters of cyanide-laced waste water were released into a tributary of the Essequibo, reportedly causing widespread die-offs of aquatic and terrestrial plant and animal life, pollution of the main source of drinking water for thousands of people, and threatening to sicken local indigenous peoples. The mine, run by Golden Star Resources (Denver, U.S.) and Cambior (Montreal, Canada), at first tried to cover up the spill by burying fish carcasses before reporting the accident to the Guyana government six days after the fact. The spill is a major setback to Guyana's development of its promising eco-tourism industry on the river. Meanwhile, the Guyana government, strapped for cash to service its debt, it granting further mining concessions on the New River. Both of these new concessions are located on the lands of indigenous peoples and also threaten pristine rainforests. Environmentalists say the government does not have adequate resources to enforce environmental standards for large scale mining or logging. Guyana still has great potential for sustainable development-it is not too late for a country with such extensive forest cover. Reportedly, the country may enter into a bioprospecting contract with an American pharmaceutical company that would pay handsomely should the company successfully bring a drug originating from Guyana's forests to market. Despite the spill, other regions of Guyana are an excellent draw for ecotourists including the magnificent King George VI falls. . . . . . For current information I highly recommend trying the CIA and FAO links below. |
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