Conservation International (CI) Guyana has called on the government to actively consider protected areas legislation, together with an adequate management authority.
Dr Patrick Chesney, CI’s manager of policy and donor relations, made this call at a ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of CI at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel on Wednesday last.
Dr Chesney said that in the next five years CI is committed to assisting with, inter alia the establishment of an 800,000 hectares Kanuku Mountains Protected Areas (KMPA) along with a co-management plan; the incorporation of the Southern Guyana community-owned conservation area (COCA) into a future national protected areas system (NPAS) and the establishment of a future protected area trust fund.
To this end Dr Chesney asked the government to actively consider enacting protected areas legislation; setting up a national system of protected areas with adequate management authority and to provide the necessary support for the setting up of the national protected areas trust fund. This fund is to meet the recurrent management costs of protected areas.
CI became operational in Guyana in 1993 with the Western Kanukus rapid biological assessment programme (RAP) before its official incorporation under the laws of Guyana on January 3, 1996.
CI’s mission, Dr Chesney said, is to “Conserve the Earth’s living heritage – our global biodiversity – and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature”. This international conservation body safeguards some of earth’s most abundant places by concentrating on biodiversity hotspots, high biodiversity wilderness areas (HBWA), and priority marine ecosystems and seascapes. Guyana is located in a HBWA.
In Guyana, CI has pursued partnerships with the government at both the political and operational levels to achieve complementary objectives. Guyana is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Dr Chesney noted that CI-Guyana is assisting Guyana to meet its obligations under the CBD.
Guyana, under the CBD, has to work to establish protected areas in two of the five priority sites: Southern Guyana and the Kanuku Mountains for a combined area totalling under 1,500,000 hectares.
CI Guyana, according to Dr Chesney, initiated and advanced the process for Guyana’s first indigenous protected area in Southern Guyana as the community-owned conservation area (COCA) in Konashen District.
In addition, the organization advanced work towards Guyana’s first co-managed protected areas in the Kanuku Mountains which included comprehensive community resource use evaluation in 18 communities of the proposed KMPA
CI is also credited with increasing local, national and global knowledge of biodiversity in several pristine areas of Guyana.
Attending the cocktail reception and awards ceremony were Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, several diplomats, private sector members and conservationists.
Curtis R. Bernard, Margaret Khan, Eustace Emerick Alexander, Nial Joseph, Margaret Gomes, Natalie Victoriano, Richard Wilson, Andrew Demetro, Patricia Fredericks, Melinda Felicia Darson, Carlton Outar, Audrey Maureen Horsham and George Laurice Franklin were honoured for five years or more service to CI Guyana.
Eight of those honoured were based at Lethem and five in Georgetown.
Communications Coordinator of CI Guyana Ajay Baksh in his welcome told the gathering that 20 years ago the approach to conservation changed and many have seen the wisdom in the CI approach, which made a difference in how conservation is viewed worldwide.
The organization, Baksh said, continues to pursue its vision with the same zest as when it started 20 years ago, resulting in the protection of massive areas of land and sea in some of the most biologically rich and threatened places in the world. (Nicosia Smith)
