Climate for conservation: by using market-based mechanisms to provide financial incentives, Guyana is becoming a global model for environmental policies.

• Author: Gies, Erica
• Position: Country overview

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A left in a small plane over Guyana, the view is an unbroken blanket of trees to every horizon. In the 21st century it is startling and heartening to see so much untrammeled wilderness.

These pristine forests hold the promise of economic benefit for Guyana's people, but the question of the moment is: how? The standard path for development is deforestation, agriculture, ranching. But Guyana's leaders recognize that the world is changing, that these forests might soon be worth more alive than dead.

Thanks mostly to a low population--just 750,000, or roughly the same as the city of San Francisco--this country the size of Idaho has managed to retain almost 80 percent of its original forest. Because the interior is so rugged, most people live in or around the coastal capital, Georgetown, leaving the large expanses of intact ecosystems inland.

As a result, Guyana is a treasure trove of more than 6,000 species of plants, 700 birds, 200 mammals, 200 reptiles and amphibians, and countless insects. Many of these species are endemic and some are unknown to science. Its more famous endangered creatures include the jaguar, giant river otter, giant anteater, harpy eagle, green anaconda, Guianan cock-of-the-rock, arapaima, and tapir.

Still, in spite of these natural riches, Guyana is a relatively poor country, and its citizens need better health care, education, water, and economic opportunity. There is talk of paving the single dirt road that crosses the country from Georgetown to Lethem, Brazil, which would generate both economic benefit and environmental risk. And the country's mining sector digs for gold, diamonds, bauxite, and aluminum, also damaging the environment.

However, Guyana's president, Bharrat Jagdeo, sees another potential path for development in a world where pristine rainforests are increasingly rare.

Two years ago, he offered Guyana's standing forests to the world as carbon offsets. In recent months he has been refining that offer by actively participating in negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, set to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. In particular, he has focused his efforts on retooling the proposed REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). In early February, his efforts caught the attention of Norway, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Guyana to cooperate on forest issues. The deal includes a united front for negotiating with international bodies and financial compensation to Guyana for creating low-carbon employment and investment opportunities and avoiding deforestation and forest degradation. Such efforts are just part of a culture of experimentation in Guyana that has brought the country to the leading edge of new economic models for conservation.

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This profile of conservation was boosted in 1996 with the passage of the Iwokrama Act that set aside a 917,000-acre parcel of forest, wetlands, and savanna as the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development to provide ecological, economic, and social benefits to the people of Guyana. Iwokrama has since drawn international scientists, tourists, and policy wonks. Its charter requires it to be financially sustainable, so in recent years, that has meant forays into ecotourism and sustainable logging.

Surama, a Makushi village near Iwokrama, is an example of how many forest initiatives in Guyana are driven by indigenous people, who comprise...