A Donor Support Group for the Iwokrama International Rain Forest Programme is to be set up so that donors could co-ordinate their assistance according to a Common-wealth Secretariat release on the financiers' meeting held in London on Wednesday.
This group is to meet in the near future but meanwhile, individual donors have pledged funds to allow Iwokrama to carry on its activities in the immediate future and to provide assistance to set up a trust fund to secure the long-term viability of the centre.
The project is in dire need of funds to continue its operations.
Dr Kathryn Monk, Director-General of Iwokrama, was quoted as saying in the release "I am very heartened by the support voiced by donors for the centre and the tremendous appreciation of its work. We look forward to working with the Donor Support Group to find ways to continue with the exciting new phase of Iwokrama's work, and to set up financial mechanisms which will ensure that Iwokrama can continue for as long as there is a threat to the world's forests."
The Commonwealth Secretariat and the Iwokrama Centre convened a donor's roundtable meeting Wednesday which was attended by representatives from several high commissions and embassies, including the USA, Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia.
In addition, donor representatives came from the Canadian International Development Research Centre (CIDA), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission (EC), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank.
The release also noted that although the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) were unable to attend, these three financial agencies expressed strong support for the work of the centre.
The meeting was held as the Iwokrama Programme is shifting to a new phase of work, the release stated. For the past five years the centre has concentrated on surveying the forest, recording the diversity of plants, animals and microbes, and assessing its valuable diversity of resources.
With this information, the centre is now poised to begin activities for the sustainable commercial use of both timber and non-timber resources of the forest for the benefit of the local communities and the country.
The participants, the release informed, discussed ways in which the international community could provide both short and long-term assistance to Iwokrama to ensure that its valuable work continues.
The release further said that donors at the meeting commended the centre for its ground-breaking work, involving partnerships with local communities, central and local government and national and international institutions, that it has carried out since 1998.
The Iwokrama International Rain Forest Programme was established by the government of Guyana with help from the Commonwealth. Under the programme, Guyana has allocated 360,000 hectares (900,000 acres) of its tropical rain forest for an international programme to preserve unique biodiversity and to study and develop methods and techniques for the sustainable utilisation of tropical rain forest resources. The initiative for the donation was taken by former president, Desmond Hoyte at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1989.
Iwokrama, the release pointed out, has always taken the far-sighted view that conservation has to go hand in hand with sustainable use of the forest resources, and that this is only achievable with the full participation of all concerned.
"The international community now recognises that this is the only way we can hope to improve the quality of life for the 2 billion people living on less than US$1 per day while maintaining the earth's environment," the release said.
According to the release, several donor participants stated that Iwokrama is one of the very few international programmes that visibly makes a direct contribution to the implementation of the 1992 Rio Convention on Biological Diversity and the Forest Principles agreed to in Rio, Brazil, to which all Commonwealth governments are signatories. Iwokrama also makes a direct contribution to the implementation of the Convention on Climate Change, the release added.