Iwokrama lives
Director General Monk upbeat about future of rainforest project
By John Mair in London
Stabroek News
May 25, 2002
The Funding Round may be over but the fund raising continues for the Iwokrama International Centre for the Rainforest Conservation and Development project in Guyana.
Director General (DG) Dr Kathryn Monk went to London hoping to secure US$20M in funding to secure the project for the next five years but Monk is returning next week to Guyana with little hard cash, lots of promises and, she says, the project intact.
Iwokrama, one million acres of virgin Amazonian rainforest, was set aside by Guyana in 1989 to show how forestry could be developed in a sustainable way.
Monk spoke exclusively to the Stabroek News several days after the high level meetings at Marlborough House in London with her trustees and a range of possible donors. She revealed that for the first time the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had shown interest in funding Iwokrama as had Brazilian and Malaysian funding agencies. But none had, so far, promised money up front. In her words: "The situation has changed since September 11th, people are spending money in Afghanistan and Africa now".
What she did secure was a commitment to set up an endowment trust fund to cover the core costs of the Iwokrama project which all donors accepted was doing a good job. Monk said that these core costs are estimated at US$1 million a year. That fund would provide a pool of capital from which the interest would suffice to core fund the project. It had yet to be established but the interested parties, whom for reasons of commercial confidentiality she would not name, would be getting together in a "virtual group''- through email and co-ordinated by the UNDP in Georgetown to thrash out the details of this endowment fund.
Any other funding for Iwokrama has to be earned and she is looking to put the project on a 'much more businesslike' footing where it is able to apply for funding for commercial and non commercial activities in the forest as well as helping enterprise, growth and jobs in surrounding communities in the North Rupununi. To these ends, specialist consultants would be brought in to beef up the business side of Iwokrama as well as the information and communication functions. The future for the whole project was bright, no jobs were immediately under threat but it would now have to work hard to earn its own way, she said.
So, cautiously the DG looks back on her trip to London but confidently she looks forward to the future. In her words "Iwokrama lives and Iwokrama leads"