President Bharrat Jagdeo meets with members of Iwokrama Board and other officials.
IWOKRAMA International will now be Directed and led by Guyanese and the Guyanese Staffers at the organisation will be treated equally as the overseas staff.

Chairman of Iwokrama International Mr. Eon Swinglan made this revelation in an interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA) earlier today.

According to the Chairman, “from now on, it will be Guyanese directed and Guyanese-led and the same working conditions whether if you are from overseas or from here will be applied.

This change, he noted, is one of the major issues on the Iwokrama Board of Directors Meeting, which is ongoing.

The Board is also meeting to see how to develop the local community so as to produce inward investment.

The chairman spoke to GINA after paying a courtesy call on President Jagdeo at State House.

The meeting was one which sought to inform the President about what Iwokrama is doing, Mr. Swinglan said, adding that it also served as a Courtesy front for himself and the Head of State since they had never met before.

The Board of Directors, including Director of Iwokrama Dr. Catharine Monk and Commissioner of the Guyana Forestry Commission Mr. James Singh also briefed the President on how Iwokrama intends to become more self-sufficient and has a long future.

Iwokrama International is a Guyana project with funding from various international agencies. It is about six years old.

The idea of an Integrated Conservation and Development Project was launched at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1989, when the Iwokrama Forest, 360,000 hectares of tropical forest in Central Guyana, was made available to the international community by the Government of Guyana.

In 1996, the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development was legally created and given managerial responsibility for the Iwokrama Forest.

Its task is to demonstrate practical steps to lasting ecological, economic and social benefits.

Over the last several years, Iwokrama has been working with institutional and community partners in demonstrating and evaluating a number of forestry activities.

These include: reduced impact-logging techniques, application of forest research results to achieve sustainable off-takes of timber among other things; community -based approaches and knowledge to wildlife management and monitoring; eco-tourism development and skills-based approaches to field-Ranger training.