Iwokrama seeking US4M to continue operations
—chairman
Stabroek News
December 1, 2002
As its financial assets continue to dwindle, the future of the Iwokrama Rain Forest Conservation Project is still under threat and the project is now attempting to secure funds to extend its life for the next three years.
Following the Ninth International Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development, which was held at the Georgetown Club yesterday, the Chairman of the Board, Professor Ian Swingland, told Stabroek News that the continuity of the project is still not totally secure and Iwokrama is now in the process of attempting to solicit US$4M to continue operations for the next three years.
The project is beginning preparations to move from being donor-driven to becoming more business-oriented, Swingland said, and in this vein both small and large ventures are being planned with both local and foreign investors.
And though he said other ways to secure revenue are being developed he also maintained that donor funding was still very important to the viability of the project. And one of the issues discussed at yesterday’s meeting was the setting up of a trust for the centre, which would be its core fund.
Meanwhile Swingland also said the board had created three new positions for directors, who would be responsible for management on a day-to-day basis, of enterprise development, operations and research at the centre. This was a conscious decision he said, as current Director General of the Centre, Kathryn Monk, will now be focusing her attention primarily on fund-raising for the project. Monk had, in March of this year, attempted to solicit funds for the project at the Meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM), in Coolum, Australia and a donor’s pledging conference was held in May at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.
Swingland said that donors, though interested in offering support, had been unwilling to commit funds without some sort of assurance of the project’s viability. A small group would soon be flying into Guyana to work with Monk and the new directors and donors, he said, to develop a business plan which, it is hoped, can offer some assurance.
In Coolum, Monk had told Stabroek News that US$2M per annum would be needed to keep the sustainable-forestry project going, however, Swingland said that the contracts for most of the current staff will expire next year while the project has little money left. However, he noted that cost-saving measures have been adopted and would be preserved to cut excessive spending. Despite this, Swingland also noted that Guyanese staff members would now be working under the same conditions as their foreign counterparts, which would include an equal pay scale.
