-in keeping with President Jagdeo’s initiativeGeorgetown, GINA, March 27, 2008

A press release from Iwokrama has indicated that a deal announced in New York today at the world’s first Biodiversity and Finance Conference now ‘opens the way for financial markets to price the ‘utility value’ of rainforests’.
The release noted that the deal is the first step in keeping with President Bharrat Jagdeo’s visionary approach to safeguarding Guyana’s forests.
“For the first time, investors will pay for the ecosystem services produced by a rainforest, including rainfall generation, climate regulation, biodiversity maintenance and water storage-utilities with global significance which are vanishing as forests fall,” the release stated.
It pointed out that the transaction today between Iwokrama and the Canopy Capital pioneers the use of risk capital to safeguard such services within the Iwokrama Reserve in Guyana. The Iwokrama forest reserve which comprises one million acres of pristine rainforest and located at the heart of the Guiana Shield was donated to the Commonwealth for sustainable forest management in 1989. It is one of the only four intact rainforests remaining in the world.
Emphasising that forests do much more for us than just store carbon, the Iwokrama release urged that ‘we should move beyond emissions-based trading to measure and place a value on all the services they provide’.
It added that the initiative fits perfectly with Iwokrama’s original mandate which is to demonstrate that conservation, environmental balance and sustainable economic activity can be mutually reinforcing.
“It also ensures, with the Commonwealth’s support for Iwokrama, that the world hears a knowledgeable and persuasive voice on a matter of growing international concern,” the release quoted Iwokrama’s Chairman, Edward Glover as saying.
Iwokrama has noted that the forests of the Guiana Shield generate rainfall that services the production of agricultural commodities throughout northern Latin America and the southern Caribbean. It said Director Hylton Philipson of Investment House Canopy Capital queried how Google’s services could be worth billions, yet those from the world’s rainforests amount to nothing.
“The deal drawn up by international law firm Stephenson Harwood, come in the wake of a pivotal year for the fate of forests. The contribution of deforestation to runaway climate change has been recognised internationally and new measures to conserve forests are set to be included in a post-Kyoto framework after 2012,” Iwokrama explained.
The deal was announced by Canopy Capital Director Andrew Mitchell who said, “The decision on forests at December’s United Nations conference in Bali is a major step in tackling climate change, but it fails to reward countries such as Guyana that aren’t cutting their forests.”
Iwokrama disclosed that ‘the deal creates an investment template for first movers in an emerging market for eco-system services. Such a market could generate billions of dollars for developing nations, making it more valuable to keep their forests standing than to cut them down’.
According to Iwokrama, funds already secured from Canopy Capital will be used to continue management of the forest in accordance with its philosophy of conservation through sustainable best practice. It will provide livelihoods and business partnerships for 7,000 people living in the forest and surrounding area.