Guyana Environment Profile 2012

Pioneering global solutions to climate change

Guyana is a center of biodiversity and is initiating a series of efforts to prepare itself to provide environmental services on a global scale, which include using the forest as a carbon sink that can generate a new revenue stream for the country. Much of the country’s indigenous population (9.2 percent) lives in forests on which they depend for their economic, social and cultural subsistence. These Amerindian communities hold formal land titles for over 2.4 million hectares. The annual deforestation rate is estimated at 0.1-0.3 percent, which is relatively slow compared to most tropical countries, and about 90 percent of Guyana’s forest is still intact. At present, the main pressures on forests are considered to be forest clearing for mining, the conversion of forest to agriculture, and the opening of infrastructure, especially roads. The main factors that have protected Guyana’s forests so far are considered to be the very low population density away from the coastal plains, and the lack of physical accessibility to the forest hinterland.