The green heart of Iwokrama

As we drifted down the massive Essequibo River in the darkness of the night, we heard the watery sputter of our boat's engine sounding more and more ominous. Then it failed to restart. “We used to have radios, yes," said Lawrence, our guide. “But they never used to work anyway, so we stopped bringing them with us." The research center was only about a kilometer upstream, but with no means to contact the observation tower and with the current threatening to pull our aluminum boat into the rapids, we might as well have been on the moon. It didn’t help that, earlier in the day, we had spotted an 11-foot black caiman – a crocodile-- in these same flooded banks. (Lawrence had pronounced it “medium-sized" and seemed unimpressed). We were guests at the Iwokrama research station, in central Guyana, about five hours from the Brazilian border. The Iwokrama rainforest itself is one of the four last pristine tropical forests in the world, a mammoth at about 3,710 sq. km. and neighbor to the great Amazonia. The center – a fully functional research facility -- had opened its doors to visitors as a fashionable eco-tourism destination. A word about the forests here. The South American green is different from any other green in the world. Forests are vast, endless, impenetrable, primordial; even seen from a plane, there is nothing but all this incredible greenness as far as the eye can see: no houses, no roads, no clearings, definitely no humans visible, just trees. This is the kind of landscape that reminds you of the dawn of time, the kind that makes you feel, as a human being, truly puny and temporary. The Iwokrama research station sees itself as a model “to show how tropical forests can be conserved and sustainably used to provide ecological, social and economic benefits to local, national and international communities." It facilitates partnerships between scientists, developers, and the indigenous communities. Guides, field researchers and conservation workers are hired from the local communities in the region; they receive training that builds on local knowledge of the forest, and become much more committed stewards of the forest. In March 2008, Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development entered into a partnership with investment firm Canopy Capital to measure, and then place a monetary value on what was christened “Ecosystem Services" (ESS) of the forest. The deal allows Iwokrama to receive hard cash for such ESS as rainfall production, water storage, and weather moderation. In theory, this model would give developing countries a reason to preserve natural resources, which in turn are supposed to be of inestimable value to the entire world. The year before that, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana—the poorest nation in South America—said in an interview with The Independent that he wanted a bilateral deal with the United Kingdom: development aid and technical assistance in exchange for conserving its rainforests. “We are a country with the political will and a large tract of standing forest. I'm not a mercenary, this is not blackmail and I realize there's no such thing as a free lunch. I'm not just doing this just because I'm a good man and want to save the world, I need the assistance." In a speech, the Prince of Wales said it was “the ethical duty of wealthy nations, which have - perhaps unwittingly - created the problem of climate change, to find a solution." Prince Charles noted that “developing nations, which may suffer most from climate change and, consequently, unheard-of levels of poverty, are now calling on us for help." A few months after the Prince’s speech, Canopy Capital, running on charitable donations and private investment, announced its groundbreaking deal with Iwokrama. The short-term effects are already apparent: for the first time in years, Iwokrama posted a profit. The research center also earns from tourism, which was what had brought us there. The field station offered the best accommodations in the region for less than US$100 per person a night, with meals and guided tours thrown in. The nighttime boat ride was part of our day’s activities, meant to take us—myself and three others—to spot wildlife feeding at night by the banks of the river. With the boat's motor dead, it seemed to us that perhaps the wildlife might be looking at something else to feed on. Our hearty chuckles grew ever thinner and more nervous as the engine repeatedly failed to start. The boat captain took the spotlight and vainly tried to signal the watchtower; Lawrence grimly took out the paddles. After about twenty minutes, the captain decided to try the motor again, and after about half a dozen pulls, he was rewarded with the throaty roar of the engine and a collective sigh of relief from his passengers. Without any light pollution for miles around, the sky was awash with stars. The moon was on the wane, however, and so there was nothing to relieve the pitch blackness of the forest. It was incredible, then, to hear Lawrence whisper excitedly, “There!" every time he spotted a creature in the dense foliage. He would shine the spotlight on his find, and the boat would travel the thirty or so feet to where there would be a tiny nightjar in the bushes. More excitingly, there was another caiman—this time the smaller, more common spectacled caiman—on the mudflats near the trail that leads to Lawrence’s village, the Macushi settlement of Fairview. This area is home to the greatest concentration of these cousins to the alligator; this particular one was hunting for fish or the occasional chicken wandering out of the village and too near the water. Later on, we spotted a tree boa, curled tightly and anxiously on a branch overhanging on the river. “See his coils? He’s not very comfortable," Lawrence said, as we drew the boat closer. I sprang with great alacrity to the back of the boat as the current pushed the boat right onto the boa’s tree. “They’re not venomous, you know. I’ve got bitten by one, here," he showed us his hand, and with typical Macushi understatement, said, “There’s no poison…but the bite hurts." The Macushi are only one of the scores of Amerindian tribes in the Americas; in Guyana, Amerindians only make up a minority of about 6% of Guyana’s population, or about 45,000, while another 750,000 Amerindians of different tribes are in Brazil. A good number of these tribes in Brazil—67 at last count by the Fundação Nacional do Índio—are classified as “uncontacted tribes," tribes which, hard as it is to imagine, have little or no interaction with the rest of the civilized world. There are about 9,000 Macushi in Guyana, and Lawrence is a prime specimen of the tribe. He had gone to work at age 11, working in a mining camp as an all-around cook, errand boy, watchman; eventually he found his way back to school and finished secondary school, and then, as many in his village had done, joined up with Iwokrama to receive training as a forester and guide. There was little that escaped his attention in the forest, and he was a quiet though eager teacher who liked to share the Macushi’s traditional knowledge of flora and fauna. He showed us a “water vine," which, when cut, would release a good amount of fresh, clean water fit for drinking. It is not to be confused with another type of vine, which released a sap that could numb and paralyze anything stupid enough to taste it. The Macushi would take pieces of this vine and throw them into a pool of water, wait a few minutes, and then gather the paralyzed fish floating helplessly on their sides. He told us of caimans fighting anacondas on the banks of the rivers, of month-long journeys in a canoe to the coast, of inch-long bullet ants that could release enough toxin in one bite to send a victim into convulsions, of the magnificent harpy eagles that are rivaled in size only by our very own Philippine eagle. Lawrence regaled us with stories like this all the way up to Turtle Mountain—about an hour by boat from the main research station, and then another hour up from base camp. A perch on Turtle Mountain offers a stunning view of the unbroken canopy of Iwokrama, a sea of green as far as the eye can see in all directions. Down there, the forest is alive: the distinctive sound of howler monkeys, the screech of a pair of scarlet macaws flying just below us, a million insect sounds joining to make a low buzz of white noise. Looking at Iwokrama from here, it all seems very far from the rest of the world, but here we are, right in the very heart of a new trade, potentially worth billions, in ecosystem services. During the Golden Age of Exploration, conquistadores thought the fabled land of gold, El Dorado, was somewhere in the Guianas. These days it isn’t gold that is the treasure here: now that we have pushed the environment to its limits, we have put a price on the very air we breathe. - GMANews.TV Kristine Fonacier is a magazine writer and editor who is currently on sabbatical, working with the international organization Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) as a volunteer Communications Advisor in Guyana--an experience that has taught her to "use media for good, not evil." Additional photos by KRISTINE FONACIER Further reading: Canopy Capital Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development “Take Over Our Rainforest," The Guardian interview with Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo “The Prince of Wales speaks about the world’s rainforests"