9/22/2018
Indigenous communities develop protocol to address forest monitoring | Guyana Times
depend on are examples of such activities,” he explained.
Wilson said that any outside organisation or individual with a proposition for the
implementation of any project would be required to obtain an FPIC agreement.
In order to obtain a FPIC agreement, one must write to the Toshao and Village
Council seeking permission to consult with them, then the leaders would organise
two General Village Meetings to inform of the project and seek consensus, after
which the village representatives would meet with the project proponent; they
would then conduct an impact assessment and if the need arises, technical and
legal services from an outsider may be contracted.
After the impact assessment, the leaders would then schedule another general
meeting where the decision would be made. If yes, then the agreement would be
signed.
FAO’s role
FAO’s country representative, Reuben Robertson, said that the Organisation has
established special ways to work with the Indigenous community.
He explained that the forests play a great role in alleviating poverty and to address
this, the FAO has collaborated with the EU to establish the FLEGT programme. He
said that the FAO has agreed to provide the technical and nancial resources to
allow for capacity building.
He stressed that the system to extract resources from the forest should be
sustainable and transparent, adding that illegal extraction only hurt the community.
“We want to ensure that we keep a forest sustained for now and for future
generations. By achieving that goal, we have to stamp out forest illegality by
reducing and totally eliminating illegal logging and that is what FAO is really all
about,” Robertson added.
He also urged the communities to ensure that there is gender equality in their
proposition since that is one of the core values of the FAO.
The next step for the APA is to approach the FAO for funding for round two of the
process which would see the implementation and monitoring of the FPIC Protocol.
The EU FLEGT system mandates countries to use the wood tracking system to tag
logs and their stumps so that when they reach the point of export it could be
traced backed to the origin to ensure its legality. The system is not new to Guyana
since they have been mandating loggers to tag their produce so they can track
them to ensure it is within their licensed agreement.
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