As Guyana focuses on its economic diversification strategy, the country is expanding its ecotourism sector and its expansive forest cover is being leveraged to push this emerging venture.
With over 18 million hectares of trees, Guyana’s rainforests are home to an abundance of biodiversity and natural attractions – like waterfalls and mountains – which makes the country an ideal ecotourism destination.
But apart from attracting tourists with its intrinsic beauty, swaths of rainforests are being designed to create ecovillages while timber from these rainforests are being used to construct urban ecolodges.
In August 2023, the product of one of these eco-ventures was opened in Great Diamond, East Bank Demerara, near a new highway and just a few minutes away from the country’s National Stadium in Providence.
Opened just in time for the Guyana leg of the 2023 Caribbean Premier League (a regional cricket tournament), the ecovillage contained 30 wooden ecolodges and was also an accommodation option for tourists who visited the country to attend the tournament.
While visiting the project in the same month it opened, Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali highlighted that everything used to build the area was “Guyanese wood, Guyanese labour, painting, and manufacturing.”
Ali said the eco-friendly venture is an example of the types of projects that the government wanted to support that could benefit players in multiple industries including the tourism and manufacturing sectors.
Ali added, “One of the bigger aims of the project is to show the potential of wood and what we can build with wood.”
Built on just two acres of land, the 30-unit project was first announced as part of the DuraVilla Homes Guyana Inc. 1000 plus timber housing project which was launched by President Ali in February 2023.
At that event, Ali explained the urban ecolodge project is meant to showcase how functional yet luxurious wooden structures can be.
He also said it is important to find ways of using timber products better.
For this project, wood is used for the structure and every other component of each building which would ideally guarantee little wood waste.
It is also expected that this project will be expanded to more rural and possibly, hinterland areas where the government hopes to develop the ecotourism products offered.
While similar structures already exist in Indigenous communities in Guyana’s hinterland, several communities are seeking to build additional structures to benefit from the national focus on attracting more tourists interested in ecotourism.
Indigenous communities are using some of the funds earned through Guyana’s carbon credits venture to develop these new ecolodges.
Another key dimension of the Urban Ecolodge project is that it seeks to empower Guyanese women.
With Government support, groups of women are pooling their funds to own units in the new ecovillages being constructed.
To date, President Ali has said that private developers are expressing their interest in investing in the ecolodge venture.
He is on record stating, “There is a proposal to do a similar facility to do something like this by a private developer in Leguan.”
Leguan is one of the larger islands found in Guyana’s largest river, the Essequibo River.
There are more than 300 islands, of various sizes, found in Essequibo.
Given the interest in the project, Ali said consideration is being given to expanding this project to other islands and communities.
The Head of DuraVilla Homes, Rafeek Khan, reported that Guyana earned about USD $34.5 million from forestry exports at the end of 2022.
Khan also spoke at the launch of the 1000 plus homes project in February 2023 and pitched the project as a potential to increase Guyana’s earnings by US$60 million at the end of 2023.
But building ecovillages isn’t the only new economic venture that Guyana’s forestry sector is contributing to.
Guyana is also making prefabricated houses to satisfy huge housing demands locally and across the Caribbean.
In the region, Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are among the nations that are sourcing these houses from Guyana.
Beyond these ventures, the country hopes to also earn from protecting its forests.
For years, Guyana has focused on keeping its forests intact.
Even with a lucrative timber sector, Guyana’s annual deforestation rate averages at about 0.06 per cent which is 90 per cent lower than other tropical countries.
At the end of 2022, Guyana ventured into the carbon credits market.
It has since secured a deal worth at least USD $750 million – up to 2030 – with American oil firm, Hess Corporation.
Given the financial benefit, Guyana’s government plans to secure more of these deals to keep the forests intact.
The country’s central argument has been that these forests provide a global service by trapping fossil fuel emissions like carbon dioxide.
As Head of DuraVilla Homes, Khan claimed that plans to expand the forestry sector do not conflict with Guyana’s forest-saving agenda as he said that less one per cent of Guyana’s forests is allocated to timber production and local producers “barely use a third of that allocation.”
