Science is the Guyanese tourism alternative

Oct 08, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor;
“I know very few places in the world where corporate tourism has not led to underdevelopment,” said Prof Suresh Narine, looking out his hotel room window at Niagara Falls. “The profit structure places the bulk of earnings in the hands of the wealthy owners and the impact depends on the trickle-down effect; it leaves workers in the industry at a subsistence level. Just a few blocks from the opulence of the grand hotels overlooking Niagara Falls, you’ll find very poor people and communities.”
It’s the same, he says, in Barbados and Jamaica and many of the small islands in the Caribbean. The only way for tourism to work is if locals own it and profit from it. Not multinationals. A similar model has worked with the Macushi tribe in Guyana, who successfully run an ecotourism business the year-round in the Guyanese interior.
But what if you didn’t have to rely on tourism, which is a low-skills transfer industry, and a volatile one? Prof Narine, of Trent University in Canada, and Guyana, director of the Guyanese Institute of Applied Science and Technology (IAST), suggests an alternative: science. Using applied science, he and the IAST have already done much to change the regional possibilities for regional economic growth and production.
At the IAST in Guyana, Prof Narine has developed a record of training locals, creating innovative products for export, and improving the quality of living of employees and consumers. He is also the Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence (joint) laureate in Science and Technology, 2015.
Three recent projects in Guyana has seen commercially produced food and personal care products for local consumption and export to the Caribbean and North America. One food product is produced in a fully vertically integrated operation which makes sun-dried tomatoes and salad dressing called Pakaraima Flavours, for their origin on the slopes of the Pakaraima Mountains in Guyana. The other project is the Morning Glory brand of rice-based cereals and food products. A factory to commercially produce the rice-based products is set to open this year.
Away from food agriculture is the Rupunini Essences product line, the active ingredients of which are the oil extract of the crabwood tree and the essential oils from lemongrass. The crabwood oil is known for its anti-viral, emollient, insect repelling, anti-bacterial and generally salubrious qualities.
It is being marketed locally, regionally and internationally as the Luxury Personal Care Brand, The Rupunini Essence includes personal care items like sanitisers, cleansers, and beauty oils. These are highly marketable products and knowledge which has remained neglected for decades. They have a strong environmental and sustainability component. Due to the profits realised from their sale logging activity is expected to be reduced so as to ensure a sustainable supply of the all-important crabwood oil. This will assist in curtailing deforestation and encourage environmental stewardship by the communities.
“The indigenous peoples of Guyana have had this knowledge for seven thousand years,” said Prof Narine. “All it took was the application of appropriate technology and commercial intervention.” But there was more to it. For these collaborations to work, an elaborate scientific and institutional infrastructure had to exist. Narine revived the IAST in Guyana about ten years ago, and turned it into one of the premier scientific institutions in the region.
Today, the investment is beginning to pay returns. The IAST has begun to train Guyanese in science and technology and basic chemistry and production methods, quality control, marketing, business plan-creation, and accounting, to service the small industries its graduates are setting up throughout the country. In addition to the projects described here, the institute has developed a local plant to produce biodiesel, biomass pellets from waste from the sugar, rice and logging industries to feed furnaces, wood-plastic composite roofing shingles, and a host of other commercial opportunities utilising local materials.
The institute takes 15 trainees at a time, and so far has graduated about 30, and they pass on the knowledge in their communities. The IAST is now partnering with the Guyanese Ministry of Social Protection and the Board of Industrial Training to accredit these programmes so graduates can work in the region. The institute also partners with the Ministries of Social Cohesion and Indigenous People’s Affairs in the application of technology to indigenous and rural communities.
When science and development is discussed, it is usually thought to mean the importation of technology. But there must be people who can innovate using foreign technology and local resources, and there must be enabling environments .Another ANSA Caribbean Awards laureate Prof Patrick Hosein of Trinidad & Tobago, has the same complaint and has set up the first science “think tank”, TTLAB, in Trinidad.
This point of the lack of local scientific initiative, said Narine, is responsible for the underdevelopment of the interior of Guyana. Its land and economic potential remained, and still remain, largely untapped because of the lack of transportation infrastructure – roads, bridges, and vehicles – to get the produce to markets, and expertise and labour from the coast.
But geography need not be a constraint. “Holland has one of the smallest land-masses in Europe,” said Narine, “yet it’s one of the largest producers of agricultural products in Europe. This is because the Dutch use their resources wisely. Appropriate technology, and choice of products – those are the keys.” By contrast, in Guyana, blessed with agricultural land and resources, “the rice breakfast cereal factory in Guyana took two years to realise because of bureaucratic delays. It should have taken six months,” said Narine.
What is also interesting is that there is no one or group of individuals to blame – the systems do not exist in most of the countries in the region to streamline such from-the-ground-up initiatives.” Change is possible, but it won’t be easy. Prof Narine calls his model “bootstrapping regional labour.” Talk and amorphous initiatives and meetings will accomplish little without will. I don’t think there’s even a regional map or database showing soil-types, water and land availability for cultivation. For example, how many people know that the slopes of the Pakaraima mountains (in Paramakatoi, for example), because of the altitude can cultivate crops the rest of the region can’t, like Irish potatoes?
Raymond Ramcharitar
Corporate Communications Manager
Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence

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