Guyana’s deforestation rate falls to seven-year low

Oct 06, 2018 News

According to the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), up to last year, the deforestation percent was 0.048;
the lowest since 2010.
In 2010, it was 0.056%; in 2011 – 0.054%; 2012- 0.079%; 2013- 0.068 %; 2014 – 0.065 % and 2015-2016 – 0.050 %.
According to GFC, the drivers for deforestation saw 8,851 hectares of forest lost last year.
Mining was the biggest culprit- 6,495; mining infrastructure – 947 hectares; forestry infrastructure= 227 hectares; infrastructure- 195; agriculture- 477 hectare; settlements- 7 hectares with fire accounting for 502 hectares.
Since taking office, the Coalition Government has seized a number of large forestry concessions, including hundreds of thousands of hectares allocated to Chinese investors.
The seizures had reportedly impacted logging activities but the industry is said to be on an upswing now.
Since signing a historic US$250M climate deal with Norway, the monitoring of the country’s forests has been taken to another level.
In fact, GFC’s figures said, results have concluded that forests at a national scale remain largely intact, with over 99% of forest still standing.
GFC disclosed that it has completed mapping of year 2017. The assessment is part of the national programme of Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) that Guyana started in 2010 with support from the Norwegian Government and which forms part of the Guyana Norway Partnership on climate and forests.
For Year 7, the GFC continued using ESA’s Sentine-l2 satellite imagery for the deforestation mapping. “Sentinel-2 data is free of charge; this is in line with the commitments made by Norway and Guyana in MRVS Phase 2 (Year 2015–Year 2019) that Guyana should look into non-payment options.”
The MRVS is coordinated by a team of local experts housed within the GFC and all mapping aspects and analyses are completed using local staff.

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