Full Circle - A Wetlands Update

For the first quarter of 2006, the North Rupununi Wetlands Project will come full circle, as it returns to its community origins. The Project is in the process of transforming from an Iwokrama/NRDDB driven process to a broader movement driven primarily by communities and community members. As a result, the Project has now shifted its focus to activities aimed at fostering community involvement and awareness. 

Community visits are now conducted every month, with most of the team involved in village activities. Aside from being a source of information, these visits are also used to increase community awareness of the Project, introduce the North Rupununi Adaptive Management Plan (NRAMP), and begin the process of the Plan’s development.

Community Mapping Exercise in the Village of Toka

Another major effort towards increasing community awareness has been the introduction of the Wetlands Project Bulletin. The first issue of the Bulletin was circulated during community visits in February, and was very well received. The Bulletin will now be a regular feature of the Wetlands Project, with the second edition currently in development for distribution by April 2006.

The community researchers in the Wetlands Team are also poised to take a greater role in this new phase of the Project. Aside from participating in village visits and environmental monitoring, community researchers now facilitate activities in their villages to promote the Project. These activities include one on one sessions with key community members, wetlands updates at village meetings, and recording the communities’ perceptions of Project performance.  

As we move towards developing the NRAMP, we expect that the level of community participation and ownership in the Project will continue to grow. Effective resource management is a long term process, and requires significant commitment from the communities to be successful. A NRAMP shaped and implemented by the communities themselves will therefore be a groundbreaking achievement for the people of the North Rupununi, Guyana as a nation, and community-based management efforts the world over.