Eldorado Verde: Guyana’s Biocapacity
OCTOBER 14, 2013 · – STABROEK NEWS – FROM RGE DIASPORA
Rory Fraser is Professor of Forest Economics and Policy at Alabama A & M University, and has spent 36 of the last 40 years in the UK, Canada, Jamaica, USA, and Guyana either attending or teaching at universities and working in forestry related fields
By Rory Fraser
Guyana’s future is inextricably linked to its greatest asset, a global leading, 59.75 global hectares (gha) per person of biocapacity. The second country is Gabon, with 27.88 global hectares (gha) per person, less than half of Guyana’s capacity. In a world with an increasing ecological deficit – ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity – this declining resource is becoming increasingly more valuable. The following discussion draws liberally from the Global Footprint Network’s analyses and their 2011 publication, Ecological Wealth of Nations.
Biocapacity is the capacity of ecosystems – i.e. a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment – to produce useful biological materials and to absorb waste materials generated by humans, using current management schemes and extraction technologies. “Useful biological materials” are defined as those demanded by the human economy. Hence, what is considered “useful” can change from year to year. Continue reading
