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Global Ecological Signpost, Local Reality: The Moraballi Creek Studies in Guyana and What Happened Afterwards Bulkan, Janette; Palmer, John

Abstract

There is a common assumption that when sustainable forest management (SFM) is not practised the reasons are usually a lack of knowledge or lack of training in applying those techniques. We trace the intermittent development of techniques for SFM in the tropical rainforest of Guyana (South America), beginning with the classical observational ecology at Moraballi Creek in 1929. We reference the deliberate lack of application of SFM in spite of access to science-based information and repeated training. In this country, a precarious political democracy is destabilised by the gigantic profits from illegal logging and log trading which support corruption in the sector and generally across regulatory systems. The highest rate of graduate emigration in the world contributes to the difficulty of creating the core of moral leadership required to rise above the local tradition of under-the-table negotiation in place of the rule of law.

Item Metadata

Title
Global Ecological Signpost, Local Reality: The Moraballi Creek Studies in Guyana and What Happened Afterwards
Creator
Bulkan, Janette; Palmer, John
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Date Issued
2016-12-15
Description
There is a common assumption that when sustainable forest management (SFM) is not practised the reasons are usually a lack of knowledge or lack of training in applying those techniques. We trace the intermittent development of techniques for SFM in the tropical rainforest of Guyana (South America), beginning with the classical observational ecology at Moraballi Creek in 1929. We reference the deliberate lack of application of SFM in spite of access to science-based information and repeated training. In this country, a precarious political democracy is destabilised by the gigantic profits from illegal logging and log trading which support corruption in the sector and generally across regulatory systems. The highest rate of graduate emigration in the world contributes to the difficulty of creating the core of moral leadership required to rise above the local tradition of under-the-table negotiation in place of the rule of law.
Subject
Guyana; Moraballi; Mono-dominance; Selective logging; Governance; Species extinction
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-05-24
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
CC BY 4.0
DOI
10.14288/1.0378994
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70321
Affiliation
Forestry, Faculty of; Non UBC; Forest Resources Management, Department of
Citation
Forests 7 (12): 317 (2016)
Publisher DOI
10.3390/f7120317
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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CC BY 4.0