Responsible tourism in Guyana

2 min summary Best time to visit Map & highlights Wildlife The Guianas Responsible tourism

Responsible tourism in Guyana

Many Guyanese people live outside of their country of origin and have not travelled home for a while. When they do, they might be surprised.

“There’s been a boom in Georgetown because of the oil industry,” says Claire Thorne, co-director at Wilderness Explorers, who run trips in the Guianas with our partner Pioneer Expeditions. The discovery of offshore oil, announced in 2015, is set to change the economic fortunes of the country, bringing smaller changes too. “Last time I went, there were traffic lights all over the place,” says Claire. “That’s quite new.”

Oil has meant investment – and that means more flights, more interest and more tourism. There are around 300,000 visitors to Guyana every year – a 50 percent increase in a decade, and that’s set to grow. Oil money has the potential to change citizens’ lives for the better and lift whole communities out of poverty, if invested at home, though there are fears of a potentially huge environmental toll, and a high risk of corruption. Oil discoveries often make the rich richer, and leave ordinary citizens worse off.

Whilst Georgetown is busy putting itself on the map, change is coming to the rest of the country at a slower pace. Guyana is a small, rarely visited country, still overwhelmingly dominated by its nature. Guyana has 38 percent of its population living below the poverty line – and high rates of adolescent pregnancy, especially among low-income groups.

As tourism grows in the country, it’s up to responsible tourists to consider wildlife and cultural issues when they visit.

Wildlife & environment

Guyana’s main wildlife problem is that it has a lot of it, but no one knows quite how much. Dense jungle and a lack of monitoring means that, for many years, no one knew how many black caiman or giant anteaters there were here. In the 2010s, a population of red siskin birds were found, hundreds of miles away from their known territory. Guyana has historically cared for and treasured its wildlife. Many Guyanese are proud that their country has some of the best wildlife in the world, and some of the world’s best wildlife guides. However, this hidden wildlife faces pressures from multiple fronts – from poaching, mining, the nascent oil industry, and climate change.

Poaching

Some people in the rainforest live off their land, hunting species such as peccary in open season. However, there are wider poaching and wildlife trade problems that turn what is a sustainable traditional practice into something less palatable. Poachers linked to Brazil, armed with guns and jeeps, have been known to come into the country. The biggest scaled freshwater fish, the arapaima, is still a hit with Brazilian markets.

Mining

Mining interests have been present in the country for decades. Gold has been mined on a large scale since the 19th century. Small-scale operations by informal ‘wildcat’ miners – also known as artisanal miners – are the kind of thing seen from the air when you fly over the country rather than something you’re likely to run smack into on the tourist trail. In the frontier town of Bartica, visitors can buy their gold panning equipment from the local shop – though we’d advise against it.

Small-scale gold mining sometimes uses mercury in the extraction process, which, if it gets into the water supply, is very toxic across a wide area. Mining also means deforestation and habitat loss – and this increases when global demand for gold increases and gold prices rise.

Oil

Oil is extracted from Guyana’s offshore reserves using risky extraction methods – the same which have caused devastating oil spills in the past in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. The extraction process is not without environmental toll, producing waste and emissions at a dizzying rate – much of which will impact the marine environment. Solid waste from the industry makes its way to the nation’s landfill sites.

Climate change

Global warming brings a threat the scale of which is yet unknown, but one problem will certainly be rising sea levels, which will threaten Guyana’s coastal mangroves. It will also affect the 90 percent of the population who live near the coast. Some are already being encouraged to move inland. There will be forest loss to accommodate for relocating the population.

What you can do

The income from tourism can present a viable alternative to more destructive forms of industry, like mining, in small communities. A 2018 study in the Peruvian rainforest found that ecotourism was more profitable over the long term than any other use of the land. Visit Rupununi’s guide to wildlife friendly tourism, developed in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, sets out the kinds of questions tourists should ask when presented with objects to purchase that are made from animals or plants. Whilst some wildlife lodges in the Amazon advertise sports fishing as an activity for visitors, there are many – like Iwokrama Research Station – that don’t, operating on the principle that you should be able to enjoy nature without subduing it.

People & culture

The changing face of Guyana

Georgetown is a business capital, the seat of Guyana’s government, and the headquarters of CAPRICOM – the Caribbean community’s inter-government collective. Guyana’s president has said that he wants Georgetown to be the “entertainment capital of the Caribbean”. There are fancy hotels under development on the coastline and the Caribbean Premier League – a cricket tournament – will be hosted here for three consecutive years. Oil is bringing more business and money here, making Guyana one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and much of this wealth will be concentrated on its capital.

Land of six peoples

Guyana is composed of many ethnic groups. The country is sometimes called ‘land of six peoples’, referencing its ethnic diversity. The largest group is Guyana’s populations of Indo-Guyanese – many from South Asia and China, and Afro-Guyanese peoples. Amerindian people make up around a fifth of the population.

Peaceful coexistence between groups has not always been possible. In the 1960s, race riots saw parts of Georgetown set on fire, and caused some to emigrate. Many Guyanese who left their country at that time are still wary of returning. Diaspora Guyanese will often say Guyana is not safe to visit – but the reality is changing. In Georgetown, explore in the daytime, rather than at night, and employ a guide to help you navigate.

Guyana has a long tradition of religious and cultural tolerance in its history. This tolerance does not extend towards the LGBTQ+ community. Same-sex relations are illegal in Guyana, with laws drawn from the colonial-era penal code, and can lead to imprisonment.

Who should benefit from the rainforest?

Among Guyana’s peoples there are nine formally recognised Amerindian communities, most living in Guyana’s interior. Not all Indigenous communities have written up rights to their land, or are adequately consulted before their land is used for mining or, more recently, ‘sold’ for carbon credits. In April 2023, all the forests in Guyana were put onto the carbon market, meaning that companies could pledge to protect them in order to ‘buy’ carbon credits towards carbon neutrality.

What you can do

Tourists inevitably end up visiting Georgetown, but if you can avoid chain hotels, all the better, before spreading your custom to the wider country, where there is less wealth. Community-based tourism is a massive part of travel in Guyana. Most lodges are in the only habitable place for miles around, making many a default part of the community – and owned by them too. This makes it very easy to participate in tourism that benefits local groups rather than overseas businesses, and to support Indigenous communities with money that you know will directly benefit them. For example, a trip to Surama Ecolodge in North Rupununi supports Makushi Amerindians, who live at the rainforest’s edge.