Mar 18 2014
The important work of Royal Holloway, University of London to protect and maintain the environment in the Guiana Shield region of South America is set to continue, following a new agreement that has been signed between the University and a UN funded environmental initiative.
Participants engaging in environmental best-practice sharing with COBRA in the community of Kavanayén, Venezuela
COBRA, a research project run by the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, will join forces with the Guiana Shield Facility (GSF) in order to support and promote ecosystem management and sustainable development in the Guiana Shield.
For more than two years, COBRA has worked closely with communities in South America in order to find ways to tackle social, economic and environmental crises, encouraging local people to take on initiatives in order to protect and maintain the environment. The work of GSF ensures that natural resources in the Guiana Shield region are plentiful and that environmental policy is developed across the area.
The combination of the work of Royal Holloway’s COBRA project and GSF will promote the idea, to audiences across the Guiana Shield from French Guiana to Colombia, that communities themselves can sustain projects without relying on external facilitation and funding.
Dr Jay Mistry, Project Leader of COBRA, said: “We are very excited about the cooperation with GSF and their adoption of the key idea of ‘community owned’ solutions within their work. This ensures that the concepts and techniques developed by COBRA, in its 3 year life-span, will continue to be an important part of ecosystem management and sustainable development in the Guiana Shield into the future.”