Guyana is a small country of 215,000 km² located on the north-eastern shoulder of South America, with a population of approximately 750,000. As at September 2010 Guyana has approximately 87% of its land area covered by forests, approximately 18.5 million hectares (GFC and Poyry 2011).

Guyana is an example of a high forest cover, low deforestation rate (HFLD) country and while historical estimates of forest cover and deforestation rates have suffered from a lack of data, estimates of annual deforestation are extremely low (Cedergren, 2009). A recent government commissioned study placed deforestation rates at 0.03% per annum between 1990 and 2009, rising to 0.06% between 2009 and 2010 (GFC and Poyry 2011).

Guyana has relatively low levels of...