EVERYONE knows the old saying: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”.

As Guyana embarks on a new era of economic development, kicked off by the discovery and development of offshore oil resources, the lesson embedded in this phrase is incredibly important.

At the heart of this lesson is capacity building. If you can teach a person key skills, then they can thrive and depend on themselves, rather than the charity of others. In light of that, two recent announcements about funding for capacity building in Guyana will be critical to our success now and in the future.

The first was the news that the World Bank has given Guyana a US$35M grant to increase the development of the financial sector, and increase Guyana’s capacity for fiscal management. The grant will focus on supporting banking reforms like insuring deposits, implementing new insurance laws and helping banks prevent money laundering.

All this effort is aimed towards teaching public servants what has worked in other more established banking systems, and building capacity among Guyanese government agencies to manage oil revenues in a transparent and healthy way when they start flowing.

The second recent announcement came from the ExxonMobil Foundation, a nonprofit organisation created by Exxon with corporate funds, which has pledged to donate a further US$10M to create a new partnership between Conservation International and the University of Guyana. The company’s press release stated that this money is to “to train Guyanese for sustainable job opportunities, and to expand community-supported conservation.”

It’s important to note that since this money is from the ExxonMobil Foundation instead of Exxon the company or its Guyana subsidiary, it isn’t part of Guyana’s oil revenues, and won’t be cost-recoverable for the company.

What it will hopefully be is a strong step towards building a diverse set of skills in Guyana, including in the environmental space.

Capacity-building initiatives like this are one of the areas where non-profit and corporate interests intersect, which is why Conservation International often partners with large companies. Both corporate and non-profit entities want local people to have greater training; in this case, training on mangrove conservation, sustainable fishing practices and more.

For organisations like Conservation International, training local citizens to protect and preserve sensitive natural areas and getting them invested in sustainable practices is more effective in the long-term than just giving money or coming into communities and dictating what should be done.

Local communities can add new training on to the extensive knowledge they already have of their local environments, and guide conservation in a way that makes sense for the unique conditions of that area. Conservation training can also help economically, and could build on Guyana’s recent success in attracting ecotourism.

A great example of this kind of practice is Conservation International’s work in South Africa, where it partners with local cattle herders, giving them incentives to protect sensitive ecological areas like wetlands, helping them deal with predators like lions without killing the rare animals, and training people to raise the animals sustainably, and restore wilderness areas.

Oil-and-gas development can pave the way for more of this type of skill-building opportunity for the Guyanese people, through more donations and eventually through oil revenues. Investing those revenues in education and jobs training will help Guyanese take advantage of new opportunities in the fossil fuel industry, and in a diverse array of other areas where Guyana could thrive; from conservation biology to financial management.

Through this kind of investment in capacity building, we can use oil wealth to diversify the economy and make Guyana economically competitive across a wide number of industries in a sustainable way.