When Guyana signed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1994 it committed itself to the protection and sustainable use of its wealth in natural resources. It was realised that data for making informed decisions on the selection of protected areas was scarce. The project 'the plant diversity in Guyana' was intended to fill this gap, and this book is one of the major outputs. The book reports partly on the process and made use of existing information. Plot inventory data of the Guyana Shield and wider Amazonia was used to put Guyana's plant diversity in a regional context. Botanical collections also proved useful, especially when very specific data were needed, as in the case of endemics. Finally some more detailed accounts were written of two mainly non-forest area in Guyana: the Pakaraima Mountains and the Rupununi savannahs. Several gaps were found in the current selection of protected areas. The most obvious being the central part of Guyana, where the major concentration of endemics is found in an area under wide utilisation.