The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) on Thursday issued Guyana over 33 million carbon credits, paving the way for possible lucrative earnings from the country’s carbon storage potential.
The announcement preceded word from the Office of the President last evening that President Irfaan Ali will this morning witness the signing of Guyana’s first sale agreement on carbon credits.
The credits, which were accumulated during the five-year 2016 to 2020 period, are certified based on ART’s standard for measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification, The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard, known as TREES.
In a statement announcing the decision, Arlington, Virginia, US-based ART yesterday said the issuance of the credits marks a milestone as it is the first time a country has been issued carbon credits specifically designed for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets for successfully preventing forest loss and degradation – a process known as jurisdictional REDD+.
However, critics have already raised concerns over such agreements and what they mean for indigenous communities, which may not directly benefit from the control and sale of carbon credits from the forest within the boundaries of their titled lands.
ART said the approval of 33.47 million TREES credits was granted to Guyana following completion of an independent validation and verification process and approval by the ART Board of Directors.
Guyana’s TREES credits are also the first market-ready credits issued to a jurisdiction classified as “High Forest, Low Deforestation” (HFLD), the statement said, explaining that this has high forest cover and low historical rates of deforestation.
Carbon markets have historically focused predominantly on areas that have already experienced high rates of deforestation. This is now starting to change with the first TREES credits issued to Guyana.
Prior to the crediting approach in TREES, there had not been a market-oriented approach that allows HFLD jurisdictions to benefit from carbon market finance.
The HFLD crediting approach in TREES recognises that HFLD jurisdictions must continue to aggressively protect forests to avoid deforestation and degradation, and that carbon market finance can be a powerful incentive to help achieve this. All HFLD credits are tagged as such on ART’s public registry, the statement added.
The ART statement went on to say Vice President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo, lauded Guyana’s leadership and tenacity, which started in 2007 when Guyana set out a far-reaching vision for how national scale action on forests could unlock huge global benefits in the fight against climate change, the preservation of biodiversity, and building energy and food security.
Jagdeo stressed that ambitious progress was possible – in Guyana and elsewhere – if the peoples of forest countries design- ed their own way forward so that action on forests boosted their legitimate development aspirations.
“The people of Guyana continue to be willing to play their part – but we also need international standards that keep pace with what science tells us is needed to safeguard the world’s vital tropical forests. So, we are pleased that ART-TREES was created to help accelerate global climate action – by recognizing what forest countries like Guyana have long called for: that the time for small-scale pilots and projects is long past, the world needs jurisdiction-scale action to make the required impact, and the world also needs to value the ecosystem services that tropical forests provide. Today, the vision set out in 2007 moves to the next phase – where payments for forest climate services can be sourced from global carbon markets. We are pleased that the vision of fifteen years ago moves forward in a major way today,” Jagdeo was quoted as saying.
Guyana’s completion of the ART process, the global initiative agency said, paves the way for other governments that are looking to receive carbon market finance for success in protecting and restoring forests.
Some, 14 other countries and large sub-national jurisdictions are working toward their own issuances of TREES credits.
Listed
The credits are now available to buyers on the global carbon market and are listed on the ART’s public registry. The credits will also be available for use by airlines for compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s global emission reduction program, CORSIA, as well as for use toward voluntary corporate climate commitments.
Chair of the ART board, Frances Seymour, in the statement, congratulated the Government of Guyana and the many domestic stakeholder groups who contributed to this achievement, which recognises the success the country has had in protecting its forests.
“Guyana is the first to complete the ART process for generating high-integrity, Paris Agreement-aligned carbon credits that will allow the country to access market-based finance to continue to implement forest stewardship strategies. ART, other governments, and important stakeholder groups, especially Indigenous Peoples and local communities, around the world can now build on Guyana’s experience to accelerate progress towards meeting global forest and climate goals in ways that ensure environmental and social integrity,” he was quoted as saying.
While there are concerns by the indigenous communities, the Chair of the National Toshaos’ Council (NTC) in Guyana, Toshao Derrick John, in the statement welcomed the announcement and hailed it as an important milestone to the nation’s Low Carbon Development plan.
“The National Toshaos’ Council welcomes this important milestone in Guyana’s programme on Low Carbon Development which will further support the development of sustainable livelihoods and protection of forests within indigenous communities. As the national body which represents all elected Indigenous Villages Leaders in Guyana, the NTC is pleased that Guyana is pioneering efforts on climate finance that will bring direct benefits to Indigenous peoples in advancing climate resilience and sustainable livelihood opportunities,” John said in the statement.
Mary Grady, Executive Director of the ART Secretariat, said, “Our planet’s last intact forests are under mounting threat of irreversible, permanent loss if new approaches to protect them are not urgently supported. Without the proper financial incentives to value forests and the actions that protect them, there is no guarantee that forests in HFLD areas will remain standing in the long run. Providing a pathway that incentivizes jurisdictions to keep their forests standing will create a more effective and equitable global system for forest protection and restoration.”
Earlier in the year, government was seeking proposals to market the carbon credits. The deadline for submission of those proposals was March 14.
Under the ART-TREES programme, Guyana is expected to have between 8 and 10 million carbon credits on the market.
