APA lodges formal complaint over carbon credits deal

-future payments could be delayed

The Amerindian People’s Association (APA) has utilized the grievance mechanism to lodge a formal complaint with the institution that issued US$750m in jurisdictional carbon credits last year and this could result in a delay in payments under the groundbreaking but controversial deal.

The complaint was lodged with the Winrock Architecture for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) Transactions (ART) Secretariat. It alleges that the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) was not applied for the issuance of the carbon credits for the period 2016 and 2020.

The formal complaint comes close to three months after US oil company, Hess Corporation, purchased US$750 million worth of the jurisdictional carbon credits from Guyana in December. The first payment of US$75 million has already been issued to Guyana but the objection by the APA can now delay future payments, Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, says. At a press conference yesterday, Jagdeo accused the Amerindian organisation of attempting to block the money from going to the communities under the guise of the United Nations legal framework of FPIC, which was designed to encompass the views of all indigenous people.

“They have launched a grievance process through ART and they are trying to block the next year’s allocation being made to Guyana… APA has done that formally …” the Vice President said. He sought to question the motive behind the group’s move and whether they consulted with villages before dispatching their letter.

“So they are now trying to block money for the Amerindian communities, in the name of the Amerindians, without consulting with any village. So the Free, Prior, Informed

Consent doesn’t relate to them?” Jagdeo questioned. Stabroek News has learnt that the APA, in their correspondence, alleged the absence of FPIC on the government’s part and therefore the legitimacy of the certification was in doubt.

The government had stated that the monitoring and evaluating factsheet reflected its comments on consultations with indigenous villages. The APA said that that is far from the truth as the sessions were merely for information sharing. The body told ART that the National Toshaos Council’s support for the government’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) document cannot be interpreted as complying with FPIC.

The APA is asking that all issued credits be suspended and future issuances frozen. Stabroek News understands that the APA is making this call in an effort to ensure that the Amerindian Act 2006 is revised.

Jagdeo yesterday said that on the return of the PPP/C government to office in August 2020, they began the process to have the carbon credits certified.

The Vice President said that for two years, there were lengthy processes of verification by external consultants and verifiers who visited Guyana to assess the policy and practices amongst others, before the certificate for the sale of credits was issued.

Self-government

It is not only the APA that has raised objections to the recent deal. Attorney-at-Law, Melinda Janki, last month argued that the agreement violates the constitutional rights of Amerindians to their property and self-government.

In a letter to President Irfaan Ali, dated March 21st, 2023, Janki warned that any claim by his government purporting to have acquired the consent of the

National Toshaos Council (NTC) to sell carbon credits, “is legally impossible.” Janki told the Head of State that while it may be the intention of his government to respect and protect Amerindian rights, it appears to be unfortunately doing quite the opposite through the arrangement with Hess. Janki said that it is the Amerindians who own the carbon removal function through their ownership of land under absolute legal titles (land grants) held by their Village Councils, and that government cannot tell them what to do, as under the Amerindian Act, “they are free to do as they like as long as they do not try to give away their land rights.”

Citing media reports by which she said government claims to have gotten consent from the NTC for selling carbon credits; Janki pointedly asserts, “… this is legally impossible.” She said that the NTC does not own the forests, and it has no legal right to do anything with those forests. “The NTC cannot authorize the government to sell carbon credits,” Janki emphasised.

Senior Director for Climate and REDD+ in the Ministry of Natural Resources, Pradeepa Bholanath has contended that there was robust consultations with over 200 Amerindian villages over a seven-month period during the LCDS 2030 draft.

“In every session held during the community consultations, the proposal for jurisdictional scale engagement in the forest carbon financing mechanism with ART TREES as the standard was presented and discussed with community feedback received. As a result of this feedback, the initial ideas presented in the draft of October 2021 were changed and significantly enhanced because of feedback received by those who participated in the consultation, including people from communities’ right across the country,” she outlined. As a result, the finalized LCDS 2030 sets out how villages will create their own development plans and can choose who to engage with the benefit sharing mechanism.

Civil society activist Janette Bulkan has also strongly condemned the deal as violating of the rights of the Amerindian people.

In a letter to this newspaper, she said that Winrock had failed to respond to her request for a plain-language explanation of how these carbon credits were estimated and what a buyer can do with them, or what obligations are incurred by the seller. She said that the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) included the entire forest area of Guyana (18.070 million hectares) in the deal, including the 2.3 million hectares of forest on titled Amerindian Village Lands, over which the GFC has no legal power. That is, the Government of Guyana appears to have sold carbon credits to which it had and has no legal right.

“The Government now appears to be making the Amerindian communities represented through the National Toshaos Council to be accomplices in this illegality, by handing out cash from the sale to Hess Corporation through the Amerindian Development Fund controlled and administered through the Office of the President. As Winrock refuses to answer, will the Office of the President now tell the people of Guyana what the titled Amerindian Villages must do or not do in order to demonstrate how they have generated, sequestered and conserved their share (2.299/18.070) of these tonnes of carbon dioxide? Where can I read that the individual Village General Meetings have each and all agreed to participate in this deal by a 2/3 majority vote, as required by the Amerindian Act (cap. 29:01, 2006)?”, she asked.

Hess Corporation, one of the partners in Guyana’s lucrative offshore oil block, on December 2nd last year announced the purchase of US$750m of this country’s carbon credits over 10 years with 15% of the monies going to Indigenous communities. The Hess purchase followed an announcement by the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions of the issuance of over 33 million carbon credits to this country. Hess will purchase the first 30 per cent of that amount for a minimum of US$750 million over a ten-year period. The first tranche of payment to the tune of US$22 million to 241 indigenous communities was disbursed to villages in February.

“Based on the application of the formula, based on population and size, you are going to see how much money the communities are getting, ranging from $10 million to some communities, their share of the 15 per cent this year, would be $35 million… we agreed that a minimum that a village or a community should get from this year, from their share is $10 million,” the Vice President said during the disbursement of the funds. The amount disbursed represented 15 per cent of the US$75 million from the sale of certified carbon credits sold to Hess Corporation. Jagdeo noted that the direct allocation is part of the recognition of Indigenous peoples and the stewardship roles they play in the protection of the forests, hinterland communities, and maintenance of the hinterland ecosystems.