Dear Editor,
The Department of Public Information has distributed several articles in the last few days in mid-February 2023 about the jurisdictional forest-based carbon credits (33.47 million tonnes of CO2e) awarded by Winrock/ART/TREES to the Government of Guyana on 01 December 2022 and sold immediately to the oil company Hess Corporation (USA). Winrock has failed to respond to my 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. The Guyana Forestry Commission 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)?
Yours truly,
Janette Bulkan
