Suri­name says it has start­ed this month trad­ing emis­sion re­duc­tion car­bon cred­its and that the ini­tia­tive is part of the green de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy that the gov­ern­ment is de­vel­op­ing to achieve sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.

The Min­istry of Spa­tial Plan­ning and the En­vi­ron­ment (ROM), which first an­nounced plans to trade car­bon cred­its last year, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to the mem­bers of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of ROM of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly on Ju­ly 30, this year.

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, the com­mit­tee was told that the prof­it-shar­ing mech­a­nism is laid down in an ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dure as that would en­sure that the rev­enues from the sale of car­bon cred­its are dis­trib­uted fair­ly be­tween in­vestors, de­vel­op­ers and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. ROM said that there would be trans­par­ent and reg­u­lar re­port­ing on the progress and im­pact of emis­sion re­duc­tion projects.

Car­bon cred­its are trad­able cer­tifi­cates that rep­re­sent a re­duc­tion of one ton of car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) or a com­pa­ra­ble amount of an­oth­er green­house gas. The car­bon cred­its are used to off­set and re­duce green­house gas emis­sions.

Green­house gas­es are gas­es in the at­mos­phere that trap heat and there­fore con­tribute to the green­house ef­fect.

Hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties have in­creased the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of green­house gas­es. This caus­es ad­di­tion­al warm­ing and cli­mate change. This in­creased ef­fect leads to more ex­treme weath­er, ris­ing sea lev­els and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems.

Com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments can buy car­bon cred­its to re­store their own green­house gas emis­sions. The sale of car­bon cred­its helps to make in­vest­ments in sus­tain­able projects, such as re­new­able en­er­gy, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, for­est con­ser­va­tion and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ini­tia­tives.

Guyana is the oth­er Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CAR­IC­COM)  coun­try in­volved in car­bon cred­it sales with George­town in­di­cat­ing last week that this year, the to­tal rev­enue re­ceived from car­bon cred­it sales is US$87.5 mil­lion, which is less than last year.

Guyana’s low car­bon de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy (2030) com­mits 15 per cent of all rev­enues from car­bon cred­it sales to Amerindi­an vil­lages for in­vest­ment in vil­lage de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties. In 2023, the coun­try re­ceived US$150 mil­lion and 15 per­cent meant that US$22.5 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed to the 242 In­dige­nous vil­lages.

In Ju­ly, Pres­i­dent Chan San­tokhi un­der­scored the im­por­tance of pur­su­ing a bal­ance be­tween eco­nom­ic growth and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, adding that the use of nat­ur­al re­sources, such as oil and gas, will be done in a re­spon­si­ble way.

At the same time, in­vest­ments are be­ing made in re­new­able en­er­gy sources and tech­nolo­gies that re­duce CO2 emis­sions. Suri­name wants to achieve this with the help of a green de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Aug 25, CMC –  

CMC/fg/nb/2024