Excluded from the negotiations, Indigenous people in Guyana criticize the loss of autonomy in their territories
Originally published on Global Voices
This article, written by Clarissa Levy and edited by Marina Amaral, was originally published on the Agência Pública website on October 16, 2024. It has been edited for length and context and republished here under a partnership agreement with Global Voices.
In the centre of the village is a football field. Around it, in nicely painted wood, are the main community buildings of the roughly 1,000 Kapohn Indigenous people who live on the banks of the Kako River, in an area of preserved Amazonian forest less than 40 kilometres from the Guyanese-Venezuelan border. Near the church and next to the health care centre, the village's newest development stands out in fresh, light green paint: a mall, or, maybe more accurately, a shed of shops.
Andy's Mall is the result of the first payment made by Guyana's government to the Indigenous people of the Kako area, who are proud to say that they were the last to give in and sign the contract with the government that determined the conversion of their forests into carbon credits, sold to the Hess Corporation, an American oil company.
The sale of the first batch of carbon credits issued by the country for the deforestation avoided between 2016 and 2020 was completed in 2022 and made international headlines. The move made Guyana the first country in the world in which credits issued on a national scale and managed by a government body — “jurisdictional credit” being the term used in the sector — were available to be sold on the private market.
Almost 100 percent of the forest area of the small South American country was included in the negotiations. Combining public forests and Indigenous peoples’ forests in the same package, the government certified and issued credits for Guyana's approximately 18.4 million hectares of forest. The sale of this first batch of 30 percent of the credits brought in USD 150 million in 2022.
According to Guyana's president, Dr. Irfaan Ali, Indigenous peoples legally hold 16.4 percent ownership of the country's territory, slightly higher than the 15 percent that Predeepa Bholanath, the Number Two person in the government's Low Carbon Development Strategy (LDCS) estimated (and which included lands that are still in the process of having their titles made official). Based on these figures, she explained, the government calculated that 15 percent of the amount paid by the Hess Corporation should go to Guyana's Indigenous peoples.
In the months following the signing of the first sale of credits to the oil company, each village received a share of the payment according to its number of residents. In addition, in 2023, USD 22.3 million were transferred to these communities. All officially recognised villages have signed letters of accession to the programme as a condition for accessing the funds.
In March 2023, Kako village received 114,000 USD from the Guyanese government. As with the other 241 villages in the country, the government set up a bank account in the cacique's (community leader) name and informed them that the payment could be withdrawn upon the approval of a sustainability plan.
“They gave us a week to decide what to do with the carbon money, to deliver a plan. I thought a mall would be a good idea for our young people. Everybody wants to own their first business,” said 54-year-old Kathleen Andrews, a retired teacher who sits on Kako's leadership council.
Built to house 12 shops, the development has yet to catch on. When Pública visited Kako in mid-July 2024, only one shop was operating. Selling cassava bread, snacks, and cleaning products, the Indigenous woman who was running the shop said she serves two or three customers a day. Seven months after the inauguration, Kathleen lamented, “Now we see that our idea of building a mall benefited only one person: the builder.”
Bholanath, who coordinates carbon negotiations along with former president Bharrat Jadgeo, who created the initiative, said, “We had nobody against it, [or] not agreeing, not receiving the money. If that were the case, well, the difference is that the money would stay in the cacique's account without them withdrawing it — because the government was going to deposit the money anyway.”
Mario Hastings, who was Kako's cacique at the time, disagreed. He says they felt like there was no choice, and even though the majority of the caciques on the National Toshaos Council (NTC) adhered to the project, they were forced to sign it. His vote at the council was a losing one in the discussion about the carbon project. ”For us there was no choice. We were forced to sign”, he says.
The construction of the almost inactive mall shows that, without the participation of Indigenous people with guidance and time to develop these projects, the real results fall far short of the aims of developing self-sustaining projects. After all, the Indigenous people of Kako followed the government's guidelines in preparing the annual sustainable development plan, which resulted in Andy's Mall. It is not that different an outcome from what happened in Guyana’s other 241 villages — some invested in the construction of business centres, others in infrastructure to host tourists, and others in equipment for growing crops.
Travelling along the Mazaruni River and the Kako River in western Guyana's Essequibo Territory, target of a territorial dispute with Venezuela, Agência Pública interviewed 22 Indigenous people from the region of the Akawaio and Arekuna ethnic groups. All complained about the loss of autonomy over their territories. “As it stands, it's as if the government were the owner of all the land, and it's not,” commented Laura George, an Indigenous lawyer who believes that the carbon project is tantamount to a loss of Indigenous control over their lands.
According to the Amerindian Act — legislation from 2006 establishing Indigenous rights in Guyana — populations must be consulted on projects that impact them, and their local council has the power to authorise or not certain uses of their lands, such as leasing areas or logging. However, this legislation has gaps, allowing the implementation of government projects in their areas even without the consent of Indigenous people, such as in situations where “large-scale mining is considered in the public interest.”
On a hot morning in late July, 47 Kako Indigenous people gather at their local community center with Publica's team and shared their concerns and anxieties about the carbon credits project.
“My question is: why do they give us this percentage [of income] instead of recognising our traditional ownership rights over the forests that are remaining in Guyana?”, asked Stephanie Crammer, one of the atendees.
To this day, the Kapohn people do not have their lands fully registered and protected. In 1991, they obtained a land title, but the document covers only a part of their traditional lands — the part in the vicinity of the current village. The areas used for planting and for traditional housing on the other side of the river, despite being part of their daily life, were not included.
“We're not on the map, but the mining concessions are,” said Derrick Krammer, another participant at the meeting, who complained shortly after. “If mining goes on like this, how are they going to have any more carbon [credits]?”
Pública asked the Guyanese government whether the areas deforested by mining are included in the lands connected to the carbon credits which have been commercialised. Predeepa Bholanath responded that the government uses satellites to map areas degraded by mining and deducts them from the credit count, but from the documents our reporters were able to reference, they could not determine which parts of deforested lands have been deducted from the general count.
In the second year of the carbon project, however, President Irfaan Ali announced at the national meeting of the caciques that the communities will receive the same net amount as the previous year, even though the country has received less for the credits this year (USD 87 million in total), taking 26.7 percent of the total profit from the sale of credits. The majority of the council of the caciques approved supporting the government project.
But, far from the capital Georgetown, several questions remain unanswered, angering Indigenous people who complain that they have been shut out of the debate over the use of their lands. “The program was never explained to us in detail. The strategy had already been designed by the government, without our input as Indigenous people,” said Alma Marshall of the Kamarang community.
Many also felt that the rush in the project schedule was problematic. “I would like to see how we could create and model a development trajectory that was our own, not just a replica [of somebody else’s],” said Romario Hastings, Kako's new chief, who was elected in June this year to take over the position held by his father for the last two terms.
“We could create a future where, for example, Indigenous knowledge has more value in our communities, in how we build our infrastructure and live our culture,” he reflected. ” I know it's a lot. But I think a young man can dream, right?”.
