1st December, 2022
Guyana – First Jurisdictional Scale Programme to be approved by ART for issuance of TREES Carbon Credits
The Government of Guyana welcome the ART Board approval and ART Secretariat issuance of 33.47million tons of verified Carbon Credits to Guyana for the period 2016 to 2020. Guyana is the first jurisdictional scale programme to be approved by ART for the issuance of TREES credits. The Carbon Credits have been certified under the TREES Standard which is ART’s standard for the quantification, monitoring, reporting and verification of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions and removals from REDD+ activities at a jurisdictional and national scale. This announcement follows the completion of a rigorous verification and validation process of Guyana’s Registration and Monitoring Reports for the period 2016 to 2020 that includes technical and REDD+ safeguards reporting. Under ART-TREES, every year, credits are validated and verified to globally-recognized standards, including adherence to Cancun safeguards, and then issued for trade on the global carbon market. Guyana first submitted it Concept Note to the ART Secretariat in December 2020. This was followed by Guyana’s approved submission of application documents for the period 2016 to 2020, in October 2021. All documents are publicly available in Guyana’s ART Registry Account available at: ART (apx.com)
Statement by the ART Secretariat
Mary Grady, the Executive Director of ART said “This marks an incredibly important milestone in the journey not only of Guyana, but of jurisdictional REDD+ as a whole, building on decades of learning and experience to ultimately recognize REDD+ in global carbon markets. We congratulate the Government of Guyana, and the many other stakeholders that contributed to this achievement, for their remarkable leadership in completing the ART process for generating high-integrity, Paris Agreement-aligned carbon credits. Our mission at ART has been to set a global quality benchmark for jurisdictional REDD+. By creating confidence in the social and environmental integrity of emission reductions from forest protection and restoration, we believe it is possible to unlock finance at scale for countries that are achieving results. Following this historic first issuance of TREES credits, the door has officially opened on a new era of carbon market finance for tropical forest jurisdictions and key stakeholders in the protection of forests – notably Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We hope this announcement will build momentum for scaling the contributions that forests can make to achieving global climate goals.”
Government of Guyana
In 2007, 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. At the time, the Government stressed that ambitious progress was possible – in Guyana and elsewhere – if the peoples of forest countries designed their own way forward so that action on forests boosted their legitimate development aspirations.
The 2007 vision became the 2009 Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) after one of the biggest national consultations in Guyana’s history. At its core was the framework for Guyana’s forest climate services – whereby Guyana committed to maintain the country’s 18 million hectares of forests, sustain one of the world’s lowest deforestation rates, store in excess of 19 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide equivalent and remove over 150 million tonnes of carbon per annum. In return, Guyana would be paid for these services, and invest the revenues in the LCDS. From 2010-2015, Norway paid Guyana US$220 million for forest climate services – these revenues were invested in renewable energy, job creation, land titling, the creation of jobs, and protecting citizens, farms and business from flooding.
In October 2021, His Excellency President Irfaan Ali set out an updated vision for the LCDS, and inaugurated a seven month national consultation to create LCDS 2030. He called on the people of Guyana to share their views on how we can create a prosperous, inclusive, sustainable Guyana – many thousands of Guyanese citizens and others participated in the consultation over many months.
In parallel, the Government called for international standards that keep pace with what scientific analysis concludes is necessary to safeguard the world’s tropical forests. The Government welcomed the creation of ART-TREES to help accelerate global climate action – by recognizing what forest countries like Guyana had long called for: a recognition that small-scale pilots and projects are not enough, 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.
With today’s issuance of Guyana’s credits, the vision set out in 2007 moves to the next phase – where payments for forest climate services can be sourced from global carbon markets, with payments for forest climate services from 2016 onwards now possible.
The Chair of the National Toshaos’ Council welcomed the announcement and noted 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 Ingenious Villages Leaders in Guyana, the NTC expressed that it 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.
Information on Parties
Government of Guyana: Guyana’s engagement in the carbon market is led by the Office of the Vice President. This engagement is part of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030 (https://lcds.gov.gy/). The LCDS is a strategy document that: outlines the approach and actions that Guyana, as a nation, can take to develop and grow for the inclusive benefit of all in a non-polluting, low carbon way; involves utilising Guyana’s natural resources in a sustainable manner while combating climate change and its adverse effects such as floods and droughts; outlines how Guyana can sustain its world-class ecosystem services for the long term, by integrating with the global economy and receiving payments for ecosystem services; and seeks to align with and contribute to global climate goals as set out in the Paris Climate Agreement, including keeping global temperatures below 1.5˚C.
Contact: Pradeepa Bholanath, Senior Director, Climate and REDD+ (pbholanath@nre.gov.gy)
ART TREES: ART is a standalone, independent program that develops and administers standardized procedures for crediting emission reductions and removals from national and large sub-national REDD+ programs. ART is governed by a Board of globally recognized experts and operated by an independent Secretariat, hosted by Winrock International. ART’s standard for the measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification of emission reductions and removals from the forest sector — The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard, known as TREES — represents the next step in the evolution of global efforts to protect and restore tropical forests. TREES supports transformational climate action at scale, while upholding rigorous social and environmental integrity.
Contact: ART Secretariat (REDD@winrock.org )