Green oil? Suriname is planning to use Indigenous Peoples’ forests to greenwash TotalEnergies’ oil extraction

Indigenous Peoples’ organisations demand the REDD deal be stopped immediately.

PHOTO Credit: The Rosebel gold mine, Suriname.

In October 2024, the president of Suriname, Chandrikapersad Santokhi, visited the island of Curaçao. While he was there, Stijn Janssen, a Caribbean-Dutch entrepreneur gave Santokhi a copy of a book titled, “Green oil”.

Earlier this year, Suriname announced new offshore oil drilling together with TotalEnergies, the French oil corporation. Suriname is planning to sell carbon credits to offset the emissions from burning this oil. The carbon credits will be Internationally Tradable Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) issued under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations is working with Suriname to generate the carbon credits.

When he handed over his book, Janssen explained that,

“Green Oil advocates an intelligent approach to the oil versus green issue, a global dilemma. Suriname can show the world that, by using oil revenues structurally and integrally to both protect the rainforest and accelerate the transition to sustainability in all layers of society, solutions are possible if we all work together. Green Oil, in other words.”

“Hot air”

In October 2023, REDD-Monitor wrote about Suriname’s plans to drill oil and use its rainforests to offset the emissions. In order to generate its ITMOs, Suriname created a Forest Reference Emissions Level. This is an ever-increasing line on a graph.

Suriname’s emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are anticipated to increase from 14 million tCO₂eq in 2020, to 16.4 million tCO₂eq in 2024. As long as Suriname’s emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are below these figures, the country can generate carbon credits.

Journalist Ties Gijzel of Follow the Money has investigated Suriname’s REDD proposals in an article published today (in Dutch).

Suriname is not planning to stop logging its forests. Instead, it hopes that Reduced Impact Logging can reduce emissions by up to 40%.

Gert-Jan Nabuurs, professor of European Forest at Wageningen University & Research, tells Follow the Money that,

“In the tropics, often only a few trees per hectare are commercially interesting. So by logging more specifically, less of the forest needs to be destroyed.

“If you are going to trade the CO₂ savings, the figures have to be correct. But that is difficult to check, because those figures are opaque. Also, the bad way of logging may simply move to another area.”

Charlotte Streck, of the Dutch climate consulting firm Climate Focus, explains that while the UNFCCC Secretariat assesses countries’ proposals, it can only suggest revisions. It cannot reject national submissions no matter how many red flags it sees. “These kinds of CO₂ credits can be anything: something legitimate, but also hot air,” Streck tells Follow the Money.

Indigenous rights in Suriname

In 2007, Suriname voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the legislative system in the country is based on colonial legislation and does not recognise Indigenous or Tribal Peoples. Suriname has not ratified ILO Convention 169 — which is based on the recognition of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ rights.

Gijzel’s article includes a letter written in August 2024 by two umbrella organisations of Indigenous Peoples in Suriname to Marciano Dasai, the Minister of Spatial Planning and Environment.

The two organisations, the Association of Indigenous Village Chiefs in Suriname (VIDS) and the Kwinti, Aluku, Matawai, Paramaccaners, Okanisi, and Saramaccaners Foundation (KAMPOS Foundation), demand that the government’s plans be halted immediately because the project was launched “without recognition of our property rights over our ancestral territories, which include the forests”.

Ritesh Dardjoe of the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Environment had just arrived in Baku for COP29 when Follow the Money contacts him. Dardjoe rejects the criticism of the Indigenous organisations. Follow the Money reports that he states that “Indigenous People have been involved from the moment the plans were ready to be presented to the outside world”.

Which suggests that Dardjoe has difficulty understanding the word “prior” in free, prior and informed consent.

Dardjoe adds that Indigenous Peoples will receive 15% of the turnover from the REDD programme.

He also says that carbon credits will not originate from Indigenous territories. But when Follow the Money ask him about this, he cannot provide any evidence for this claim. “That will remain a discussion, since it is not entirely clear in the law what exactly belongs to their residential and living community,” he tells Follow the Money.

In 2017, Suriname’s parliament approved an amendment to a 1982 “Domain Land” law. The amendment declared that all land over which title cannot be proven is State Domain.

According to the most recent census from 2012, Indigenous Peoples account for approximately 20,344 people in Suriname. That’s about 3.8% of the population. The UN states that Indigenous Peoples’ “rights to land cover more than 80 per cent of the territory of Suriname”.

Here is the letter from VIDS and KAMPOS Foundation (translated from Dutch using DeepL):

Paramaribo, 15 August 2024

To:
The Minister of Spatial Planning and Environment
Marciano Dasai, Ph.D.
Prins Hendrikstraat 22
Paramaribo-Suriname
Email: secmin@rom.gov.sr

CC: UNFCCC Secretariat
ITMO Ltd.
Coalition for Rainforest Nations

Dear Minister,

With great concern, as well as indignation, the traditional authority figures of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, during a Gran Krutu [Great Gathering] held from 14-16 August 2024, have taken note of a presentation by the Ministry of Spatial Planning and the Environment (ROM), entitled Suriname'‘s National Guidelines on Carbon Credit Development and Trading, dated 19 July 2024.

For the umpteenth time, the government and/or administration of Suriname hereby demonstrates how little knowledge it has about, and respect for, the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ITPs) as internationally recognised, including by the Climate Convention and the Paris Agreement, as well as in judgements of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the State of Suriname. These are legally binding obligations for Suriname, not desirables. We are rights holders, not merely stakeholders, and should be approached as such.

According to the presentation, various conditions for entering the carbon credit market have already been met, structures to this end have already been established, and an agreement on the sale of carbon credits has already been signed in February 2024. All of this without compliance with our right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), without recognition of our collective property rights over our ancestral territories, which include the forests, and without any consideration for the rights of ITPs in each of the aforementioned aspects of the proposed carbon trading. At this stage, we do not even address the substantive aspects of the structures and processes, such as the policy structure, benefit sharing mechanism and dispute resolution, and corrective mechanisms.

We, the trustees and protectors of our territories, therefore demand that the further process be stopped immediately and proceed to full review of each of its components and steps, and that FPIC and consultation processes in line with international standards should be followed at all times, through our legitimate representative bodies of Traditional Authority.

We look forward to receiving your actions to be taken to meet the above requirements by 22 August 2024.

Sincerely,