“Let me stop you right there.” The BBC’s missed opportunity to talk about colonialism, elite capture, the climate crisis and Exxon’s carbon bomb in Guyana

An interesting, but intensely frustrating, interview.

A few weeks ago, a clip of an interview between Stephen Sackur of BBC’s HARDtalk show and President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana went viral. Sackur asks about the two billion tonnes of carbon emissions that will result from the exploitation of the oil and gas off the coast of Guyana. “Do you know that Guyana has a forest forever that is the size of England and Scotland combined?” Ali replies.

It’s an interesting, but intensely frustrating, interview.

Sackur starts his interview by focussing on the extremely favourable deal the country made with ExxonMobil and its partners Hess corporation and the Chinese CNOOC. Sackur quotes from a February 2020 Global Witness report:

We have a report from Global Witness, the anti-corruption people, saying that if a deal had been done with the more usual royalty and cost agreements like we've seen in other parts of the world then Guyana would stand to gain another US$50 billion from your oil and gas reserves.

What he doesn’t mention is that Global Witness withdrew the report in January 2021 in part because the report “overestimate[s] the potential economic benefit of oil extraction”, and because of “its stifling of debate within Guyana around actions to address climate change”.

Sackur might have done better to quote from a November 2017 report by the International Monetary Fund produced for Guyanese officials. The terms of the 2016 contract with Exxon, “are relatively favorable to investors by international standards,” the IMF wrote. “Existing production sharing agreements appear to enjoy royalty rates well below of what is observed internationally.”

Guyana’s deal with Exxon is analysed and critiqued in detail in Season 8 of climate journalist Amy Westerveld’s excellent Podcast “Drilled”. There is no doubt that Guyana signed a particularly bad deal with Exxon.

Westerveld reports on a May 2023 court ruling in the High Court of Guyana, in which Justice Sandil Kissoon described Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency as “derelict, pliant, and submissive” in its dealing with Exxon’s subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited.

The judge described Esso as “disingenuous and deceptive”.

In an article written in response to the HARDTalk interview Westerveld quotes Keston Perry, a political economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote on Twitter that,

“Guyana is not responsible for climate change. We should all call out the hypocrisy and disrespect of the Global North. However, while forceful, President Ali can not be let off the hook for allowing his government to be used as a neocolonial puppet for Exxon, the U.S., and transnational corporations.”

A brief history of US and British interference in Guyana

Westerveld gives a history of US interests in Guyana - which date back to the 19th century. “The country has seen gold, bauxite, diamond and lumber booms over the years, none of which has left it better off economically,” Westerveld writes.

In 1953, Britain, under prime minister Winston Churchill, overthrew Guyana’s democratically elected government. Churchill was concerned that Cheddi Jagan and his wife Janet, who had together founded the People’s Progressive Party, would take the country over to the Soviet Union’s side during the cold war.

“We ought surely to get American support in doing all that we can to break the communist teeth in British Guiana,” Churchill wrote to his colonial secretary. But Britain acted alone, sending a warship, HMS Superb. On 9 October 1953 , Britain suspended British Guiana’s constitution, fired its legislators, and arrested the Jagans.

In 1961, when Guyana became self-governing, Cheddi Jagan, and Indian-Guyanese, was elected prime minister. Between 1962 and 1968 the US government spent more than US$2 million on “covert action programs” in Guyana. CIA operatives fuelled racial tensions and opposition groups, incited riots and violence, and weakening Jagan’s power.

Forbes Burnham, who was Afro-Guyanese and led the People’s National Congress Party, replaced Jagan in 1964. Thanks to rigged elections, he remained prime minister from 1964 to 1980 and President from 1980 to 1985. It was a period of corruption and mismanagement that had a disastrous impact on Guyana’s economy.

“Does that give you the right?”

After President Ali responded to Sackur’s question about the carbon bomb from Guyana’s oil, Sackur asked “Does that give you the right?”

It’s far too easy for Ali to take on the role of the President of a former British colony. He accuses Sackur of lecturing him on climate change. “I am going to lecture you on climate change,” Ali says.

Ali refers to Guyana’s forests, and says, “Guess what? We have the lowest deforestation rate in the world.”

At this point Sackur could have introduced the concept of the fast carbon cycle (carbon circulates between the atmosphere, land and seas) and the slow carbon cycle (carbon circulates between the atmosphere and the rocks which make up Earth’s interior). Rainforests are part of the fast carbon cycle. Fossil fuels are part of the slow carbon cycle.

From the perspective of addressing the climate crisis it makes no sense to equate carbon in the fast carbon cycle with carbon in the slow carbon cycle.

Sackur could also have challenged Ali’s claim about Guyana’s rate of deforestation being the lowest in the world. It’s true that Guyana has a low rate of deforestation, but Ali’s claim just doesn’t stand up.

According to Global Forest Watch’s database, Guyana has the 80th highest rate of tree cover loss in the world. Between 2001 and 2023, Guyana lost 269,000 hectares of tree cover. During the same period, the country gained 30,500 hectares of tree cover.

While it’s true that Guyana’s rate of deforestation remains low, the destruction of primary forest has been increasing since 2001 and 2023 was a record year:

Sackur could also have referred to the 2022 deal that Guyana made with Hess Corporation to sell US$750 million carbon credits generated from the carbon stored in the country’s forests. The Guyanese government entered into the deal without a process of free, prior and informed consent with the Indigenous Peoples who live in the forests.

Yet Indigenous Peoples’ forests are generating the carbon credits that the government is selling to Hess Corporation.

Guyana’s Amerindian Peoples Association filed a formal complaint with Winrock International, the Secretariat for Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART), the organisation that certified Guyana’s carbon credits. But in October 2023, Amerindian Peoples Association was forced to withdraw from an appeal process because Winrock International and ART were hiding behind bureaucratic pedantry, confidentiality clauses, and a failure to implement a “fair, independent, and transparent complaint mechanism”.

In a letter to Stabroek News¹ in response to the interview, Janette Bulkan, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry, pointed out the “apparent misunderstandings by President Irfaan Ali” in the interview.

Bulkan uses the Guyana Forestry Commission’s statistics. In 1990, the country had about 18.5 million hectares, which by 2022 had reduced to 17.8 million hectares. The main cause of this forest destruction was uncontrolled mining.

Bulkan notes that the consulting firm Indufor, which carries out Guyana’s National Forest Monitoring Platform, with funding from the Norwegian government, has re-estimated the baseline forest area as “higher-resolution satellite imagery and better trained GFC [Guyana Forestry Commission] staff have enabled fresh looks at older imagery”. Bulkan notes that, “The baseline was re-set in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022.”

Bulkan estimates that the average annual loss of CO₂ from deforestation in Guyana is almost 8 million tonnes. This is a small fraction of the carbon stored in Guyana’s forests.

But, as Bulkan explained in a 2009 10-part series about “Carbon in the forests of Guyana,” the claim that Guyana is providing a huge ecological benefit to the world from the carbon stored in its forests is based on a misunderstanding. Bulkan writes that,

The standing natural tropical rainforest is in dynamic equilibrium. Like all living things, the trees grow and die. During daylight hours, the trees accumulate carbon through photosynthesis. During the night, most of that carbon is respired back to the atmosphere. And most of the stored carbon retained in each tree is also lost back to the atmosphere when trees decay and die; some adds to stored soil carbon, but this also is subject to natural carbon cycling unless buried under anaerobic conditions and, over tens of millions of years, becoming coal or – indeed – petroleum.

Bulkan points out that Guyana’s forests are carbon neutral. The forest area is not increasing. It is decreasing because of uncontrolled deforestation and degradation. Forest growth is “not being accelerated by silvicultural treatment under GFC,” Bulkan writes.

Thus Guyana’s forests have no net positive effect on global atmospheric carbon, contrary to the claims by Guyanese leaders.  Also, uncontrolled deforestation, plus the generation of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel for generation of electric power and transport, especially on the coastland, mean that Guyana has been a net emitter of atmospheric carbon for decades.

Emissions from Exxon’s oil and gas extraction

Bulkan turns her attention to the carbon emissions that result from Exxon, CNOOC, and Hess Corporation’s offshore drilling.

Bulkan calculates that Sackur’s figure of two billion tonnes of carbon emissions over the next two decades is “an underestimate by 1.6 Gigatonnes”.

This is quite the opposite of the conclusions of both President Ali and General Secretary Jagdeo.  Guyana’s predicted total emissions are enormous, on a per capita basis by far the largest in the world. And Guyana’s net emissions from uncontrolled deforestation also contribute to global climate heating, although in a relatively tiny amount.

Here’s a transcript of the section of the HARDtalk interview about oil and gas extraction and Guyana’s forests:

Stephen Sackur (BBC's HARDtalk): Let’s take a big picture look at what’s going on here. Over the next decade, two decades, it is expected that there will be US$150 billion worth of oil and gas extracted off your coast. It’s an extraordinary figure. But think of it in practical terms. That means according to many experts more than two billion tonnes of carbon emissions will come from your seabed from those reserves and be released into the atmosphere.

I don't know if you as a head of state went to COP in Dubai . . .

President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali: Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. Do you know that Guyana has a forest forever that is the size of England and Scotland combined? A forest that stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon. A forest that we have kept alive. A forest that we have kept alive.

Stephen Sackur: Does that give you the right, does that give you the right to release all of this carbon from . . .

Irfaan Ali: No, no, no. Does that give you the right, does that give you the right to lecture us on climate change? I am going to lecture you on climate change. Because we have kept this forest alive that stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon that you enjoy, that the world enjoys, that you don't pay us for, that you don't value, that you don't see a value in, that the people of Guyana has kept alive.

Guess what? We have the lowest deforestation rate in the world. And guess what? Even with our greatest exploration of the oil and gas resource we have now, we will still be net zero. Guyana will still be net zero. With all our exploration we will still be net zero.

Stephen Sackur: Couple of points. Powerful words, Mr. President, but a couple . . .

Irfaan Ali: I am not completed as yet, I am not finished as yet. I am just not finished as yet. Because this is the hypocrisy that exists in the world. We, the world in the last 50 years, has lost 65% of all its biodiversity. We have kept our biodiversity. Are you valuing it? Are you ready to pay for it? When is the developed world going to pay for it? Or are you in the pockets of those who have damaged the environment? Are you in the pockets, are you and your system in the pockets of those who destroy the environment through the industrial revolution and now lecturing us? Are you in their pockets? Are you paid by them? Are you paid to keep the message alive? There is no hypocrisy in our position.

Stephan Sackur: Alright Mr. President. The Center for International Environment and Law has described the oil and gas production in Guyana as turning your country from, as you rightly put it, a carbon sink into a potential quote carbon bomb. Now you may say you have every right to exploit that oil and gas . . .

Irfaan Ali: That is ridiculous. Even with our, even with exploring and production of all our resources, we are going to still be carbon neutral. We are still going to be carbon neutral.

Stephan Sackur: Let me quote to you Greenpeace who say quite simply to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and you know that your own country is one of the most vulnerable to climate change because most of your most of your population lives below sea level.

Irfaan Ali: And we have paid, guess what, guess what we have paid for the mitigation, we have paid for the adoptation we are the ones who have to find revenue, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .

Stephan Sackur: I want to continue, I haven't finished telling you what Greenpeace say . . .

Irfaan Ali: But let me tell you . . .

Stephan Sackur: Greenpeace say we need to keep the majority of the world’s remaining fossil fuels in the ground. You're not doing that.

Irfaan Ali: Yeah. Greenpeace can say that. Greenpeace and you can say that. But we need to get resources and the developing world we need to get resources to build the sea defences, we need to get sea defences to build the drainage and irrigation system.

You just said that we’re six feet below sea level. Who is going to pay for the infrastructure? Who is going to pay for the drainage and irrigation? Who is going to pay for the development and advancement of our country? Are you going to pay? It’s not coming from anywhere. It's not coming from Greenpeace or anyone else. Look at the adaptation budget that is required for the developing world. Where is the money coming from?

Stephan Sackur: Isn’t there a cynicism here in Georgetown, best expressed by your vice president who said recently because there is this climate change imperative to decarbonise, our policy is to get as much oil out of the ground as quickly as possible. Now he said that's harsh for those who think that you should be environmentally sound but that is the reality of it. Those were very honest words from your vice president.

Irfaan Ali: And that is what we are honest. We are practical.

Stephan Sackur: So you’re rushing to get this oil out before any deal is done to quote Dubai COP to transition away from oil and gas.

Irfaan Ali: You can say we are rushing but we are very practical. We have this natural resource and we are going to aggressively pursue this natural resource because we have to develop our country. We are committed to the development of this region. We have to create the opportunity for our people because no one is bringing that for us. You, you, no one is bringing that for us. No one is paying our agenda, no one is paying our . . .

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1. The figures in this post are based on a subsequently corrected version - the areas for deforestation were too low. The corrected figures do not affect the argument Bulkan makes in her letter.