You extracted from a press release by the Office of the Vice President in your article ‘APA withdraws from Carbon Credits appeal process’ (SN October 30, 2023). The Vice President’s Office is yet again misleading the people of Guyana by implying that the National Toshaos Council (NTC) has authority to surrender control to the Guyana Forestry Commission of forest on titled Amerindian Village Lands. The NTC has no such authority. Only a properly convened Village Meeting can approve such surrender, Village by Village, as written in the Amerindian Act (cap. 29:01 2006). I quoted the exact wording of the relevant sections of that Act in my letter which SN published on 13 December 2022 (‘Gov’t and its partner Winrock have illegally arrogated to themselves the rights vested solely in Amerindian land title holders’).
Nothing has changed in the Amerindian Act since December 2022. The Winrock award to Guyana of 33.47 million jurisdictional carbon credits on December 01, 2022, includes credits estimated from the 2.299 million hectares of forest on titled Amerindian lands.
Guyana’s immediate sale of 37.5 million carbon credits to the oil company Hess Corporation of the USA was fraudulent in that the government did not disclose that the credits included those misappropriated from Amerindians. Winrock/ART and its auditor Aster Global Environmental Solutions and Hess Corporation all failed to carry out due diligence sufficient to detect the illegal seizure of Amerindian forest rights.
The Office of the Vice President itself has failed to carry out due diligence when making unreasonable criticism of the sustained work of the Amerindian Peoples Association to uphold Amerindian rights. The Office of the Vice President has asserted that the acceptance by Amerindian Village Councils of allocations of money from the initial payments by Hess Corporation means that the Villages have accepted the illegal seizure of the rights over their forests. Legally speaking, the Office of the Vice President is absolutely wrong, a disgrace to a high office in our land.
Yours truly,
Janette Bulkan
Article originally published at: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2023/11/01/opinion/letters/vice-presidents-office-is-yet-again-misleading-the-people-on-carbon-credits/
