- Indigenous communities in Guyana, such as the Kapohn people, have received funds from carbon credit sales negotiated by the government, but many criticize the lack of consultation, rushed implementation, and projects that have not met local needs.
- Although Indigenous lands contribute to the Guyanese carbon credit program, many remain without full legal recognition or protection, and leaders argue that their autonomy and traditional rights are being undermined in favor of state-managed initiatives.
- Amid growing concerns over land rights, mining concessions and transparency, Indigenous voices are calling for meaningful participation, cultural respect, and development plans rooted in their own priorities and knowledge systems.
In the center of the village is a soccer 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 kilometers (25 miles) from Guyana’s border with Venezuela. Near the church and next to the health care center, the village’s newest development stands out in fresh, light-green paint: a mall, or, perhaps 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, a U.S. 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” is the term used in the sector — were available for sale on the private market.
Almost 100% 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 (45.5 million acres) of forest. The sale of this first batch of 30% of the credits brought in $150 million in 2022.
According to Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, Indigenous peoples legally hold 16.4% ownership of the country’s territory, slightly higher than the 15% that Pradeepa Bholanath, the No. 2 official 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, Bholanath said, the government calculated that 15% of the amount paid by Hess 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, $22.3 million was transferred to these communities. All officially recognized villages have signed letters of accession to the program as a condition for accessing the funds.
In March 2023, Kako village received $114,000 from the Guyanese government. As with the other 241 villages in the country, the government set up a bank account in the name of the local cacique, or community leader, 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 reporters from Agência Pública visited Kako in mid-July 2024, only one shop was operating. Selling cassava bread, snacks and cleaning products, the Indigenous woman running the shop said she serves two or three customers a day. Seven months after the inauguration, Andrews said, “Now we see that our idea of building a mall benefited only one person: the builder.”
<style=”font-size: 14px;”>Inside Andy’s Mall in Kako village, Guyana. Image by Rafael Vilela/Agência Pública.</>
‘We were forced to sign’
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 centers, others in infrastructure to host tourists, and others in equipment for growing crops.
Traveling along the Mazaruni River and the Kako River in western Guyana’s Essequibo territory, the 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,” said Laura George, an Indigenous lawyer who maintains that the carbon project is tantamount to a loss of Indigenous control over their lands.
According to the Amerindian Act of 2006, which establishes Indigenous rights in Guyana, populations must be consulted on projects that impact them, and their local council has the power to authorize 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.”
The money comes, but recognition of land rights does not
On a hot morning in late July, 47 Indigenous Kako people gathered at their local community center with Agência Pública’s team and shared their concerns and anxieties about the carbon credit project.
“My question is, why do they give us this percentage [of income] instead of recognizing our traditional ownership rights over the forests that are remaining in Guyana?” asked Stephanie Crammer, one of the attendees.
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]?”
Agência Pública asked the Guyanese government whether the areas deforested by mining are included in the lands connected to the carbon credits that have been commercialized. 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 Ali announced at the national meeting of the caciques that the communities would receive the same net amount as the previous year, even though the country received less for the credits in 2024 ($87 million in total), taking 26.7% 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 discussions 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 cacique, 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 said. ” I know it’s a lot. But I think a young man can dream, right?”
This story was originally published by here by Agência Pública on Jan. 13, 2025.
Image banner of a Kapohn Indigenous woman inside the Kako village mall in Guyana. Image by Rafael Vilela/Agência Pública.
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