What’s at stake for the environment in Suriname’s upcoming elections?

Suriname, one of the most forested countries in the world, will hold elections this weekend for parliament and set up a vote for the next president. The outcome could determine whether the forest remains largely intact or succumbs to logging, agribusiness, mining and other threats that many officials argue are vital to economic growth. The vote will also be pivotal for Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities fighting for their ancestral land rights.

Elections in Suriname differ from most countries in South America. Voters will elect members for all 51 seats of the National Assembly, who will then choose the president, usually the leader of a majority party or coalition.

The incumbent, President Chandrikapersad Santokhi, is a likely candidate, although he’s faced sinking popularity in the runup to the elections, and even asked the country for “more time” to carry out his agenda. Recent opinion polls show that his Progressive Reform Party is losing support with the country, with most people saying they want new leadership.

Santokhi has done little to publicly support conservation of the Amazon Rainforest, instead pushing for development that has led to deforestation. Approximately 93% of Suriname is covered by rainforest, making it one of the few countries that acts as a carbon sink, absorbing more CO₂ than it emits. For this reason, forest loss can be a sensitive political issue for many citizens.

Under Santokhi’s watch, officials planned a three-year pilot program that would have cleared 30,000 hectares (about 74,000 acres) for 50 Mennonite families dedicated to developing agribusiness. Officials were considering a long-term plan of attracting even more development on around 467,000 hectares (1.15 million acres), of which 451,000 hectares (1.11 million acres) was primary forest. The plan was met with fierce pushback from conservationists and Indigenous communities, and was ultimately cancelled.

Santokhi’s government caused similar controversy because of plans to open a bauxite mine run by Chinese corporation Chinalco. The 30-year project could extract around 6 million metric tons of bauxite per year for aluminum production, taking up around 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) near the village of Bakhuis, in Sipaliwini district. Some residents there said they weren’t adequately consulted about the project and were questioning how it would affect their land rights.

Suriname is the only country in South America without a law formalizing the territorial rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. A 2007 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights told the government to demarcate territory for the Afro-descendant Saamaka people, but the project has been delayed for nearly two decades.

That’s allowed Santokhi’s government to continue granting commercial logging concessions on ancestral land. In some instances, communities have written directly to Santokhi asking for a halt to logging activities. They’ve also published statements denouncing the draft of a territorial rights bill that would allow the government to grant concessions without prior consent.

Another candidate, Ronnie Brunswijk, has been more vocal in defending ancestral rights. A member of the General Liberation and Development Party and Santokhi’s current vice president, Brunswijk led the Jungle Commando insurgent group during Suriname’s civil war before pivoting to politics on the promise that Maroon communities, descendants of enslaved Africans, deserve formal land ownership.

However, Brunswijk, who is Afro-descendant, has also been accused of leveraging Maroon support for personal gain. He was convicted in absentia of drug trafficking in the Netherlands and France, and has questionable connections to harmful gold mining projects in the Amazon. He relinquished his mining concessions to become vice president, but also oversees the agency that regulates Suriname’s mining industry, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

In 2023, he said the government wasn’t funding oversight of the mining industry, which has allowed Brazilian wildcat gold miners, or garimpeiros, and other illegal mining operations to clear the forest and use harmful chemicals like mercury.

Another candidate, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons of the National Democratic Party, has a better environmental track record. A former chair of the National Assembly, she’s spoken out about the expansion of mining, logging and agribusiness throughout Suriname, and helped implement important environmental regulations.

She has supported continued protections of the 1.6-million-hectare (3.9-million acre) Central Suriname Nature Reserve. In 2019, she also introduced the environmental framework law that requires development projects to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of local communities.

In general, observers have doubts that even Geerlings-Simons, let alone other candidates like Santokhi or Brunswijk, will protect the rainforest as needed or push though the land rights legislation that has been stuck in parliament for years.

Officials are working hard to diversify the economy to help address social inequalities, debt and inflation. Mining, agribusiness and new oil and gas projects appear to be the way to do that. If those goals are in sight, the environment may take a back seat for a while.

Banner image: President Chandrikapersad Santokhi addressing the UN Summit of the Future. Photo courtesy of the UN. 

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