Carbon credit payments should be used in forestry sector – GMSA suggests

See below the full statement from the GMSA:

The Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) applauds the Government in the recent signing of agreement with Hess Corporation for the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART TREES) credits. The GMSA further congratulates the Government in leading the charge as being the first among 14 other countries and large sub-national jurisdictions toward their own issuances of TREES credits.

With the projection of Guyana receiving at the minimum of US$750M for a period 2016 and 2032 of which the government commits to inject into the development of Indigenous communities. The GMSA also hopes that special provisions are made using these funds for forests users including loggers, since they play a pivotal role in protecting the forest such as conducting sustainable forest management and complying with the wood tracking system during their logging operations. In addition, support is given to the Guyana Forestry Commission for its role which underpinned this Agreement.

With Guyana’s forests of about eighty-seven (87%) being intact, it is the hope of the Association that government continues to involve key stakeholders in the conversations for forest protection and sustainable forest management. In this regard, the GMSA recommends that monies received from this Agreement are invested toward maximizing the allowable utilization of the forest resources into downstream processing, agro-forestry, and improving land use planning between forestry and mining. The Association believes that these are some of the priority efforts that will aid in continuing to enhance the value of forest resources that can be extracted, while at the same time, retaining deforestation rate below one percent (1%).

The GMSA reiterates that the selling of carbon credits from Guyana’s forest augers well for meeting the target of the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) – 2030’s target of accelerating the deployment of renewable energy of which the GMSA foresees would greatly reduce production cost for extracting and manufacturing operations.g