Is Guyana’s forest carbon what the government says it is?

Apr 01, 2024 News, Peeping Tom

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Peeping tom…

Kaieteur News – The government of Guyana claims that its forests sequester some 19.5 billion tonnes of carbon. This number needs interrogating.

This figure appears to be overstated. If this is indeed the case, then it means that the concerns over Guyana’s carbon accounting will be called into question again. This has implications for whether Guyana will remain a carbon sink when future oil production ramps up.

As was explained by Vice President Jagdeo in his press conference last Thursday, there are essentially three groups of emissions from the energy sector. Scope 1 emissions refer to emissions from activities in the country, including its transportation and industrial processes. Scope 2 refers to the emissions directly from the production of energy and this involves emissions from the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels. Then there are Scope 3 emissions or emissions that relate to the use in other countries of the petroleum produced in Guyana. It is these latter indirect emissions that will skyrocket Guyana’s total emissions.

Jagdeo did some calculations and came up with the conclusion that even if you factored in Scope 3 emissions, total emissions would fall short of the 2 billion tonnes which the BBC’s Hard Talk host touted in his recently-aired interview. Jagdeo did not consider that the host may have been referencing total cumulative emissions over a period.

However, in his calculations Jagdeo seems to have overlooked emissions from the forests itself, including from deforestation and forest degradation. From the forestry sector alone, total carbon dioxide emissions for 2021 was reported as close to 12 million tonnes. One study has established that total emissions (direct and indirect) but excluding Scope 3 emissions, as at 2025, would be to the tune of 110M tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

But Jagdeo, in asserting that even with Scope 3 emissions added, Guyana would still be a net carbon sink, must have taken into account his government’s contention that Guyana’s forests sequester some 19.5 billion tonnes of carbon. This is the baseline which the President also used to argue that Guyana will still be a net carbon sink even during peak oil production.

The 19.5 billion tonnes may have been derived based on a report done by the Mc Kinsey Group in 2008. That report had projected that Guyana’s closed forest areas (estimated at 156,465 square kilometers), contain 3.457 gigatonnes (billions of tonnes) of tree carbon equivalent, and 12.676 gigatonnes of sequestered carbon dioxide. If marsh, swamp, scrub, and savannah are added to this, then Guyana’s total land area sequesters 18.40 gigatonnes. (SN April 17th 2016)

But what if this 19.5 gigatonnes tonnes of carbon is an overstatement?

In a study done in 2017 and published under the title, “Carbon storage potential of mangrove forest in Guyana” the researchers pointed out that Guyana’s total forest  coverage  is 18,570,000 ha containing  over  5 gigatonnes  of carbon dioxide in aboveground biomass. And interestingly the source of this information is the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, the very Ministry which now falls under the oversight of Jagdeo.

To better determine the accuracy of the 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon which the government claims our forest sequesters, we need to look at the total amount of carbon stored by the world’s forests. Unfortunately, there is no agreed upon figure and the number rages from 400 billion tonnes to 800 billion tonnes of carbon.

However, from the upper number it is estimated that a mere 361 billion tonnes are stored above the ground or live biomass and that tropical rainforest contain about 400 gigatonnes of carbon.

Is it plausible that Guyana accounts for 20% of the world tropical stored forest carbon? That does not sound plausible.

The Amazon is estimated to store about 123 billion tonnes of carbon and this area is more than 30 times the size of Guyana’s forests. It therefore does not seem plausible that Guyana’s forests are capable to store 19.5 billon tonnes of forest carbon per annum.

One study found that Guyana forests store around 351 tonnes of carbon per hectare. This is made up of 150 tonnes from above ground tree biomass (including dead wood), 30 tonnes below ground, litter of 15 tonnes and 156 tonnes from soil organic matter (UN-REDD Programme 2009). Guyana has 18.5 million hectares of forests which would translate to 6.4 billon tonnes of forest carbon.

At his next press conference Jagdeo should get his experts to come with their methodology and calculations to explain how the 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon was arrived at. But then again, why should he when he knows it all!

 

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• and savannah, marsh, scrub, swamp, The BBC’s, The Government of Guyana, Vice President Jagdeo

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