Fernandes defends APNU’s promise to give 50% of carbon credit funds directly to indigenous residents

Jul 29, 2025 News

…says forest to be preserved are primarily on their lands

Fernandes defends APNU’s promise to give 50% of carbon credit funds directly to indigenous residents

Prime Ministerial candidate for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Juretha Fernandes

Kaieteur News – Prime Ministerial candidate for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Juretha Fernandes on Friday defended the party’s promise to transfer 50% of the proceeds from the sale of Guyana’s carbon credits under the Low Caron Development Strategy (LCDS) saying that the forests that need to be preserved are primarily on Amerindian lands.

Responding to a question posed at the coalition’s news conference last Friday based on what Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said at his Thursday press conference, Fernades said that “The first thing I want to say is that we don’t deal with feelings. We deal with facts. When you’re putting policies together, it’s not about your personal feelings towards these things, but it’s about a fact. The fact is that right about now, we’re having carbon credits money being paid when it comes to preserving the forest that is primarily indigenous, that are primarily on indigenous lands, and we’re having only 15% of those sums actually being given to indigenous communities.”

She explained that APNU feels that this is not enough, hence the proposed increase. The PM candidate highlighted that Guyana’s indigenous peoples are at the forefront when it comes to protecting the forest and therefore it is important that the funds go directly to the residents.

Meanwhile on Thursday last at his weekly press conference, a reporter pointed out to the Vice President that APNU is “proposing to increase the LCDS fund to 50%, and instead of giving village councils to manage the funds, they are proposing to give residents directly. In your view, how is this unsustainable and why is village led management important?

In response Jagdeo said: “…so on the LCDS funding, it’s amazing how dishonest and shameless people could be. They were touting that Granger had this great plan, the Green State strategy. It didn’t earn a cent for the country, didn’t earn a cent. It was going nowhere. We had to spend the money to develop it. Money that we left from the early LCDs that they were opposed to. They were opposed to the LCDS, Granger said he couldn’t look at that,” he stressed.

Jagdeo went on to say that until now the opposition has not been in support of the LCDS but they now want to utilise monies from something they were always against, when they went as far as to supporting the Amerindian People’s Association (APA) to block it.

“Juretha Fernandes is talking about how she will use the money earned from the LCDS. So we made it clear that 15% of those funds will go to the Amerindian communities. So far they’ve been getting over 20% of the funds from the first three years, $14 billion went to the villages. The villages have to decide on their own how to spend the money. We don’t tell them to do that,” he explained.

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APNU, Carbon credit funds, Juretha Fernande, Low Caron Development Strategy

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