PARAMARIBO, Suriname — With the U.N. Climate Change Conference coming up next week, Suriname finds itself at the center of a global debate about how to reduce carbon emissions and prevent deforestation. COP30 will see nearly 200 countries converge on the city of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon, with multiple climate policy solutions on the agenda. Neighboring Suriname, despite its small size and influence, will have a uniquely large voice at the event.

The South American country has managed to keep 93% of its national forest cover and boasts net-negative carbon emissions, meaning it absorbs more CO₂ than it emits — a rare feat achieved by only two other countries: Panama and Bhutan. As a member of multiple international coalitions, including the G-Zero Forum, Suriname has used its conservation success to lead calls for Indigenous rights, biodiversity protections, and financial compensation for smaller countries that have already met emissions targets.

President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, who took office in July, has been especially vocal about pinning down the frameworks for international carbon markets, which would allow nations to buy and sell credits earned from emissions reductions. The Paris Agreement establishes frameworks for doing this, but Geerlings-Simons says countries still aren’t seeing the money that they should. Carbon-emitting countries need to be held accountable, she says, and countries conserving their forests must see real compensation.

During Climate Week in New York in September, her government pledged to formally conserve 90% of Suriname’s rainforest — more than 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 square miles) — by creating new protected areas and demarcating Indigenous and Maroon territories. The announcement garnered $20 million from environmental donors.

Geerlings-Simons’ environmental work has earned her a spot on this year’s TIME100 Climate list of influential people. But in Suriname, she still has plenty of challenges ahead. Not all Indigenous and Maroon communities are happy with the government’s proposed boundaries for their ancestral territories. In some areas, violence has erupted during protests by communities against mining and logging on their land.

Gold mining also continues to destroy parts of the rainforest, often with mercury and cyanide that pollute the water and soil, creating a public health risk for local communities.

Geerlings-Simons says she plans to move forward with new offshore oil projects, adding they will finance sustainable development projects and help improve the country’s infrastructure. She says the additional revenue will also help improve oversight of the mining industry.

Mongabay’s Maxwell Radwin sat down with Jennifer Geerlings-Simons at her office to discuss how she plans to balance economic development with her many environmental goals, focusing on her plans for COP30, carbon credits and mining.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Mongabay: Many conservationists in Suriname are excited about your presidency. They view you as an advocate for the environment in ways that past presidents haven’t been. Your advisers are calling you the “Forest President.” Is that how you understand your political identity?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: I see myself as a president for the people. That’s why I’m worrying about, and working for, the environment — because the people of my country need a healthy environment. My image of myself is that I’m here to work for sustainability for my people, and that’s not easy in the world we live in. It’s a challenge.

I’ve been very honest when I said that I want to keep the forest standing. But we’ll need compensation, because this forest is standing on many riches like gold, diamonds, bauxite and more. If we want to keep it standing, we’ll have to make an effort. The people who are actually putting the carbon into the air will have to come forward in an honest and fair way, with not only support but also fair climate finance.

We have about 93% forest coverage, but I speak about 90% because I know that there’s some mining going on — and we need the mining. But we also need the forest. So we’re working on both. What I’m specifically excited about is a more modern view of the forest, working with investors, working with people who have a specific interest in their business [while also keeping] the forest standing. For example, people who do ecotourism and adventure tourism, bird-watching and so on. This is a specific kind of tourism, where [right now] you have high prices and not that many people [participating]. These investors have a specific interest in keeping the forest standing, and I want to keep it standing, and they want it, too. If we have our regulations or legislation, sustainable management of the forest, then we can actually work together and earn some money for the people and protect the forest. It isn’t easy. It won’t be something that we should just expect to go well. We will have to work at it.

Mongabay: Protecting 90% of the forest is going to require new legal frameworks for creating and maintaining protected areas. That can be a complicated process involving demarcation, prior consultation and then actually allocating resources to infrastructure, park guards, etc. Is that complexity daunting when you’re trying to protect so much land, or do you feel well-equipped to meet those challenges?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: It isn’t easy. As I said, it’s complex. We’re working, for example, on the land rights of Indigenous people and tribal people. When we have that, when we’ve done that, then they’ll have their own forest, their own regions with forests, and we’ll have the other regions for the general population.

And look at the Central Suriname Nature Reserve: It’s still there. Still pristine. I think that we actually do have an idea about how to manage our forests. Otherwise it wouldn’t be there.

This is also what I’m telling people: we’ve done logging for many decades, but we still have the forest because we had a sustainable system. I’m actually talking to Austria. I spoke to the ambassador, and they have another system, as well, where they’re logging and still growing their forest. So maybe we can also learn from that. I’m talking to different countries. But we developed a system here in Suriname. We called it the CELOS system. This is a sustainable way of logging. That’s why we did logging for many years but the forest is still there. [What is] actually removing the forest is the mining, specifically the large bauxite and gold mining. But we have some room for that.

Mongabay: It’s interesting that in your answer about creating protected areas, you shifted to defending sustainable logging. Perhaps this gets at an idea that’s very present in Suriname, which is that there’s a tension between the economic needs of the country and certain environmental goals.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: I don’t see these things as contradictory, but they are often seen as contradictory. But that’s why I told you about my interest in businesses that have an interest in keeping the forest standing. It’s a way to do business and still protect the forest. Ecotourism, sustainable logging.

Mongabay: What about agribusiness? In recent years, there’s been some pressure to grow food in new parts of the country, the logic being that Suriname needs to diversify economically. Growers make the argument that they can work sustainably on degraded land.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: Suriname has the advantage of having very fertile soil in the coastal area. When we’re looking at the forest — the rainforest is not in the coastal area, we still have some estuaries and so on, also protected — but in the coastal area where we have the agricultural land, well, it’s largely unused. We can expand our agriculture without taking out one tree in the forest.

Mongabay: So Suriname has enough land for agriculture as it is, without the need for clearing more rainforest. Why has that land gone unused then? And why would agribusiness look to forested land first?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: We have so much unused agricultural land. It’s underused. In the past, the land was given to small farmers, and many of them just took other jobs, still living on the land, and their whole 2, 3, 5 hectares are just sitting there. If you fly from Paramaribo to Nickerie [in the northwest], you will see it. We can do a lot more agriculture without touching the forest.

Mongabay: Carbon credits are a big part of your plan to strengthen the economy, as well. But it sounds like you’ve run into some roadblocks trying to access that money.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: You know how some countries make an agreement with you that you can export things to their countries, and then they have these non-tariff barriers, all kinds of stuff about why you can’t export, why you can’t access their market, even though you have an agreement? Sometimes it looks like that. We have the Paris Agreement, it’s been improved, we have the Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes [that measure carbon emissions reductions]. But then to register your credits, there’s all kinds of bureaucracy and people that are frustrating [the process]. It’s there but you can’t access it, and that’s some of the frustration. Another thing we had in the past is that there’s a lot of money for countries that actually diminish their forest and then they want to grow it back. Then they get money to grow it back. But people who actually took care of the forest and it’s still there, don’t get anything. They get a pat on the back and that’s it.

We’re also proud, but we have to pay the bills as well. We have to feed our people. And we need schools and hospitals like everybody else. And then on top of all our need, we have a lot of natural resources under the forest. The forest is actually competing with these natural resources. We want to keep the forest standing — I want to keep it standing — but there’s also pressure because people want to mine gold, people want to mine bauxite, now I hear people talking about lithium and other rare earth [minerals]. There’s a lot of pressure to do things like mining that will actually get rid of the forest. These are the frustrations, if you want to call them frustrations.

People who put carbon into the atmosphere don’t want to pay up. They find all kinds of evasions to try not to pay. Luckily, you have some countries in the West, like the Northern European countries, that actually want to do something. So we’re talking to them, and we’re also trying to organize ourselves. We have only three carbon-negative countries in the world: Panama, Suriname and Bhutan. And one [that’s] carbon neutral is Madagascar. We’re coming together in this G-Zero Forum. But we’ve also organized as HFLD [High Forest, Low Deforestation] countries in the past, and we have the Declaration of Paramaribo in 2019 [that called for more climate finance for HFLD countries]. We’re also talking to about 33 or 35 other countries so that we can have a bigger voice and we can better express what is needed for us.

But there are also some initiatives, like debt-for-nature swaps. Now we’re also talking, of course, to Deutsche Bank and other people who want to do some business with carbon credits. We hope that in the coming years, specifically with the Brazilian initiative [Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)], that we will be able to get some compensation for the forest. If you want to keep the forest standing, you will have to have people who also do the checks and controls. You will need to spend some money on that.

Mongabay: Do you plan on hammering out some of this next week during COP30?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: What I’ve told you so far is what I will speak about. We really need to become more serious and fair about climate finance. Another thing is to support the Brazilian initiative and to organize ourselves, like the G-Zero and HFLD countries. We’re calling them up now, trying to get some time, and working with one another to see what we can do to lessen bureaucratic barriers and register our credits, and to make sure we create a better environment for really getting some compensation.

Mongabay: When it comes to struggles with the carbon market, sometimes it seems like a bureaucratic issue. Other times it seems like people in power are dragging their feet because they don’t want to see that money moving.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: It’s people dragging their feet.

Humanity has done more complex things [than carbon credits]. If we wanted to do it, we would have done it. There have been discussions in the past. Since the Paris Agreement, it was finally agreed upon that we should be paying people who actually take carbon out of the air. It’s relatively new and it wasn’t perfect, but I think during the last COP it was adjusted so that now we’re on a certain path. I personally did the carbon crediting for ParlAmericas. I spoke a lot about the fact that there are only these private people buying credits, and that they wouldn’t work. People would make money, money would move, but the carbon emissions wouldn’t [change].

But I know what the pressure is in my country. Do you know about the Mennonites? They would like us to give them the land so they can cut it down and start some agriculture. Others want the Bakhuis mountains to go and mine bauxite for the next 100 years. Now I’ve also heard that there’s lithium, I don’t know. I have to research that first. But we know that there are also diamonds. This is the reason why I’m urging people to find a good solution, because when people come to mine gold or whatever, they just come and say, “OK, what is it I have to pay you for the license and so on.” I tell them, there’s this much in profit and that much in taxes, and then they go and mine and give us the money. But with carbon credits, it’s a lot more complicated.

Mongabay: In the past, some Indigenous communities have been unhappy with proposed carbon credit programs. They’re also negotiating for their land rights and the royalties that might come with carbon credit programs and mining. The government is in the middle of negotiating the boundaries of their ancestral territory, but the leader of one community, who wished to remain unnamed, told Mongabay that there could be violence if certain demands aren’t met by January.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: You’re talking about a specific community. They have had some problems with a government mining company because they wanted to mine [themselves]. And [in the past] there was a kind of agreement that took a long time so they were removed [from the area], etc. I had them here a few days ago and that’s when we negotiated. I said we’ll make sure that we have some solutions within a few months, and that’s what we’re doing for them. But their land, their village, is in a place where there’s a gold mining camp, and that’s a problem, so we will work with them. That’s what we told them, to make sure that there are some other jobs in the village for women and others and that the people who want to mine the gold get a specific spot to mine.

Mongabay: They really made it sound like this could become a national problem, with young members of several communities organizing themselves. Are you really not concerned at all about backlash?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: It’s a localized issue. Many of the people are living just in their areas … I personally had not seen the demarcation [for that community]. I received it a few days ago. I have a specific group of advisers here now who formally advise me, also Indigenous people, tribal peoples, lawyers and so on. We’re working on this land rights issue because I really would like to resolve it in this term. I think that it will assist us in our development if we have clarity. But with this type of issue, you might have people who I spoke to in the past — some people would like to draw a line and say, “This is ours,” and that’s, of course, not possible. We can’t turn back the clock. So we have to negotiate. We will start things off on where we can agree, and then move forward. That’s what I want to do. And then also recognize their chiefs and so on. We also recognize them culturally, but now it would be a little more legal. We’re working on it. Because if they have a piece of the forest, they can also earn money.

Mongabay: As you’ve mentioned, Suriname has a gold mining issue. Legal and illegal operations use mercury and cyanide, Mongabay has found. Some mining groups use armed violence against the local population. There’s also a lack of transparency surrounding who owns and operates the mines. It’s an extremely complex, systemic problem.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: Let me start by saying that even if we have gold mining and all the problems with it — we still have 93% forest coverage. This is the first thing I want to say. And then this whole gold mining issue has a history and it’s complicated. Because, for example, most of the tribal people are illegal or partially illegal miners, and sometimes give other people the right to mine in their village and to get money. So it’s also the people themselves who accommodate [the mining problem]. And then we have Brazilian people who are coming with the big guns and sometimes wreak havoc on the whole interior where people are mining gold. [People] have asked us to make sure that we improve security for them. I think that this is a path we have tried before, but it’s complicated. And as you well know, we have an economically difficult situation at the moment. So in order to bring some security to the Surinamese miners — be they legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter — if you want to bring some security to these mining areas, you would have to invest in your army and some specific parts of the police, so some money would be necessary to do that.

We have some tribal people who don’t mine, mostly Indigenous people and also the people of the Upper Suriname River. Their river also has gold but they don’t mine. They do tourism. It’s a choice.

Mongabay: Do you think you need to provide these communities with an economic alternative to mining?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: Yes, some of them. Of course, some will mine. But it’s also possible that they can earn good money in other ways. And at the moment, it would be very difficult because the price of gold is very high.

What we’re doing right now is looking at the people of the Upper Suriname River. If there is some money to be made from mining, we need to also channel that to the people who don’t mine, so that they keep doing their tourism business. We expect that tourism will flourish when the oil boom comes. There will be people who will want to go to the Upper Suriname River region. We’re also looking forward to some seed money we’ve received. [Communities] have pledged to do the training and make sure that if they get more tourism, their river stays clean, that they can get more money out of tourism and they can keep doing what they do and they don’t mine.

As I said, this is not an easy issue. But even though there is mining, we still have the 93% [forest coverage] and we want to keep the 90% standing.

Mongabay: Much of the gold is purchased by gold shops here in the city. Mongabay found that the shops exclusively buy raw gold and don’t verify whether it was legally sourced. One of the shops’ main clients is the government. Doesn’t that mean the state is profiting from the same illegal activity it purports to be fighting?

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: No, we have about 39 gold exporters, people with licenses to export gold, and they export the gold they buy.

Mongabay: But the government is a buyer as well.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: The government gets some of the money … The government has to do it because we have to pay soldiers and police and people. If we want to regulate the whole gold mining sector, if we want to improve it, we need money from gold. And if we want to make sure that the other people who don’t mine keep doing what they’re doing, they also need some services … We won’t like it if you smuggle [the gold] to another country. You have to sell it in the right way even though it’s illegal.

For example, the Indigenous people you talked about, their mining is illegal. But we don’t view it as “illegal” because they live there. It’s their environment. The gold is being mined in the area where they live. We as a government, we didn’t give them a license, but we actually made the agreement that, “OK, in this licensed area for [a mining] company, you’ll also get a part to mine.” We’d like to have these safe zones. We planned them a long time ago, even to make sure that the miners can sell their gold directly to the government so that we can start showing them better ways to mine — friendlier, more sustainable ways to do the mining without mercury and so on. But if we don’t have a military and police to make sure that it’s safe, we won’t be able to do so. This is the complicated situation that we have. We’ll be working on it, and we will not solve it tomorrow, but we’re working on legislation.

When we have some more money coming from oil, we want to improve the gold mining that’s being done. We want to make sure that it’s more sustainable, less damaging, and make sure that there’s security and safety in these areas.

Mongabay: It sounds like oil drilling is going to open up a lot of opportunities for the country moving forward. Also that conserving the rainforest involves some economic activity that you view as a means to an end.

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons: We will have some money from the oil to invest in more security and safety for the miners and other types of gold mining, which are actually less damaging. But we’ll keep mining gold. We have no choice. What we don’t want is to expand it — because I’m telling you, this whole country, this whole forest everywhere — there’s gold everywhere. In some parts there’s a lot, in some parts less, but there’s gold everywhere, and that’s why I’m pleading in this way to the world. This forest will not be standing here if we don’t actually work to keep it standing.

Banner image: Suriname President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons. Image courtesy of Facebook. 

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