Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
At the U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP30, in Brazil, Suriname is taking a large step into the spotlight, reports Mongabay’s Max Radwin. With about 93% forest cover and a status as one of only three nations to boast net-negative carbon emissions, the country is punching above its weight. Less usual is its insistence that countries that keep their forests intact should be paid.
President Jennifer Geerlings‑Simons, in office since July, is driving that message. She argues that the frameworks set by the Paris Agreement and the Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes exist in principle, but not in practice.
“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,” she told Radwin in Suriname.
Her point has two threads. The first is the tension between conservation and development. Suriname has committed to preserving some 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 square miles) of rainforest by creating protected areas and recognizing Indigenous and Maroon territories. And yet the country also intends to press ahead with offshore oil projects. She frames the revenue from those projects as the means to pay for stronger oversight of gold and bauxite mining, and to fund tourism and infrastructure. She said the forest isn’t idle land — it stands on “many riches like gold, diamonds, bauxite and more. If we want to keep it standing, we’ll have to make an effort.”
The second thread is the mechanics of carbon finance. Suriname belongs to groups of high-forest/low-deforestation nations and has been arguing for fairer access to carbon markets. But bureaucracy, and what Geerlings‑Simons calls foot-dragging by richer emitters, are slowing the flow of funds.
“People who put carbon into the atmosphere don’t want to pay up. They find all kinds of evasions to try not to pay,” she said.
The scenario she portrays is familiar: the crisis-averse small country that is already doing the right thing being asked to wait for its reward.
Suriname’s claim to a moral and material stake in the global fight is bold: it is not only conserving forest, but demanding that conservation be treated as a commodity. Yet there are risk lines. One arises from the relationship with Indigenous and Maroon communities, some of whom have already erupted into protest over mining and land-rights disputes.
Geerlings‑Simons acknowledges the complexity: “It isn’t easy … We will have to work at it.” The other is the question of whether oil revenues and mining oversight will truly yield the conservation dividend she promises, or instead dilute the message of forest protection.
Suriname is arguing that forest protectors deserve more than recognition: they deserve compensation, clarity and contracts. Whether others will listen, and act, remains an open question.
Read the full interview with Jennifer Geerlings-Simons by Max Radwin here.
Banner image: The Suriname River. Image by NullAspect via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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