Biodiversity finance needs its own case

Dear Editor,

The Kaieteur News’ Peeping Tom column of October 26, 2026, titled “Questions for the Global Biodiversity Alliance”, raises an important and legitimate question about environmental financing, particularly the need to demonstrate additional value when seeking payments for biodiversity conservation alongside existing carbon credits.

This is a useful contribution to the discussion, and the concerns regarding additionality deserve serious consideration.

However, there are three important distinctions that should inform this debate.

First, forest carbon credits represent only one level of monetising the environmental services provided by Guyana’s natural assets.

Carbon markets recognise the climate-regulation value of our forests, but they do not capture the full ecological and economic value of the biodiversity, freshwater systems, habitats and other ecosystem services those forests support.

Guyana’s approximately 18.5 million hectares of forest cover about 85 per cent of the country, underscoring the scale of these services.

Guyana has so far sold only approximately 30 per cent of its available carbon credits. Even within the existing carbon market, therefore, the country has not fully monetised the climate services its forests provide. It would be premature to suggest that Guyana’s forests are already being comprehensively compensated for their environmental contributions.

Second, the Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) seeks to move this conversation to an entirely different level. Biodiversity conservation is not simply a by-product of keeping forests standing, it requires deliberate, sustained and often costly interventions to protect species, preserve habitats, maintain ecosystem health and address threats that carbon accounting alone does not capture.

These forests support more than 1,200 bird species, approximately 225 mammal species and some 8,000 plant species, illustrating the ecological value that cannot be reduced to tonnes of carbon.

A forest can remain standing and continue storing carbon while simultaneously losing biodiversity through wildlife trafficking, illegal hunting, invasive species, habitat degradation and other pressures.

Protecting carbon stocks and protecting biodiversity are therefore related, but fundamentally different, conservation responsibilities.

Third, protecting biodiversity requires significantly greater investment in people, systems and activities.

Effective biodiversity conservation demands more trained personnel, including rangers, scientists, ecologists and monitoring specialists. It requires expanded research, species inventories, habitat assessments, enforcement, community engagement, technology and long-term ecological monitoring.

Guyana already has approximately 1.8 million hectares under protected-area status, while a plan is being advanced to 30% of areas under conservation by 2030. Expanding effective protection requires sustained financing for management, monitoring and community participation.

These activities entail real and recurring costs that are not necessarily covered by carbon-credit revenues. Biodiversity financing can provide the additional resources needed to undertake this work and deliver measurable conservation outcomes.

The column rightly asks what additional benefit biodiversity financing would purchase. Guyana’s carbon-credit programme has generated approximately US$353 million over three years, with 20 per cent of gross revenues allocated to Amerindian villages.

This illustrates the potential of environmental finance, but it does not establish that the distinct costs of biodiversity protection have been met.

The answer lies precisely in the additional conservation effort, scientific capacity, institutional strengthening and measurable ecological outcomes that such financing can support.

That means clearly defining the conservation activities financed, establishing baselines, tracking measurable biodiversity results and ensuring that the same outcome is not claimed twice. Of course, appropriate safeguards must ensure credible measurement and the avoidance of double counting.

But we must also avoid confusing the existence of multiple environmental services within the same forest with the duplication of payments for the same service.

The Global Biodiversity Alliance offers an opportunity to advance the global conversation beyond paying countries simply to maintain forest carbon stocks, towards recognising and financing the much broader responsibility of safeguarding the planet’s biodiversity.

For Guyana and other biodiversity-rich developing countries, this distinction is particularly important. The world cannot continue to demand increasingly sophisticated conservation outcomes without providing the financial resources necessary to achieve them.

The objective is not, as the column cautions, to “multiply the invoices.” It is to recognise that protecting a forest’s carbon is not the same as protecting the full richness of life within it — and that the latter requires additional work, additional capacity and additional financing.