• Bahamas must ‘go down the correct path’ 

• Cabinet minister in Gabon to learn lessons

• Mitchell touts ‘hundreds of millions” benefit

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A senior Bahamas National Trust (BNT) executive yesterday said this nation must likely invest $50m to enter “what could be the very lucrative international financing mechanism” of carbon credits.

Eric Carey, the Trust’s executive director, told Tribune Business he believes this nation has “significant bankable carbons” through its abundant mangroves and wetlands that can be monetised into major revenue streams for The Bahamas just when it is seeking to escape a fiscal crisis that was significantly worsened by COVID-19 and Hurricane Dorian.

However, he warned that The Bahamas must “make sure we are going down the right path” by “investing a lot of time and effort” in “a very intense” two-year process to establish the necessary framework for accurately valuing the nation’s carbon credit potential, then have this verified and internationally certified so trading can occur. The BNT chief said the $50m investment required for this was “the number an expert shared with me last week”.

Mr Carey spoke out after it was revealed that Alfred Sears, minister of works and utilities, is currently in Gabon, west Africa, to gain an understanding of how The Bahamas can follow that nation’s lead in developing a system that can fulfill its carbon credit potential.

Mr Sears’ west African mission was disclosed by Fred Mitchell, minister of foreign affairs and the public service, and Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) chairman, in an early morning voice note yesterday to the party’s supporters. He suggested that, if The Bahamas is successful, it could generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in income for this nation.

“The environmental international policies these days now have something called carbon credits,” Mr Mitchell said. “Right now, for example, the minister of works, Alfred Sears, is in Gabon, meeting with the Government there, that’s in west Africa, on how The Bahamas can enter the carbon credit market, which has the potential to monetise hundreds of millions of dollars for The Bahamas.”

Mr Sears could not be reached for comment, but Gabon was the first African country to receive results-based payments for curbing deforestation of its rainforests under the Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi). It last year received $17m from Norway through Cafi because of reduced emissions from forest loss in 2016 and 2017, which were lower than the 2006-2015 targets.

The payment is part of a 2019 agreement between Gabon and Cafi that could see the former receive up to $150m for reducing emissions from deforestation and land degradation over ten years. The scheme is designed to eventually allow Gabon to sell its emissions reductions as carbon credits on the open market.

The Davis administration is likely assessing whether The Bahamas can accrue similar financial benefits from restoring, or protecting, its mangroves, wetlands, sea grass and coral reefs, which are all regarded as great sequesters of carbon, capturing and storing it in their roots and soil.

Mr Carey, meanwhile, said the BNT was working with several organisations to determine which national parks and other areas it manages can “play a role in the national carbon credit potential”. He confirmed the Trust has held talks with Marvivo, a company involved in projects to eradicate deforestation and promote wildlife conservation in Mexico’s Magdalena Bay and Baja Peninsula, plus Indonesia.

Ex-MP and Cabinet minister, Earl Deveaux, is Marvivo’s Bahamas representative. He declined to comment when contacted by Tribune Business yesterday, but Mr Carey said the BNT was assessing how it can work with Marvivo to “determine tradable blue carbon assets” especially in the 1.5m acre West Side national park west of Andros.

“We believe The Bahamas has significant bankable carbons,” the BNT executive director told this newspaper. “It is our view that it needs to be carefully assessed, and we need to make sure we are going down the right path. Yes, I am convinced there is significant value.”

Carbon credits were originally devised as a means to incentivise companies, and countries, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive the global warming thought to be behind the more frequent, and intense, hurricanes that have devastated many islands in The Bahamas over the past two decades.

Negotiators at the Glasgow COP26 climate change summit in November 2021, which was attended by Prime Minister Philip Davis and a Bahamian delegation, evolved this further by agreeing to create a global carbon credit offset market that would encourage countries to work towards their climate change targets by buying credits representing emissions reductions by other states.

Mr Carey said he was aware that different institutions and exchanges employ various means to value carbon credits, while individual countries can also develop their own verification models. While The Bahamas had the possibility to gain credits for restoring or regenerating mangroves, wetlands and seagrass, he added that it was “more difficult to sell carbons” relating to areas that are already protected or not under threat.

“You have to quantify it,” Mr Carey said of The Bahamas’ carbon credit potential. “It’s a very stringent process. The BNT is working with a couple of organisations to clarify and determine what areas managed by the BNT can play a role in national carbon credit potential.

“It’s an intense process, and we may have to invest up to $50m to get the inventory, the verification and international certification. That can take a couple of years. Over that period you have to invest a lot of time and effort so you can have your data verified by international experts, and when you are ready to trade carbons it’s an international commodity based on type and value which is bankable and tradable.”

Mr Carey said countries have the ability to either conduct one-off carbon credit transactions with other nations or companies, or have them traded on an exchange. “All of this has to be worked out,” he added. “What is the best method or framework that could work for us?”

The Trust chief said he understood the Government has formed a committee to examine The Bahamas’ carbon credit potential that includes four-five Cabinet ministers, three permanent secretaries and other technical officials. Among its members, he suggested, are Senator Ryan Pinder, the attorney general; Senator Michael Halkitis, minister of economic affairs; and Simon Wilson, the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary.

“We have had discussions with any number of international players in the carbon space,” Mr Carey told Tribune Business of the BNT, “and we’ve had some discussions with a company called Marvivo. Marvivo is a company that’s done carbon credit analysis, certification and testing in places like Indonesia and Mexico.

“We have had meetings with them, they’ve made representations to the Government, and we’re exploring ways of working with that company to determine potential tradable blue carbon assets. The west side of Andros is a significant area of intact mangrove systems. We have the ability to enhance management systems by investing in staff and resources, and bring it to an area that’s under threat from alternative use, and become bankable carbons.”

Mr Carey said The Bahamas would have to preserve and protect ecosystem habitats that earned it carbon credits as part of the transaction. And he said this nation would have a framework whereby it can assess, and compare, the value of restoring such areas as opposed to using them for other types of economic development, thus ensuring The Bahamas gets the best return on its land, ocean and other assets.