Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit: “We need to have fair pricing for carbon” fmr Colombian President demands

…COP30 President says strengthening of carbon market is high on the agenda

With carbon credits fast becoming an option for countries and major companies around the world to offset their high emissions, former Colombian President Iván Duque has sounded calls for the right price to be placed on carbon credits.
“We have seen many advancements on carbon credit markets despite the critics that the market has faced in the last few years, but we need to have fair pricing,” Duque declared during a presentation on Day Two of the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit 2025 being held in Georgetown.
According to the former Head of State, accurately pricing carbon is important to help incentivise biodiversity protection and climate action. He pointed out that the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region is already facing the challenge of finding adequate funding to trigger the level of climate action that is required.
Duque ruled out that this funding will come from philanthropy, bilateral allocation, and national budgetary resources. To this end, he posited that the mobilisation of resources to achieve climate action will have to come through the market-driven, nature-based, or climate-based solutions like carbon credits.
“We have seen many advancements on carbon credit markets, even despite the critics that the market has faced in the last few years. But we need to have fair pricing; we need to improve on the accounting. We need to provide all the transparency, and we need to allow those regions in the world that already have a voluntary carbon market to be able to compensate through projects in the Global South so that resources are very well allocated,” the former Colombian leader stated.

Duque believes that the carbon credit market is the only way, at least in the short term, to mobilise the resources that are badly needed in the Global South. Without these market solutions, the former Head of State says there will continue to be great promises and pledges, but not enough results.
In fact, he is hoping that this agenda to strengthen and accelerate practical, smart, and financial solutions like the carbon credit markets will be advanced at the upcoming 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), which will be held in November this year in neighbouring Brazil.
“I don’t want to see either a whining situation from the Global South or a patronising situation from the Global North. And that involves the Global North needing to do something fast to provide the right pricing for carbon in the Global South. And it also has to do with the need that voluntary carbon credit markets in the Global North have to allow big companies from the Global North to provide resources to the Global South via compensation in projects,” Duque posited.

Bemoaned significant loss
The former Colombian President also bemoaned the significant loss of the Amazon Rainforest over the last four decades and stressed the importance of ending deforestation – a sentiment that was shared by President of COP30, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago.
He pointed out that ending deforestation and stimulating restoration of forests within the Amazon basin is highly important – the latter, especially, to the carbon credit market.
“I completely agree that we need to have the most dynamic and efficient carbon market possible because the credits from carbon, from forest restoration, are, by definition, much better credits than any other credits because they are the only ones that capture CO2 that has already been emitted.
“I think that it is our obligation as forest countries to prove that we can have extremely serious and verifiable credits from forest restoration. And so, I believe that there is a really impressive opportunity at COP30 for us to show how we can strengthen the idea of a carbon market [and] of forest restoration,” Ambassador Lago stated.
When it comes to avoiding deforestation, the COP30 President pointed to financial mechanisms created under the Climate Change Convention – the REDD+, which awards countries financially for maintaining their forests.
Ambassador Lago further outlined plans by Brazil to launch the Tropical Forest for Forever Facility (TFFF) at COP30 – a novel investment fund that aims to protect tropical forests by paying countries for keeping their forests intact.
“I believe that this is going to be an extremely positive evolution because you’re going to have the TFFF for conservation, you will have to strengthen REDD+ to avoid deforestation, and we have to have a very strong carbon market for restoration of forests. So, we have three distinct activities in forests that have to receive the financial resources to go ahead,” the COP30 President stated.

Financial instruments
To this end, Ambassador Lago indicated that there is a group of global economists that is currently working on a variety of financial instruments that can be presented at COP30 aimed at bringing innovative solutions for developing countries to receive the resources critically needed for climate action.
“This is a very difficult moment for international financing for the developing countries, because the risk that is perceived in our countries is much higher than the reality. We don’t have fiscal space, and if we think we can depend on official resources from developed countries, unfortunately, it’s going to be infinitely lower than what is necessary. So, we definitely need new ideas,” the COP30 President stated.
Since launching the world’s first Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) in 2009, Guyana has received significant results-based payments for forest climate services, including through a formative partnership with Norway that was followed by the world’s first issuance of jurisdictional REDD+ carbon credits under the ART-TREES standard, which have been sold to companies such as Apple, Hess Corporation, and 16 global airlines.