Projects

Granman Jimmy Toeroemang founded the Tewe Foundation in 2022 to coordinate projects in the south of Suriname for the wellbeing of his peoples. The office opened in April 2025.

It is now in regular use for meetings and training sessions — the kind of everyday institutional capacity that is hard to fund and harder to do without.

The Trio tribe decided to put forward part of the funds available to them, under the programme for enhancing self-governance of the Trio tribe, to a socio-economic project in the village of Kwamalasamutu. They built a community-owned guesthouse to accommodate paying guests to the village.

The Environmental Framework Law (2020) opened up new opportunities to attract and manage environmental financing. Together with the Ministry of Spatial Planning & Environment and the National Institute for Environment and Development (NIMOS), Green Growth Suriname assessed the country’s current environmental finance experience and its untapped opportunities.

The programme introduced more than 40 selected policymakers to modern environmental financing concepts and trends. Sessions ran online because of COVID-19; the recordings are the only record of them. The assessments and training fed into a roadmap for environmental financing that government can use in designing its climate financing strategy.

The campaign runs on billboards and posters around Paramaribo, in video and radio commercials, across social media, and through highly visible branding partnerships — including the tail livery of Surinam Airways aircraft, branding at J.A. Pengel International Airport, the Sabiso TV quiz show, and a mural with the Paramaribo Live Museum.

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In 2020 a project started to advance forest conservation through a community-owned Brazil-nut enterprise in Alalapadu. The facility was already in production thanks to a partnership between the Alalapadu community and Conservation International Suriname.

Green Growth Suriname supported the community foundation and Conservation International Suriname, in a one-year project, to diversify the product range by researching, designing and setting up a roasted nut line — an extension of the existing Tuhka brand, which already had an oil product.

At the same time the community is trained and supported in conservation monitoring of the 235,000 hectares it pledged to help conserve under a conservation agreement with Conservation International Suriname.

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Research — near-real-time satellite monitoring with the technology of Satelligence. The database shows bi-weekly alerts of changes in forest coverage across the production area of Suriname’s forest, a quarter of the land area, shared publicly via Busi Taki.

Engagement — citizen science through two mobile apps developed with Spotteron. Green Growth Forests lets anyone photograph and record signs of deforestation or logging; it was released in August 2020 and extended to Guyana in January 2021. Green Growth Wildlife is the first citizen science app published in an Indigenous language.

Awareness — a weekly episode by nature enthusiast and journalist Christio Wijnhard puts the findings in front of the public, drawing on both the apps and the satellite data.

Triangulating the three opens up the governance of the forestry sector, with more and readily available information about activity in the forest. All data is shared with researchers and government institutes.

Busi Taki ↗Satelligence ↗

A fee structure for Environmental Impact Assessments, now compulsory under the Environmental Framework Law (2020).

An assessment of historic multilateral and bilateral funding for Suriname’s conservation agenda, and of new funds the country can tap into.

An environmental taxing structure based on the Environmental Framework Law’s condition that the polluter pays.

A realignment of the draft Nature Conservation Act with the Environmental Framework Law. The text is under review by government.

An assessment of the protected areas network and the opportunity to introduce IUCN Categories for Protected Areas into legislation.

An assessment of environment funds and a design proposal for the Suriname Environment Fund, introduced as a consequence of the Environmental Framework Law (2020).

Since the start of the foundation, part of its funds have gone to Green Growth Champions — among them the Organisation of Indigenous Suriname (OIS), the oldest organisation for Indigenous peoples in the country; the Trio tribe in the south; and Trijana, the consolidated foundation of the Wayana and Trio tribes, who populate the nine villages of South Suriname.

The organisation also selected young nationals for an internal programme with a lecture series from professionals in the environment sector. After that initial online programme the champions became FOREST93 Ambassadors, who are featured on the campaign site.

FOREST93 Ambassadors ↗