"We don't want to develop like Europe" says Suriname's architect minister

Suriname's Marciano Dasai is possibly the only government minister in the world who's also an architect. In this exclusive interview, he discusses the challenges facing the tiny rainforest nation.

Dasai has been Suriname's minister of spatial planning and environment since last year, having previously spent 20 years practising and teaching architecture.

"I was never into politics," he told Dezeen. "I never joined a political party."

"We're in the beginning stage of everything to do with buildings"

That changed in 2023, when the country's coalition government invited Dasai to take on the brief following the previous incumbent's resignation midway through the current parliamentary term.

"They were looking for a candidate, and I think they asked me because of my background," said Dasai.

"One thing that attracted me to take this role is that Suriname is a developing country – we're in the beginning stage of everything that has to do with buildings, with infrastructure."

"So knowing what problems there are in my sector and getting this opportunity to work on these issues, I said, 'okay let me take the challenge, even though it's a political function'."

The challenge he refers to is considerable. Suriname is South America's smallest sovereign state, with a population of around 630,000.

A former Dutch colony, its development has been stunted by several bouts of political turmoil since it gained independence in 1975.

Despite its modest population size, it is also at the epicentre of many climate-related issues.

The Amazon rainforest covers 93 per cent of its land, making it the world's most forested country and one of only three carbon-negative nations, along with Bhutan and Panama.

But with the vast majority of its people living in low-lying coastal areas, Suriname is described by the United Nations Development Programme as "highly vulnerable to climate change".

Meanwhile, following the recent discovery of an estimated 2.4 billion barrels of oil off its shores and another 350 billion cubic metres of gas, it has plans to start drilling in 2028.

"We don't want to develop like Europe," said Dasai. "Europe has destroyed everything and has become rich. We don't want that scenario where you become rich but you have to destroy your environment."

"But the big challenge now is that because we're a young country and we still have to develop economically, we have to find a balance between conserving what we have and developing."

"Our best resource is the forest – not the oil"

According to Dasai, Suriname intends to remain carbon-negative, despite its plans to exploit its oil and gas reserves.

"We are one of the three carbon-negative countries in the world and we'd like to keep it that way, because I think that our best resource is the forest – not the oil or gold that we have underneath it," he said.

But to do that, it wants help from wealthier countries in the form of carbon credits.

Since governments finally agreed a set of rules for carbon-credit trading at COP26 in 2021, Suriname has moved quickly, hitting the carbon-credit trading market in July.

Essentially, it is looking for governments in other parts of the world to pay it to maintain its rainforest. Implicit within that is a challenge to wealthier nations.

"We – the Amazon countries – have been absorbing all the CO2 that the world emits, especially the rich countries, for many years," said Dasai. "And we have been doing that for free."

"And now we're in a phase where we have to reduce emissions, but we are not developed yet, and we have these opportunities," he added.

The more money Suriname can raise through carbon credits, Dasai argues, the less it will need to use its fossil-fuel resources to fund its infrastructure needs.

"We say: look, if you can help us in the way that we prefer – by paying for the carbon credits – then we won't have the tendency to use our natural resources, which will give high emissions," he said.

Carbon credits will also incentivise ordinary Surinamese to prioritise protecting the rainforest, he adds.

"We have people that don't have any possibilities," he said. "They want to develop, they want to eat, so what are they doing? They're going underground looking for gold, or into the oil sector."

"And if we say, 'no, protect the forest', they say, 'okay, what are you giving me for that?' So that is the context here in Suriname."

"I have to have a whiteboard with me"

Making these kinds of arguments has been a new challenge for Dasai since he entered politics.

"The technical side is no problem," he said. "You can have the biggest issues to solve, but it's doable, I have the background."

"The political side is new for me. It's a bit difficult, but I'm learning."

Despite meeting peers from many nations since becoming a minister, he says he has yet to meet another architect.

Dasai has brought his experience, which includes founding architecture firm Sadewa Design and Engineering in 2017 and spending more than a decade teaching architecture and building technology at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname, with him into his government role.

"I have to have a whiteboard with me," he said. "If I look at my other colleagues, they always use words in their slides, but I use graphics, drawings, illustrations."

"So my design background helps me to illustrate the problem to my people," he added. "It's a big help if you can look at it in a scientific way, and then try to solve it politically."

The next major political hurdle for Dasai will be the introduction of his amended Spatial Planning Act to Suriname's parliament.

It seeks to add structural plans and zoning plans to the current legislation, which dates back to 1970 and has never been updated.

This is "very basic stuff", says Dasai, but crucial to Suriname's future development.

"If you don't have certain things in place you cannot go further, so my high priority is the updated Spatial Planning Act," he said.

"If we have that we can make further steps. If you don't have that in place, it makes it difficult for architects to develop new projects in the proper way."

"The focus is building with nature"

"We have done all the work and now all these concept acts have to go to the parliament – and that's a big challenge now, because we have to defend it, and we have to talk about it in a political way."

Combined, the planning act and the carbon credits form major planks of Dasai's Green Development Strategy for Suriname, targeting sustainable land use.

On top of the agenda is improving Suriname's flood-prevention infrastructure.

"The focus is building with nature," explained Dasai. "So all these concrete dams are not a priority at the moment, for instance."

"We are looking at projects where we rehabilitate our mangrove sites, and we will try to have a mixture of green and grey."

Suriname's most notable existing architecture is the 17th- and 18th-century Dutch colonial buildings in its capital, Paramaribo, where the historic inner city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Moving forward, Dasai is eager to encourage architecture that suits Suriname's tropical climate while avoiding heavily CO2-emitting concrete.

"What we from the ministry are promoting is tropical architecture, where you make use of natural ventilation," he said.

"For the construction, we prefer wood," he added. "We have a lot of wood, and it's being exported."

"We want to try to change that. We don't want to export the roundwood – we can use it for our own market, or export already-made wooden products to other countries."

However, with a general election due in 2025, Dasai may not have long to deliver on his ambitions.

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