President Nayib Bukele has made his position on carbon credits unmistakably clear. In a recent post on social media, he responded to a video showing an autonomous robot that kills pests with UV light – no chemicals, no pesticides.
But instead of stopping at the technology, Bukele turned the conversation toward a much larger issue: the global carbon credit market and its impact on developing nations like El Salvador.
The core argument
Bukele began by stating directly:
“They want to buy our air through carbon credits. If carbon credits were such a great deal, they would be selling them to us, not the other way around.”
This statement cuts to the heart of his criticism. For Bukele, carbon credits are not a genuine solution for environmental protection. Instead, they represent an unequal exchange where developed countries pay to continue polluting, while nations like El Salvador sell their environmental potential at low prices, perpetuating a cycle of dependency.
The real cost of clean water
To show why carbon credits are insufficient, Bukele put a concrete number on the table:
“Cleaning every river, lake, and water source in El Salvador, and ensuring they remain clean and sparkling, would cost roughly $12 billion. Where is that money supposed to come from without economic development? Carbon credits?”
The question is rhetorical. For Bukele, the answer is obvious: carbon credit revenue could never cover such a massive investment. The only realistic path is economic development that generates enough wealth to fund large-scale environmental restoration.
Development as the solution
Bukele then broadened his argument to a global perspective:
“The key to saving the environment is not looking backward, it’s moving forward.”
He cited personal experience: visiting Italy twenty years ago, where rivers sparkled and everything was clean and green. For him, the lesson was clear – the answer is not underdevelopment, but progress.
He also referenced China:
“When China was poor, the air was so polluted that people could barely see the blue sky. Today, blue skies have returned to their cities. Development does not only create wealth, it also provides the resources needed to restore and protect the environment.”
A critique of certain environmentalism
Bukele did not hold back in criticizing what he sees as misguided environmentalism:
“Some environmentalists want us to preserve every aspect of our biodiversity, including the mosquitoes for example, so that researchers can fly in once every ten years from their universities (which build particle accelerators and billion-dollar laboratories with their pocket money), study our ecosystems, and count how many people died from dengue outbreaks.”
His point: environmental policies that ignore human suffering – such as deaths from dengue – are hypocritical and detached from the realities of developing countries.
The path forward
Bukele concluded with a clear vision for El Salvador:
“The answer is not underdevelopment. The answer is progress.”
“The path forward for our country is the path of Japan and Singapore, not the path of the Congo.”
In other words, El Salvador will not choose stagnation in the name of conservation. It will pursue technological innovation, economic growth, and industrial development – just as Japan and Singapore did – to generate the resources needed to protect its environment.
Conclusion
President Bukele’s message is firm: El Salvador will not sell its air to the highest bidder through carbon credits. Instead, the country will build its own future through development, innovation, and real progress. The robot that kills pests without chemicals is just one example of where El Salvador is heading – forward.
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