One small South American country is making some giant steps for conservation.

At a recent Amazon summit, Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali announced that his country would double its protected areas within the next 18 months, local news reported .

Some 85 percent of Guyana is covered in forest, the second-highest percentage of forest cover of any country — with deforestation rates among the lowest in the world. In short, Guyana is a climate champion, storing nearly 20 billion tons of climate-warming carbon, according to government figures (the world emits about 50 billion tons of carbon a year).

At the same time, with the 2015 discovery and subsequent extraction of oil off its coast, Guyana is now the world’s fastest-growing economy .…