8th December 2008
GenderCC, a global network of women and gender activists, is demanding that a comprehensive gender assessment is carried out of the potential impacts of different REDD policies on women “before the negotiations on this issue are continued within the framework of the FCCC”. They note that “The REDD discussions are already triggering elite resource appropriation,” as governments, corporations and large international conservation agencies take over large tracks of land to profit from REDD. GenderCC also opposes the potential inclusion of plantations in REDD schemes.
read more »
8th December 2008
The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, a group of civil society and Indigenous Peoples organisations, has released the following statement. The statement sets out 10 principles and an approach to financing that Accra Caucus considers to be crucial for the REDD negotiations and subsequent agreements.
The statement is available in French here, and in Spanish here.
read more »
6th December 2008
A new report from the NGO FERN provides a very helpful summary of some of the main proposals that have been offered, mostly by governments, for how REDD should work. The proposed schemes covered in the report include those from the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, Tuvalu, Brazil, COMIFAC, India, the Latin America Nested Approach, the European Union, New Zealand and Norway.
read more »
5th December 2008
At a side event in Poznan yesterday (4 December 2008), the World Bank, the Norwegian government and various UN agencies presented their plans for REDD. In response to a comment about the World Bank’s record in the forests and the new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility the Bank’s Benoit Bosquet said, “I expect that we will make mistakes.” Not a very promising sign for forest dwelling people or the forests in the tropics.
read more »
5th December 2008
The EU outlined its plans for carbon markets in relation to forests at a press conference today (5 December 2008) in Poznan. The EU aims “to halve the total forested area loss in the tropics by 2020, and to halt the global forest cover loss completely by 2030 at the latest” and estimates that this will cost somewhere between €15 and €25 billion a year. A “global forest carbon mechanism” is to be established to fund this, followed by “a pilot scheme to test the inclusion of forest credits in carbon markets, which could be used by governments to achieve their compliance.”
read more »
5th December 2008
One of the key issues related to REDD is that of risk. All trade carries an element of risk, but there is general agreement that the risks associated with forest carbon trading might be substantial, and possibly unresolvable, at least in the short term. Some risks are well known – not the least that forests that are supported by carbon market financing might catch fire, blow down or suffer other catastrophic loss. However, some of the greatest risks relate to the ability (or inability) of tropical country governments to effectively manage large new flows of carbon financing, and to provide the needed stability, governance and ‘enabling environment’ for complex carbon trading regimes to work over necessarily long periods of time.
REDD-Monitor has now compiled the ratings and rankings from 10 well-known indices of broad governance performance for the 21 countries with the largest areas of rainforest, which between them contain well over 95% of all tropical rainforests. We show the resulting ‘rainforest risk register’ in full below.
read more »
5th December 2008
A press statement issued today by the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) is criticial of the way negotiations on REDD are progressing in Poznan. “The issue of REDD remains problematic for Indigenous Peoples,” IIPFCC states. Many of the Indigenous Peoples’ delegates in Poznan “reject outright market-based mechanisms as ways to resolve the climate change problem”. IIPFCC is concerned that the REDD negotiations are not taking place in the framework of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They therefore call for the suspension of REDD projects, until the rights of Indigenous Peoples are guaranteed
read more »
5th December 2008
Yesterday, 4 December 2008, the EU held a press conference, during which Reuters asked the question: “Will forest offsets be used within EU ETS? And what is EU’s view on avoided deforestation?” Here are the responses from Brice Lalonde from the French delegation and Jurgen Lefevre from the European Commission.
read more »
4th December 2008
International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) was by far the biggest “NGO” at last year’s climate conference in Bali. In Poznan, IETA has hired a building inside the International Trade Fair where the climate conference is taking place. With sponsorship to be in Poznan from BP, Shell, Enel, AES, Chevron, TÜV SÜD, SGS and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, IETA is no ordinary NGO. It is, in its own words, dedicated to “the establishment of effective market-based trading systems for greenhouse gas emissions by businesses”. On day three in Poznan, REDD-Monitor visited IETA’s side event on “REDD in the voluntary markets: Lessons Learned”. Needless to say, IETA is in favour of trading carbon from forests.
read more »
3rd December 2008
In the short report below, we provide some insights from the Forest Peoples Programme into the much-heralded ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ initiative which has been set up by a company called Canopy Capital, in the rainforests of Guyana. The project at Iwokrama has been lauded as ‘an historic deal’, and has gained much international attention, not the least through the support shown for this kind of venture by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles. However, doubts about the scheme have been growing, and it may not be quite the ‘model’ it appears.
read more »
3rd December 2008
One of the many unresolved issues concerning REDD is how will it be monitored? As Global Witness, one of the pioneers of independent forest monitoring says, “A robust monitoring, reporting and verification system will be key to the success of the scheme for REDD.” Many of the proposals for how to operate REDD seem to assume that monitoring is a relatively straighforward technical issue to solve - given enough satellite images and radar data. But the reality is likely to be much more complicated than simply obtaining pictures of where trees are standing or not. The consensus is increasingly that better forest governance is going to be critical to effective REDD mechanisms, and as Global Witness also points out, “An essential part of REDD will be monitoring forest governance on the ground.”
read more »
2nd December 2008
At its meeting today, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice discussed REDD. During the meeting, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) made an intervention. In the intervention, Tauli-Corpuz emphasised the risk that REDD could reinforce centralised governance and finance for forests and undermine the role of indigenous peoples in managing their forests. The UNPFII also emphasised the importance of rights, called for using the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an overarching framework for REDD and stated that “No REDD project should be done on indigenous peoples territories without obtaining their free, prior and informed consent.” UNPFII is the official UN body dealing with indigenous issues. The statement can hardly be ignored.
read more »
2nd December 2008
This afternoon, the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) held a side event at the climate conference in Poznan titled “How REDD policy options interact with forest measuring and monitoring”. Not surpringly, since Wood Hole is, as the name suggests, a research centre, the presentations tended to be extremely technical. Nonetheless there were brief glimpses about what this technology might mean for REDD and more importantly for the climate, for people and for forests. The outlook is not good.
read more »
2nd December 2008
A new report from Belgium and UK-based NGOs FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme casts a heavy new shadow over the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). Based on a assessment of nine FCPF ‘Readiness Plan Idea Notes’, the groups conclude that the Bank has been cutting corners, failing to consult properly, and has ignored its own internal safeguard policies. In a joint press release, given in full below, Marcial Arias, from the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change also called for the “suspension” of all REDD activities and carbon market initiatives in indigenous areas until such time as the inhabitants’ rights were recognised.
read more »
2nd December 2008
Environmental activists yesterday occupied the Washington DC offices of Environmental Defense (ED), one of the leading architects and NGO advocates of carbon trading. The protest was led by Dr Rachel Smolker, daughter of Robert E. Smolker, a Founder of ED, who said her father would be “rolling over in his grave” at the direction the organisation has taken. Environmental Defence has long argued in favour of REDD forest carbon trading, and has dismissed concerns that this would further weaken already faltering carbon markets. The eco-activists from the Global Justice Ecology Project and Global Forest Coalition said that carbon trading had “utterly failed”.
Scene of the crime: protesters point to links between ED and corporate polluters
read more »
|
|
