From 11-13 March 2009, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Participants Committee met in Gamboa, Panama. The Bank Information Center took part as an NGO Observer and has posted the following report on its website.
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Forest Peoples Programme recently published a briefing, titled “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and REDD: The Case of the Saramaka People v. Suriname”. The briefing asks the question: To what extent should or must REDD account for and respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights? FPP’s conclusion is clear: “attention to indigenous peoples’ rights is not only desirable as a means to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of climate change mitigation measures, but, also, that these rights must be viewed as part of the applicable legal framework for conceiving and implementing such measures. Failure to do so undermines the rule of law and will expose REDD proponents and investors to a series of serious risks.” President Bharrat Jagdeo’s visit to Europe last week was reported enthusiastically in Guyana’s newspapers. Headlines like “The Norway climate deal a significant step forward” and comments such as “Guyana is getting significant backing, including financial support, from Norway, for its model to push saving rainforests as a central platform in the global plan to avert climate change disaster,” both from the Guyana Chronicle, are typical. REDD-Monitor recently received the following anonymous contribution which challenges the claims that President Jagdeo and his consultants McKinsey have been making about Guyana’s forests and questions what is really driving REDD in Guyana. It seems to have dawned on Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, that you can’t reduce deforestation if you don’t have any deforestation in the first place. Guyana has large areas of forest and low levels of deforestation. So, in 2008, Jagdeo commissioned the consulting firm McKinsey to find a way out of the problem. McKinsey’s report, published last December, is titled, “Saving the World’s Forests Today: Creating Incentives to Avoid Deforestation”. A better title might have been “Hand over the money or we’ll destroy the forests”. Armed with the report, President Jagdeo is currently in Davos at the World Economic Forum. From there he will visit Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, followed by a visit to Prince Charles in England. Canopy Capital’s Iwokrama, Guyana, project ’shrouded in secrecy’; indigenous residents not consultedIn 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. That’s what Time magazine said earlier this year: |
 
 
 
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