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Brett Goldsworthy, chairman of Shift2Neutral has responded to REDD-Monitor’s email asking some questions about his company’s REDD-type projects in Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. He states that his company “deals in facts”, but provides no new information. He states that his company manages its project “in an ethical and open way” but apparently only “to those people involved in the project”.
Jaringan Orang Asal SeMalaysia (JOAS), the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia, put out a press release on 10 August 2010 about a carbon trading deal with indigenous peoples in Sarawak. On 6 August 2010, Reuters reported that an Australian carbon trading company called Shift2Neutral had “signed a deal with nine Malaysian tribal leaders to certify carbon offsets from a project aimed at preserving more than 100,000 hectares of tropical forest”.
Interview with Abdon Nababan, secretary general of the Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN – The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago), and Mina Setra the head of international policy at AMAN. The interview took place in AMAN’s office in Jakarta on 9 June 2010.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the billion dollar forest deal between Norway and Indonesia is proving to be controversial in Indonesia. The government now has to play an impossible balancing act – claiming to be serious about addressing deforestation, while reassuring forest destroyers that their profits will not be affected.
Here’s a copy of the Letter of Intent (pdf file 341 KB*) signed yesterday by Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim and Indonesia’s Foreign Minister RM Marty M. Natalegawa. One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it’s worth putting in perspective.
Yesterday, Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim and Indonesia’s Foreign Minister RM Marty M. Natalegawa signed a US$1 billion deal aimed at reducing deforestation in Indonesia. There are few details about the deal available so far. The agreement itself has not yet been made public – when it is REDD-Monitor will post it here.
On Tuesday, 18 May 2010, the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry held a meeting to discuss the country’s activities under the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Invitations went out the previous Friday. No documents were available before the meeting. The meeting lasted less than four hours. The Ministry of Forestry calls this “Public Consultation”.
This week (from 17-22 April), the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Taskforce takes place in Aceh province, Indonesia. Three working groups in the meeting will discuss standards and criteria; project based carbon accounting; and funding. But local groups feel they have been excluded from the discussions and from the REDD-type project at Ulu Masen in Aceh province.
While the Paris-Oslo process has been getting plenty attention since Copenhagen, another process is quietly taking place in parallel to the UN negotiations on REDD. The Governors’ Climate and Forests Taskforce is a collaboration between the Governors of 14 states and provinces from the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico. The taskforce’s third meeting will take place in Aceh province in Indonesia from 17-22 May 2010.
Friends of the Earth Indonesia (WALHI) and Friends of the Earth Australia put out a press release today strongly criticising an A$30 million Australia-Indonesia REDD project in Sumatra, which was announced last week. WALHI and PPJ (United Farmers of Jambi) have also produced a position paper on the project and REDD in Jambi. |
 
 
 
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