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On 23 August 2010, Norway’s Finance Ministry announced that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) had blacklisted the Malaysian logging giant Samling from its portfolio. The decision was made after a review by the Norwegian Council of Ethics of Samling and two Israeli companies.
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.
The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is carrying out a evaluation of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative. Norad’s consultants need to ask some hard questions about NCFI’s activities globally and about Norway’s massive oil industry that is ultimately paying for the forestry handouts.
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.
With apologies for stating the bleeding obvious: If REDD is going to work, it has to reduce deforestation. It also has to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. So why is Brazil, which claims to be serious about stopping deforestation, planning to build the world’s third largest hydropower dam? The Belo Monte dam is planned to be built on the Xingu River and would result in the eviction of tens of thousands of Indigenous Peoples.
On 12 April 2010, a group of NGOs produced a statement criticising the Paris-Oslo process, criticising the lack of transparency and participation. The Norwegian government has now replied to this statement. A “core group” of 29 “facilitating countries” has created a REDD+ partnership document, that is open to comments from all countries and the general public for two weeks, from 28 April to 12 May.
A group of NGOs have produced a statement on the Paris-Oslo process, criticising the lack of transparency and participation. “A bad REDD system is worse than no system at all for the world’s climate, its forests and its people,” they write in the statement. “Unless underlying problems are addressed, so-called fast-start financing would be a false start for REDD.”
Last week, REDD-Monitor received a reply from Hans Brattskar, the Director of Norway’s Climate and Forest Initiative, to the post “Indigenous Peoples excluded from French-Norwegian partnership on forests“. The reply is posted below in full, as requested. Brattskar seems keen to distance Norway from the Paris meeting. |
 
 
 
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