28th July 2009
A fascinating discussion is going on at “the Masalai blog” about carbon trading in Papua New Guinea. It is particularly interesting because Dave Sag, co-founder and Executive Director of Carbon Planet has answered some of the accusations against his company.
Sag is a software programmer, who has found himself “at the forefront of Internet software development since 1993,” he writes on his website. In 1998, he won an Australia Day Council Award for services to Australian Business. He was nominated as one of Australia’s top 40 achievers under 40 years of age. Sag describes himself as “a serial entrepreneur. Right now my main focus is saving the world via Carbon Planet”. He’s even had his photograph taken with Al Gore.
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24th July 2009
For several weeks, Papua New Guinea has been embroiled in a forest carbon trading scandal. Kevin Conrad, talks about “carbon cowboys” descending on PNG.
Ilya Gridneff, a journalist with the Australian Associated Press, has been digging deeper into PNG’s carbon trading mess. It seems that not all of the “carbon cowboys” came from outside PNG (although some of them did). None of what Gridneff has found bodes well for the idea of financing REDD through carbon trading.
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9th July 2009
Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea’s Special Envoy and Ambassador for Environment & Climate Change, has spent much of the last three years travelling around the world promoting REDD and carbon trading. So what does the man that Time magazine calls a “Hero of the environment” and UNEP a “Champion of the Earth” have to say about the current REDD credits crisis in Papua New Guinea? On 6 July 2009, Conrad was in London, speaking at a Chatham House event, “The Politics of Climate Change Agreement“. Natasha Loder, a journalist with The Economist, was there and has writes about Conrad’s speech on her blog.
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3rd July 2009
Penny Wong is Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Water.
Ilya Gridneff is a journalist working for the Australian Associated Press in Papua New Guinea.
Recently, Gridneff sent 10 questions to Wong asking about Australia’s funding to Papua New Guinea regarding climate change. Given that PNG is currently embroiled in a scandal over the issuance of REDD “credits”, the questions seem perfectly reasonable. The Australian government has established a multi-million dollar series of initiatives on forests and carbon that are explicitly aimed at influencing the negotiations towards establishing a REDD mechanism under the UNFCCC. It is an extremely sensitive, important international issue. It is also public money. “The predictable, anodyne Australian Government response would be funny if it wasn’t the bane of my existence,” Gridneff writes.
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2nd July 2009
Last week, Theo Yasause, the director of Papua New Guinea’s Office of Climate Change, was suspended while an internal investigation of the office is carried out, reports Australian Associated Press. For several weeks, the government of Papua New Guinea has been embroiled in a scandal over the issuance of a series of REDD credits, in the absence of any policy or legislation. Yasause denies having done anything wrong.
Two journalists have been covering these REDD developments in Papua New Guinea: Natasha Loder is based in the UK and works for The Economist; and Ilya Gridneff, works for the Australian Associated Press in Port Moresby, PNG. This post is an attempt to summarise their stories so far. Please visit their blogs for more information. Loder blogs on Overmatter: Leftovers from the science desk at The Economist and Gridneff on Papua News Guinea.
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7th June 2009
On 4 June 2009, Reuters reported evidence of a multi-million offer from carbon brokers to PNG’s Office of Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability. Reuters also reported on sale of carbon credits from an area of forest in PNG that has not been validated. REDD-Monitor has found (on the internet) some of the documents that Reuters has seen and is sharing these documents, in the interest of transparency.
12 June 2008: Theo Yasause, executive director of OCCES, signed a government memo asking PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare to counter-sign a certificate allowing two carbon brokers, Earth Sky and Climate Assist PNG, to sell US$500 million worth of forest carbon offsets. “The (two brokers are) prepared to put in 10 million Australian Dollars [US$8 million] to assist the establishment of the Office of Climate Change,” Yasause wrote in the memo. In addition, OCCES would earn 20% of any proceeds from carbon sales.
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5th June 2009
In a side event at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Patrick Alley of Global Witness highlighted the dangers of REDD – as well as the potential opportunities. “Going beyond carbon: good governance, biodiversity conservation and demand-side management in REDD,” was presented by the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, which was formed in Poznan in December 2009.
Alley illustrated his talk with this slide of the Bugatti Veyron, a car that consumes more fuel per kilometre than any other production car on the planet, with a top speed of 407 kilometres an hour. That’s the length of a football pitch every second. At this speed, you could cross Equatorial Guinea in 25 minutes. Except, of course, that you couldn’t because the roads needed to drive a car like this don’t exist in Equatorial Guinea. For once, Jeremy Clarkson is right when he describes it as “a triumph for lunacy over common sense”. Something similar could be said about the idea of pouring billions of dollars a year for REDD into some of the most corrupt governments in the world.
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21st May 2009
The International Institute for Environment and Development published an important new report last week, “Tenure in REDD: Start-Point or Afterthought?“. Written by Lorenzo Cotula and James Mayers, it is a welcome addition to the discussion on REDD.
Like a football match, this is a report of two halves. In the first half, the authors discuss the issues surrounding tenure of land and trees in the context of REDD: “the systems of rights, rules, institutions and processes regulating their access and use”.
The second half consists of seven country studies. The authors note the “often apparent gulf between policy and practice” in looking at the land tenure situation in the seven countries. “The current international drive to explore REDD could do more harm than good,” if it focusses on the letter of the law rather than the practice, Cotular and Mayers write.
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24th February 2009
Eastern Highlands Governor, Malcolm Kela-Smith, states that Papua New Guinea’s Office of Climate Change and Carbon Trading (OCCCT) “is illegal and established without due regard for existing mandates”, according to an article in The National on 15 February 2009. Kela-Smith warned landowners and provincial governments not to enter into any deals solicited by the OCCCT.
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15th November 2008
The government of Papua New Guinea has warned that NGOs and carbon traders will be prosecuted if they start developing REDD activities without its permission. In a strongly worded public notice, the Office of Climate Change and Carbon Trading in Port Moresby has said that “It has come to this office’s knowledge that certain NGO’s are organizing seminars, workshops in discussing Draft Payment System for environmental services including payments for Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). . . . It appears that there are endless groups of NGO’s and Carbon Traders coming to PNG with ideas on REDD and proposal for benefit sharing. This dynamic is not constructive for either the government or the rural communities. Any matter regarding Climate Change and Carbon Trading is ONLY to be dealt with by the Head Office in Port Moresby with the authority of the Executive Director.”
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