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On 27 May 2010, Sir Michael Somare, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, gave a speech at the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference. Much of his speech amounted to little more than a request for Norway’s money. But the speech included the outlines of Papua New Guinea’s new plans for REDD – a plan that involves doing away with any safeguards.
In Papua New Guinea, the forest carbon trading fiasco continues, as does the logging. But you wouldn’t notice anything was amiss from the UN-REDD website. On 5 January 2010, 13 January 2010 and again on 15 February 2010, REDD-Monitor wrote to the UN-REDD programme to find out what UN-REDD has been doing to address the problems.
A month ago, I wrote to the UN-REDD team in Papua New Guinea to ask, among other things, what has happened to the programme’s budget of US$2,596 million. I am still waiting for a reply. Last week, I sent a reminder, along with a new question about the PNG government’s investigation into the Office of Climate Change, the key documents of which, it seems, have disappeared.
The UN-REDD programme in Papua New Guinea has been very quiet about the on-going controversy involving carbon trading and REDD in the country. REDD-Monitor asked UN-REDD some questions in an attempt to find out what the UN-REDD programme has been doing to address the problems. Unfortunately, UN-REDD remains very quiet on the subject.
This week, activists protested outside a Carbon Trading Summit in New York. Executives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Duke Energy, American Electric Power and other corporations mingled with representatives from government, carbon credit aggregators, hedge funds and carbon traders.
“It’s depressing”, Kevin Conrad told Associated Press, commenting on what happened (or didn’t) in Copenhagen. “It means I’ve got to spend another year … coming to meetings and talking about the same things.” Conrad would probably be even more depressed had he been asked to comment on what is happening in Papua New Guinea.
Here are two more REDD-related news items from Papua New Guinea. The first is an article from Ilya Gridneff, a journalist with Australian Associated Press in Port Moresby. Carbon Planet has invested A$1.2 million in projects in PNG.
Papua New Guinea’s forest carbon trading fiasco is back in the news. The focus is on Kirk Roberts, pictured right, his company Nupan (PNG) Trading Limited and an Australian carbon trading firm, Carbon Planet. “It’s no secret that I am one of the most important foreigners in PNG,” Roberts says. But his opponents have called him “the kingpin of the ‘carbon cowboys’”.
On 16 July 2009, Mekere Morauta, the leader of the opposition in Papua New Guinea, made a statement in Parliament about carbon trading and the role of the Office of Climate Change. Having received no answers to his questions, he produced a new media statement at the end of August 2009, repeating his questions to the prime minister.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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