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This article was published in the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin 151, February 2010. It is loosely based on a presentation I gave at a workshop in Bogor earlier this month, about local media and REDD. The workshop was organised by the Indonesian local media association ASTEKI and the Samdhana Institute.
Two interviews with Jeff Horowitz, the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners, were published earlier this month. The interviews reveal a great deal about why AD Partners is so interested in carbon trading. For example, Horowitz estimates that “protecting tropical forests will cut the cost of U.S. climate legislation almost in half – saving Americans billions.” This week, REDD-Monitor asked Horowitz some further questions.
Last month, Ecosystem Marketplace published a report on the state of the forest carbon market. The report, “State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2009: Taking Root & Branching Out“, provides a fascinating glimpse into the upside-down world of carbon trading.
The Ulu Masen project covers an area of 770,000 hectares in Aceh province in the north of Sumatra. The project aims to generate 3.3 million carbon credits a year to finance conservation and development projects for local communities. To find out more, REDD-Monitor interviewed Joe Heffernan of Flora & Fauna International and David Gaveau of the University of Kent in England.
“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. The PNG government is investigating allegations of corruption linked to REDD and carbon trading. The Rights and Resources Initiative notes that “there are reports of villagers are being threatened at gunpoint to hand over their carbon rights to ‘carbon cowboys’.” The government has shut down the Office of Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability (OCCES) and there are criminal investigations underway regarding the issuance of carbon certificates.
The Australian government is one of the most enthusiastic promoters of using market mechanisms to finance REDD. The reason? Australia wants REDD to create a loophole in any climate deal large enough to allow emissions to continue in Australia. A new report by Friends of the Earth Australia and Aid/Watch exposes the flaws in the Australian government’s REDD plans. The report, “What a Scam! Australia’s REDD offsets for Copenhagen,” which is endorsed by WALHI and Serikat Petani Indonesia, concludes that “The Australian REDD offset model breaches Australia’s international obligations, and is a scam: it is not aimed at reducing deforestation, but at creating a source of cheap credits for increased emissions in Australia.”
There are many reasons to oppose carbon trading. The most important is that carbon trading will not address climate change. Rising Tide North America together with Carbon Trade Watch and the Camp for Climate Action is launching a new website, 350 Reasons. The launch date is 24 October 2009, to coincide with the International Day of Climate Action. The point is not just that governments need to act to address climate change but that false solutions will make matters worse. Governments should not be looking for innovative ways to create loopholes for polluters or to create fortunes for carbon traders. Instead we need to dramatically reduce emissions – quickly. Carbon trading was created to avoid precisely that.
In 1988, Applied Energy Services (AES) was constructing a 183 MW coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. AES hired World Resources Institute to find a forestry project to “offset” the 14.1 million tons of carbon that would be emitted over the power plant’s 40 year life. The following year, AES signed an agreement with the NGO CARE to fund an ongoing agroforestry project in Guatemala. It was the world’s first forestry project funded explicitly to offset greenhouse gas emissions. CARE describes the project as a “success”, generating “a wealth of direct and indirect benefits for the people of Western Guatemala”.
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. Gridneff has uncovered more about where some of the money went – apparently to James Kond, the vice-president of PNG’s ruling party, who offered to help “secure endorsement of these projects for carbon trading from the PNG government”. The second is a statement from the Eco-Forestry Forum, a PNG NGO, calling for a stop to carbon scams in the country.
A couple of months ago, Kevin Conrad commented that “because Papua New Guinea was advocating a regime shift in forests, we had every carbon cowboy in the world descend upon Papua New Guinea.” Unfortunately, it seems that PNG is not the only country in the world that is facing an influx of “carbon cowboys”. More than a year ago, the Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Development in Colombia issued a warning about “Oxygen buyers” (in English and Spanish, below). Even more unfortunately, the notice seems to have little effect. |
 
 
 
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