9th October 2009
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”.
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29th September 2009
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.
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28th September 2009
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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22nd September 2009
A series of new reports about climate and finance is available on The Corner House website. The papers illustrate the dangers of attempting to find “solutions” to climate change through carbon trading. “There are close parallels between the rampant financial innovations behind the current financial crisis and the innovations feeding carbon trading,” writes Larry Lohmann in a new Corner House Briefing. Prof. Michael Dove, at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, has described Corner House publications as “medicinal doses of complexity against the plague of simplicity.”
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11th September 2009
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’”. Roberts claims to have power of attorney over 90 forest deals. He also claims to be unaware of any disputes with tribal groups, although one tribal representative says he was coerced into signing a Memorandum of Agreement with Nupan.
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2nd September 2009
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. In a recent statement, Wari Iamo, the Acting executive director of the Office of Climate Change states that “Voluntary Carbon Agreements (VCA) are not currently supported by the Government.” All three statements are reproduced below.
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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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27th July 2009
“When is ’saving’ our global forests a hideous idea?” The question comes from Duff Badgley in recent article about REDD, published in the e-zine of the Green Party of Washington State, “Greener Times“. Badgley’s answer? “When it’s REDD.”
Badgley has been described as the “kind of hard-core environmental activist who loves making a nuisance of himself.” He’s also been described as “an old-school, grassroots, car-free, long-haired, bleeding-heart, dirty hippie environmentalist”. Recently, largely as a result of his campaigning, the city of Seattle decided to “completely discontinue crop-based biofuels”.
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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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15th July 2009
On 26 June 2009, the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and Energy and Climate Secretary, Ed Miliband, visited London Zoo to launch “The Road to Copenhagen“, a report outlining the UK’s vision of the climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009. The report claims to be setting “ambitious” goals: “The UK believes that the over-riding goal of the Copenhagen agreement is to limit climate change to an increase in global average temperature of 2°C. This means the deal needs to establish a credible trajectory for reducing global emissions by at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050.” But as George Monbiot points out in The Guardian, “a global cut of 50% offers only a faint-to-non-existent chance of meeting their ultimate objective: preventing more than two degrees of warming.” The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that to have a high chance of limiting climate change to 2°C requires global cuts of 85% by 2050.
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