REDD-Monitor

“REDD proposals will only lead to forest protection if needs and rights of local communities are being effectively addressed,” wrote FERN in a report released in November 2008. Continuing the theme, FERN’s EU Forest Watch this month comments on the importance of forest peoples’ rights. FERN highlights the case of Indonesia, where the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has raised concerns about the country’s draft regulation on REDD.
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The November 2008 report, “Cutting Corners; how the FCPF is failing forests and peoples” is now available in Spanish. The report, produced by FERN and Forest Peoples Programme looks at nine country concept notes presented to the World Bank (so called R-PINs) to get REDD money and finds that none of them has been developed in a proper consultative process, nor do they address issues as rights and governance and the whole process has been in violation of the Bank’s own procedures and guidelines.

The Spanish translation of the report can be downloaded here (pdf file 0.8 MB) and a Spanish description of the report is below. The English version of the report is available here.
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FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme have produced a “Special report on Poznan”, focussing on what happened (and what went wrong) in the negotiations on REDD. The report is reproduced in full below and can be downloaded here.
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FERN’s EU Forest Watch reports on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme directive, which was adopted on 17 December 2008. Forest credits are excluded from the ETS until at least 2020. This is good news, although they should be excluded after 2020 as well. The EU’s target of 20 per cent emission reductions by 2020 is already too weak. The EU needs to reduce dramatically its greenhouse gas emissions, not use the offsets scam to allow industry to continue polluting.
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A new report from the NGO FERN provides a very helpful summary of some of the main proposals that have been offered, mostly by governments, for how REDD should work. The proposed schemes covered in the report include those from the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, Tuvalu, Brazil, COMIFAC, India, the Latin America Nested Approach, the European Union, New Zealand and Norway.
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A new report from Belgium and UK-based NGOs FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme casts a heavy new shadow over the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). Based on a assessment of nine FCPF ‘Readiness Plan Idea Notes’, the groups conclude that the Bank has been cutting corners, failing to consult properly, and has ignored its own internal safeguard policies. In a joint press release, given in full below, Marcial Arias, from the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change also called for the “suspension” of all REDD activities and carbon market initiatives in indigenous areas until such time as the inhabitants’ rights were recognised.
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