A new manual by six Europe-based NGOs calls for an end to forest offsets. The report argues that there are two motivations for forest offsets: “reducing the pressure to do something about fossil fuel emissions and the short term profit motive”.
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A new report by Global Witness reveals two conflicting views of REDD. First, forests are near the top of the global political agenda and REDD is an “unprecedented opportunity” to address deforestation. Second, “The potential for criminality is vast and has not been taken into account by the people who set it up,” as Interpol’s Peter Younger pointed out in 2009.
On 21 September 2011, the World Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations the No REDD Platform released “an open letter to the international donor community to halt the diversion of forest conservation funding to dubious schemes to ‘Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks’ (REDD+).”
“We believe that the current situation demonstrates more than ever the need to pursue other paths beyond REDD+.” This is from this month’s issue of the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin, which focusses on REDD. The first article in the Bulletin asks “Can REDD+ be ‘fixed’?”, the answer to which is somewhat given away by the next article: “The ‘sins’ of the REDD+ approach”.
In June 2011, FERN, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the Rainforest Foundation UK produced a report which counters some of the misconceptions about the suitability of carbon markets to finance forest protection.
One of the problems with REDD is that it will not address climate change, for the simple reason that to address climate change we need to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned. While we need to reduce deforestation, trading carbon stored in forests against fossil fuel emissions will help lock in polluting technology.
Many of the countries hoping to implement REDD are riddled with corruption, illegal logging and a failure to respect land rights and indigenous peoples’ rights. The forestry ministries in these countries are often among the most corrupt institutions in the government. Pouring money into these countries in the hope that it will help reduce deforestation is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.
In June 2011, REDD-Monitor posted a statement signed by indigenous people in Kapuas District in Central Kalimantan demanding that the Australia-Indonesia Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership be stopped in indigenous peoples’ land. Recently REDD-Monitor received an email from the chairman of the Council of Indigenous Dayak (Dewan Adat Dayak – DAD) in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan.
The mining industry has obvious reasons for being interested in REDD. The industry is responsible for vast greenhouse gas emissions. While the obvious way of reducing emissions is to reduce the amount of fossil fuels mined (an option that is never on the agenda at UN climate meetings), a more profitable option is to continue mining and “offset” the emissions by buying carbon credits.
On 10 June 2011, the Norwegian government responded to the Open Letter sent on 24 March 2011. While the Open Letter raised eight problems with Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, the vast majority of the discussion generated by the letter focussed on the signatories to the letter rather than the problems they were raising.
On 19 May 2011, the day that Indonesia’s President finally signed the moratorium on forest concessions into force, activists from EIA and Telapak were in Central Kalimantan documenting a plantation company illegally clearing an area of peat swamp forest. This is a strange story, full of strange coincidences.
When Australia announced the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership, in September 2007, Australia’s then-Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer said that the project, “was an example of practical climate change action that could deliver immediate and tangible benefits”. What he didn’t say was who would get those benefits.
A group of Brazilian NGOs has written to the Brazilian delegation for climate change negotiations, opposing offset and market mechanism as a means of financing REDD. The letter is signed by 21 environmental organisations and social movements and is available below in English and Portuguese.
The latest round of UN climate meetings is currently taking place in Bonn, Germany. REDD is on the agenda in several parts of the meeting. Here is REDD-Monitor’s attempt to explain what is on the agenda regarding REDD during the meetings in Bonn over the next two weeks. It will be interesting at the end of the two weeks of meetings to see how much progress has been made on these issues.
“Our green economic mantra is called ‘pro-growth, pro-job, pro-poor, pro-environment’ – and of course pro-business,” Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s President, told the Business for Environment Conference at the end of April 2011. “It’s a lot of balls to juggle with,” he added, leaving his Special Adviser on Climate Change, Agus Purnomo, with the difficult task of explaining what he was talking about. |
    
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