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The Forest Peoples Programme’s April 2011 ENewsletter starts with this sentence: “Closing the gap between international human rights law and realities on the ground is the most important challenge facing forest peoples.” This raises a question for REDD proponents: Is REDD helping to close the gap, or further widening it?
A new report from FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme concludes that the safeguards put in place by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership (FCPF) are inadequate. The report looks at eight Readiness Preparation Proposals (R-PPs) submitted to the FCPF and finds that FCPF safeguards are not clear and do not conform to the World Bank’s own safeguards.
In October 2010, the Forest Peoples Programme helped to organise a four day workshop of The Forests Dialogue about Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in Indonesia. More than 80 participants took part, including indigenous peoples, local community representatives, NGOs, international financial institutions, government agencies and the private sector.
“What is REDD” and “What to do with REDD?” are two booklets produced for indigenous peoples. The first provides a detailed overview of what REDD is and the second is a training manual for indigenous trainers to facilitate a training on REDD for indigenous peoples.
On 11 March 2010, an international conference took place in Paris, hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy: the International Conference on the Major Forest Basins. While 64 nations took part in the conference, Indigenous Peoples were not invited. A press release from the Forest Peoples Programme denounces the lack of transparency and participation in the discussions.
Two days ago, Greenpeace set up a Climate Defenders Camp on the Kampar Peninsula in Riau province, Sumatra. The camp will remain there for several weeks to highlight the importance of protecting forests on peat soils. The soils on the Kampar Peninsular store about 2 billion tonnes of carbon.
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.
Forest Peoples Programme recently published a briefing, titled “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and REDD: The Case of the Saramaka People v. Suriname”. The briefing asks the question: To what extent should or must REDD account for and respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights? FPP’s conclusion is clear: “attention to indigenous peoples’ rights is not only desirable as a means to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of climate change mitigation measures, but, also, that these rights must be viewed as part of the applicable legal framework for conceiving and implementing such measures. Failure to do so undermines the rule of law and will expose REDD proponents and investors to a series of serious risks.”
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.
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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