Canopy Capital’s Iwokrama, Guyana, project ’shrouded in secrecy’; indigenous residents not consulted

In the short report below, we provide some insights from the Forest Peoples Programme into the much-heralded ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ initiative which has been set up by a company called Canopy Capital, in the rainforests of Guyana. The project at Iwokrama has been lauded as ‘an historic deal’, and has gained much international attention, not the least through the support shown for this kind of venture by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles. However, doubts about the scheme have been growing, and it may not be quite the ‘model’ it appears.
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Global Canopy Programme misled conservation activists before vote on ETS forest credits

Conservation campaigners were misled into believing that the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) supported the inclusion of ‘avoided deforestation’ credits within the the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) ahead of Tuesday’s vote in the influential Environment Committee of the European Parliament. In a message sent out on a widely used eco-activist mailing list, Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme claimed that WWF supported his organisation’s campaign for tradeable forest credits to be included in the ETS, and asked readers to write to Members of the European Parliament urging them to agree to this. In fact, WWF had made it clear that they opposed such credits.
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reddisms:

“You’ve heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor.” — Rachel Morris, Mother Jones, June 2009

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