The Accra Caucus is a coalition of more than 100 non-governmental organisations from 30 countries. It was formed in August 2008, in Accra, Ghana at a meeting organised to discuss issues and concerns associated with REDD. Before COP-15 in Copenhagen, December 2009, the Accra Caucus produced a list of key messages to be included in any agreement on REDD.
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This week, activists protested outside a Carbon Trading Summit in New York. Executives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Duke Energy, American Electric Power and other corporations mingled with representatives from government, carbon credit aggregators, hedge funds and carbon traders. “The same Wall Street bankers who gave us the global climate crisis are trying to own the sky,” said Brian Tokar, director of the Institute for Social Ecology. In its press release about the event, Indigenous Environmental Network focussed on REDD, what can go wrong and what already has gone wrong. (Spanish version, below.)
“We cannot decide whether we would accept or not because we have had no information at all,” Jajang Kurniawan a farmer in West Java told film makers LifeMosaic. “The name of the programme is very foreign to us. What is this REDD? What kind of animal is it, we just don’t know.” LifeMosaic is a film-making organisation that aims “to support indigenous peoples in exercising their right to obtain information before large-scale developments occur on their territories, and to decide freely – without coercion – whether they want to accept or refuse these developments.” LifeMosaic has produced four short films bringing indigenous peoples’ voices to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) in December 2009.
A Declaration produced during a recent meeting in Papua demands that “All forms of activities and initiatives for carbon trade and carbon compensation which do not recognize the rights of adat community in land of Papua should be stopped.” From 19-21 November 2009, more than 200 participants attended the Congress, “Save The People and Forests of Papua”, organised by the Papua NGO Cooperation Forum (Foker LSM Papua). People from seven indigenous territories in Papua, Mamberamo Tami, Saireri, Bomberay, Domberay, La Pago, Mee Pago and Anim Ha, took part, including Indigenous Peoples, Religious Leaders and CSO activists.
The indigenous Ogiek people living in the Mau Forest Complex in Kenya are threatened with eviction to make way for the government’s conservation plans. The government has already started evicting 1,690 non-Ogiek families from the Mau Forest. They have nowhere to go. The Mau Forest Secretariat says that because they have no title deeds they do not qualify for any compensation. Karanja Njoroge, a journalist with The Standard spent a day and a night with the evicted people and described it as “an experience of extreme despair and squalour of people who say they have been kicked out without being allowed to harvest their crops.”
Another week, another series of UN climate talks. This time in Barcelona. This is the last week of negotiations before COP-15 in Copenhagen. Perhaps not surprisingly, things are not looking good. Rich countries ground the negotiations to a halt by refusing to agree to targets under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. At one point, African negotiators walked out refusing to discuss any other issues (including REDD) until rich countries agreed deep cuts in emissions. In support, civil society organisations set up an impromptu human shield against the killing of Kyoto targets and demanded at least 40% emission reductions with no offsets by 2020.
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. Much of the forest around the peninsular has been destroyed to make way for oil palm plantations and industrial tree plantations for the pulp and paper industry, in part by pulp and paper company APRIL. Now APRIL claims it want to protect the Kampar Peninsular with a REDD project. This week Forest Peoples Programme and Scale Up released a report titled “Indonesia: indigenous peoples and the Kampar Peninsular“. The report finds that APRIL has ignored the views of local people on the Kampar Peninsular.
REDD is one of the key issues under discussion at the UN Climate negotiations in Bangkok. NGOs have put out a series of new reports hoping to influence the way the discussions go. A new briefing from Global Witness, reveals why the forestry term, ’sustainable forest management’ could spell disaster for the future of the world’s forests. The Ecosystems Climate Alliance has produced a Forest Pledge, calling for countries “to support the protection of intact natural forests as a core mechanism of the treaty”. And the Indigenous Environmental Network released a report strongly rejecting REDD.
From 7-9 September 2009, environment ministers and senior officials from the European Union took part in a high-level meeting in Strömstad, Sweden: “Visions for Biodiversity Beyond 2010 – People, Ecosystem Services and the Climate Crisis“. At the end of the meeting, the chair produced a series of conclusions. Surprisingly, for this sort of meeting, the problem of over-consumption in the North was acknowledged. Paragraph 18 of the conclusions states: “The impact of European consumption on global biodiversity needs to be addressed.” The conclusions also include two paragraphs about REDD.
From 5-8 August 2009, the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara – AMAN) held a national consultation of indigenous communities on Climate Change and REDD. At the end of the meeting, the participants produced the Sinar Resmi Declaration (available in Bahasa Indonesia below). The Declaration demands meaningful emissions reductions in the North. It also insists on guarantees that the rights of Indigenous Peoples will be protected in any REDD initiatives, otherwise, “Indigenous Peoples will reject the implementation of all REDD plans and any other climate change mitigation initiatives.” |
 
 
 
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