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On 27 May 2010, Sir Michael Somare, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, gave a speech at the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference. Much of his speech amounted to little more than a request for Norway’s money. But the speech included the outlines of Papua New Guinea’s new plans for REDD – a plan that involves doing away with any safeguards. During the climate negotiations in Poznan, Brazil pushed for “forests in exhaustion” to be included under the Clean Development Mechanism. Currently, any plantation established on land that was forested after 1 January 1990 is excluded from the CDM. Brazil hopes to overturn this ruling by arguing that severely degraded logged-over forests store little carbon and that the only way of storing more carbon on the land is by planting trees. On 11 December 2008, the Brazilian government organised a side event in Poznan to explain the National Plan on Climate Change and to present the Amazon Fund. The National Plan on Climate Change was launched on 1 December 2008 by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The timing was interesting. Coinciding with the first day of COP 14 in Poznan, the country with the largest area of forest in the world announced its climate change plans, which include reducing deforestation but excludes the possibility of trading the carbon stored in its forests. On the final day in Poznan, a dispute took place between Saudi Arabia and Brazil over the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Saudi Arabia wants carbon capture and storage to be included in the CDM. Brazil wants carbon credits for “forests in exhaustion”. Saudi Arabia’s motivation is obvious. It wants to continue extracting and selling oil. But what is Brazil’s motivation? And what, exactly, are “forests in exhaustion”? Interview with Tom B.K. Goldtooth, the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, co-chair and co-founder of the Environmental Justice Climate Change initiative and co-chair of the Honor The Earth campaign in the U.S. 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. Interview with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and Executive Director, Tebtebba. In its statement on the final day of the COP in Poznan, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change repeated its demand “for an immediate suspension of all REDD initiatives and carbon market schemes. Cut emissions at source ‐ No REDD.” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz’s comments on the deletion of all references to rights from the draft SBSTA text during the negotiations in Poznan. At the 2007 climate conference in Bali, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) organised a Forest Day. In Poznan, on 6 December 2008, CIFOR held Forest Day 2. The more than 900 participants could chose from 38 different side events and four “Cross-Cutting themes” Sub Plenary presentations, all bracketed by an Opening Plenary session and a Closing Plenary session. But this apparent diversity of views was marred by the fact that there were no Indigenous Peoples’ representatives in any of the Plenary or Sub Plenary sessions. During the Closing Plenary session, Yvo de Boer pointed out the importance of consulting Indigenous Peoples and civil society and said that “There is a little group of marginalised Indigenous Peoples wandering around who are not really making an input to the negotiations.” He might have added that they were also not making an input to Forest Day 2. |
 
 
 
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