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On 9 December 2008, the day before international human rights day, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand removed all references to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities from the UN technical discussions on REDD (taking place in the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, SBSTA). Third World Network released the following new update from Poznan earlier today.
On Tuesday, 9 December 2008, I visited the Sheraton Hotel for an event titled “Making Forests Competitive: Practical solutions for permanence”. Organised by the legal firm Norton Rose, in association with the UNEP Finance Initiative and Carbon Markets and Investors Association, the event looked at the possibilities for the insurance industry to insure forest carbon. The principle is simple. There are lots of risks associated with storing carbon in forests. If you are buying or selling carbon you want a contract and want it to be insured. While insurance cannot prevent the carbon being released to the atmosphere, it can insure against financial loss, thus making financing forest projects more attractive to investors. The point of insurance is “de-risking investment in forests”, as Phil Cottle from ForestRE put it.
The International Youth Delegation is a consortium of over 500 young people from over 50 countries. “We are the largest ever youth presence for a conference of this kind,” they say. “We are here in Poznan to provide the youth voice in the negotiations and to remind governments that they are bargaining with our future.” Here’s their position on REDD.
Indigenous Peoples in Poznan protested today at the exclusion of the word “rights” from the Draft COP14 Decision text on REDD. They chanted “No rights, no REDD.”
The negotiations on REDD are heating up. After a week of mindnumbingly slow progress on REDD, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are now opposing the inclusion of references to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the COP14 decision text on REDD. Needless to say, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and NGO representatives are outraged at this development.
An action on Friday parodied measurements of carbon baselines and predictions of future deforestation by rounding up delegates, gazing into a crystal ball and telling them how deforestation rates would increase in the future and how much money they might make from REDD by reducing the rate of destruction.
GenderCC, a global network of women and gender activists, is demanding that a comprehensive gender assessment is carried out of the potential impacts of different REDD policies on women “before the negotiations on this issue are continued within the framework of the FCCC”. They note that “The REDD discussions are already triggering elite resource appropriation,” as governments, corporations and large international conservation agencies take over large tracks of land to profit from REDD. GenderCC also opposes the potential inclusion of plantations in REDD schemes.
The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, a group of civil society and Indigenous Peoples organisations, has released the following statement. The statement sets out 10 principles and an approach to financing that Accra Caucus considers to be crucial for the REDD negotiations and subsequent agreements. The statement is available in French here, and in Spanish here.
At a side event in Poznan yesterday (4 December 2008), the World Bank, the Norwegian government and various UN agencies presented their plans for REDD. In response to a comment about the World Bank’s record in the forests and the new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility the Bank’s Benoit Bosquet said, “I expect that we will make mistakes.” Not a very promising sign for forest dwelling people or the forests in the tropics.
The EU outlined its plans for carbon markets in relation to forests at a press conference today (5 December 2008) in Poznan. The EU aims “to halve the total forested area loss in the tropics by 2020, and to halt the global forest cover loss completely by 2030 at the latest” and estimates that this will cost somewhere between €15 and €25 billion a year. A “global forest carbon mechanism” is to be established to fund this, followed by “a pilot scheme to test the inclusion of forest credits in carbon markets, which could be used by governments to achieve their compliance.”
A press statement issued today by the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) is criticial of the way negotiations on REDD are progressing in Poznan. “The issue of REDD remains problematic for Indigenous Peoples,” IIPFCC states. Many of the Indigenous Peoples’ delegates in Poznan “reject outright market-based mechanisms as ways to resolve the climate change problem”. IIPFCC is concerned that the REDD negotiations are not taking place in the framework of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They therefore call for the suspension of REDD projects, until the rights of Indigenous Peoples are guaranteed
Yesterday, 4 December 2008, the EU held a press conference, during which Reuters asked the question: “Will forest offsets be used within EU ETS? And what is EU’s view on avoided deforestation?” Here are the responses from Brice Lalonde from the French delegation and Jurgen Lefevre from the European Commission.
International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) was by far the biggest “NGO” at last year’s climate conference in Bali. In Poznan, IETA has hired a building inside the International Trade Fair where the climate conference is taking place. With sponsorship to be in Poznan from BP, Shell, Enel, AES, Chevron, TÜV SÜD, SGS and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, IETA is no ordinary NGO. It is, in its own words, dedicated to “the establishment of effective market-based trading systems for greenhouse gas emissions by businesses”. On day three in Poznan, REDD-Monitor visited IETA’s side event on “REDD in the voluntary markets: Lessons Learned”. Needless to say, IETA is in favour of trading carbon from forests.
At its meeting today, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice discussed REDD. During the meeting, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) made an intervention. In the intervention, Tauli-Corpuz emphasised the risk that REDD could reinforce centralised governance and finance for forests and undermine the role of indigenous peoples in managing their forests. The UNPFII also emphasised the importance of rights, called for using the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an overarching framework for REDD and stated that “No REDD project should be done on indigenous peoples territories without obtaining their free, prior and informed consent.” UNPFII is the official UN body dealing with indigenous issues. The statement can hardly be ignored.
This afternoon, the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) held a side event at the climate conference in Poznan titled “How REDD policy options interact with forest measuring and monitoring”. Not surpringly, since Wood Hole is, as the name suggests, a research centre, the presentations tended to be extremely technical. Nonetheless there were brief glimpses about what this technology might mean for REDD and more importantly for the climate, for people and for forests. The outlook is not good. |
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