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Last week, Australian ABC News’ Foreign Correspondent programme looked into Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd.’s operations on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The programme, titled, “Sumatra – Paper/Tiger“, gives a shocking view of the ongoing destruction of Sumatra’s remaining forests.
Earlier this year, the Matsés indigenous people rejected Australian businessman
In June 2011, REDD-Monitor posted a statement signed by indigenous people in Kapuas District in Central Kalimantan demanding that the Australia-Indonesia Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership be stopped in indigenous peoples’ land. Recently REDD-Monitor received an email from the chairman of the Council of Indigenous Dayak (Dewan Adat Dayak – DAD) in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan.
On 10 June 2011, the Norwegian government responded to the Open Letter sent on 24 March 2011. While the Open Letter raised eight problems with Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, the vast majority of the discussion generated by the letter focussed on the signatories to the letter rather than the problems they were raising.
Members of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago – Central Kalimantan Chapter (AMAN Kalteng) have issued a statement demaning an “immediate moratorium of all REDD+ processes and investments in Central Kalimantan”, until a series of conditions are met. AMAN Kalteng’s statement can be downloaded here (pdf file 72.1 KB) and is posted in full, below.
Last week, Carbon Trade Watch released two new factsheets: “Key arguments against REDD+”, and “Some Key REDD+ Players”. Be warned: you are in for a rocky ride if you belong to the camp that believes that REDD is the best hope for saving the rainforests, that safeguards will protect indigenous peoples’ rights and that carbon trading is the only way of raising sufficient funding for REDD.
When Australia announced the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership, in September 2007, Australia’s then-Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer said that the project, “was an example of practical climate change action that could deliver immediate and tangible benefits”. What he didn’t say was who would get those benefits.
On 19 May 2011, Indonesia‘s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, signed a presidential instruction bringing into force a two-year moratorium on the granting of new forestry concessions. A group of NGOs has now produced a Briefing Paper criticising the moratorium’s failure to address the causes of deforestation in Indonesia.
A report released earlier this week by the Oakland Institute investigates the role that hedge funds are playing in land grabs in Africa. Hedge funds are investing in large scale industrial agricultural projects in Africa. The result, according to the Oakland Institute is, “food insecurity, the displacement of small farmers, conflict, environmental devastation, water loss, and the further impoverishment and political instability of African nations”.
The latest round of UN climate meetings is currently taking place in Bonn, Germany. REDD is on the agenda in several parts of the meeting. Here is REDD-Monitor’s attempt to explain what is on the agenda regarding REDD during the meetings in Bonn over the next two weeks. It will be interesting at the end of the two weeks of meetings to see how much progress has been made on these issues.
The next two weeks sees the latest round of UN climate negotiations in Bonn. REDD-Monitor will not be attending the 34th session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), the second part of the fourteenth session of the AWG-LCA or the second part of the sixteenth session of the AWG-KP.
On 16 December 2010, US President Barack Obama announced that “in April, we announced that we were reviewing our position on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And today I can announce that the United States is lending its support to this declaration.”
On 24 March 2011, members of Guyanese civil society and two Members of Parliament sent a letter to Erik Solheim, Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development. The letter raised “eight key problems with the operation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of Guyana and Norway”.
Interview with Andy White, Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, Washington DC, by email.
A letter to the Participants Committee Members of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), signed by 32 NGOs from 11 countries, raises concern about a potential “significant weakening of safeguards” under the FCPF process. FCPF is considering allowing regional development banks and UNEP, UNDP and FAO to implement FCPF readiness grants – without applying World Bank safeguards. |
    
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![Carbon cowboy [CENSORED] denounces indigenous chief in Peru](http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Screenshot-100811-082747-150x150.png "Carbon cowboy [CENSORED] denounces indigenous chief in Peru")
