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In Papua New Guinea, the forest carbon trading fiasco continues, as does the logging. But you wouldn’t notice anything was amiss from the UN-REDD website. On 5 January 2010, 13 January 2010 and again on 15 February 2010, REDD-Monitor wrote to the UN-REDD programme to find out what UN-REDD has been doing to address the problems.
A month ago, I wrote to the UN-REDD team in Papua New Guinea to ask, among other things, what has happened to the programme’s budget of US$2,596 million. I am still waiting for a reply. Last week, I sent a reminder, along with a new question about the PNG government’s investigation into the Office of Climate Change, the key documents of which, it seems, have disappeared.
The UN-REDD programme in Papua New Guinea has been very quiet about the on-going controversy involving carbon trading and REDD in the country. REDD-Monitor asked UN-REDD some questions in an attempt to find out what the UN-REDD programme has been doing to address the problems. Unfortunately, UN-REDD remains very quiet on the subject.
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.”
The UN-REDD Programme is seeking nominations for four representatives from Civil Society Organisations to serve on its Policy Board. It is important that the UN-REDD adopts meaningful environmental and social safeguards as well as upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. And unless NGOs, Indigenous Peoples and other civil society organisations push for this it is unlikely to happen. For those who can survive this sort of potential policy black hole, further information is available on the UN-REDD website.
In March 2009, the UN-REDD programme released a document titled “UN-REDD Programme Operational Guidance: Engagement of Indigenous Peoples & other forest dependent communities“. The document includes much that is good, including references to free, prior and informed consent, the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But it fails to look at the realities faced by many Indigenous Peoples. REDD-Monitor received the following note from John Palmer, Senior Associate, Forest Management Trust, outlining some of the omissions in the UN-REDD Operational Guidance on Indigenous Peoples. It is reproduced here in the interests of generating further discussion on the issues raised. In September 2008, the United Nations launched its UN-REDD programme. According to information released by the UN “Nine countries have already expressed formal interest in receiving assistance through the UN-REDD Programme: Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tanzania, Viet Nam, and Zambia.” A “Framework Document” dated June 2008 provides more detail about the programme. The analysis presented raises several concerns with UN-REDD, but what is far more worrying is what is excluded from the Framework Document. |
 
 
 
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