17th November 2009
At a recent conference in Oxford, Richard Betts, the head of climate impacts at the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, launched a new report that warns that we could see a global increase in temperatures of 4°C as soon as 2055. Climate change could accelerate so rapidly because of feedback loops which are triggered by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and which in turn will cause new emissions. “Four degrees of warming, averaged over the globe, translates into even greater warming in many regions, along with major changes in rainfall,” Betts said. An increase of 4°C global average temperature would mean a rise of up to 15°C at the North Pole. Sea levels would rise by up to 1.4 metres. Monsoon rains could fail. At the conference, two scientists looked specifically at the implications of 4°C warming for the Amazon rainforests: Yadvinder Malhi, a Professor of Ecosystem Science at Oxford University; and Wolfgang Cramer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
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6th October 2009
In its most recent newsletter, Down to Earth outlines the increasing concerns about the way REDD is developing in Indonesia, focussing on the role of the World Bank and the Australian government. The World Bank is pushing ahead with its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in Indonesia in spite of a “storm of criticism from civil society organisations at home and internationally”. Of particular concern is the fact that the Bank is going ahead without applying its own safeguard policies. DTE also criticises the Australian government’s focus on carbon offsetting in its bilateral REDD-type schemes in Indonesia.
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12th August 2009
For the past five years, the Forest Peoples Programme and other NGOs have been working to persuade the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) that funding the oil palm sector in Indonesia is problematic. Given the destruction caused by oil palm plantations, you might think this would be easy. Not so. This is the World Bank, after all. In July 2007, Forest Peoples Programme and 18 other NGOs filed a complaint with the IFC’s Compliance Advisory Ombudsman (CAO) about the IFC’s funding of the palm oil producing and trading company, Wilmar. The recently released CAO report found that “Because commercial pressures dominated IFC’s assessment process, the result was that environmental and social due diligence reviews did not occur as required.”
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20th July 2009
The World Bank is positioning itself as one of the major funders of REDD. One of the Bank’s funding mechanisms is the Forest Investment Program. So far, the FIP has held three design meetings.
Sena Alouka, Executive Director of Jeune Volontaires pour l’Environnement, Togo is one of the civil society representatives at the FIP meetings. He wrote the following account of the FIP so far in the Global Forest Coalition’s newsletter “Forest Cover“, July 2009.
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14th July 2009
On 8 July 2009, the Rights and Resources Initiative and Chatham House held a meeting on “Forests, Governance and Climate Change” at the Royal Society in London. Among the speakers was Marcus Colchester of the Forest Peoples Programme, who spoke about the importance of recognising rights in the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. His presentation, “Safeguarding Rights in the FCPF” is available here.
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1st July 2009
The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has approved the readiness plans (R-Plans) for Panama and Guyana, reports the Bank Information Center. In doing so the FCPF ignored the advice and recommendations of its own Technical Advisory Panel. The approval demonstrates that the guidelines and standards developed under the FCPF are effectively meaningless.
From 15th to 18th June 2009, the members of the governing body of the FCPF, the Participants Committee, met in Montreaux in Switzerland. Three R-Plans were on the agenda at this meeting, from Guyana, Panama and Indonesia. Once their R-Plans are approved, countries can tap into grants up to a maximum of US$3.6 million, including a US$200,000 grant which the Bank can provide up front to support the development of the R-Plan.
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2nd June 2009
Indonesian NGOs SawitWatch and AMAN have written to the Minster of Forestry expressing their concerns about Indonesia’s draft R-Plan (Readiness Plan), due to be considered by the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in June 2009. “We have serious concerns regarding the current draft, the gaps and omissions contained therein, and the time that will be made available to review the revised, final R-Plan,” the NGOs write.
The NGOs note that the R-Plan “makes no reference to, nor contains any attempt to comply with, key requirements of the FCPF Charter.” They add that “This is perhaps not entirely surprising as the Guidelines for the Review of R-Plans similarly contains no reference to the Charter, a strange oversight given that the Charter is the overarching legal framework for all activities and operations of the FCPF.”
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18th May 2009
The World Bank’s involvement in developing and financing REDD is one the more troubling aspects of REDD – at least for anyone aware of the World Bank’s record in dealing with people and forests. True to past form, when the Bank announced its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in Bali in December 2007, it did so without consulting Indigenous Peoples, let alone seeking their free, prior and informed consent. When the countries involved produced their “Readiness Plan Idea Notes” without consulting Indigenous People, the Bank simply decided that consultation wasn’t necessary.
Benoit Bosquet, a “senior natural resources management specialist” is responsible for leading the development of the FCPF at the World Bank. When Bosquet spoke to more than 400 Indigenous Peoples at the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change, in Alaska last month, we might have expected Bosquet at least to offer an apology. He did not. Coming from someone who has acknowledged that “we will make mistakes” on REDD, perhaps we should not be too surprised.
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17th April 2009
From 11-13 March 2009, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Participants Committee met in Gamboa, Panama. The Bank Information Center took part as an NGO Observer and has posted the following report on its website.
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16th April 2009
The World Bank recently invited comments on the design of its Forest Investment Program. Rainforest Foundation UK and Greenpeace produced the following comments on the FIP design document along with suggestions for concrete changes to the text (available here, pdf file 111 kB).
Having noted the “undue urgency” with which the Bank is carrying out this process, Rainforest Foundation UK and Greenpeace focus on the following: strengthening safeguards; increasing transparency; addressing underlying causes of deforestation; including civil society and Indigenous Peoples in decision making processes, design and implementation of FIP; independent monitoring; and excluding from FIP activities that lead to deforestation and forest degradation.
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