|
|||||
|
WWF, the world’s biggest environmental organisation, is under fire. On 23 June 2011, the German TV station ARD broadcast a documentary highlighting WWF’s cozy relationship with distinctly unsustainable companies like the genetically modified giant Monsanto and the rainforest destroying palm oil company Wilmar. This week Global Witness published a report criticising WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network.
In April 2010, the UN Environment Programme named six people “Champions of the Earth” – the UN’s highest award for environmental leadership. Among those recognised this year was Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, who won the award for “Biodiversity Conservation & Ecosystem Management”.
Just twenty years ago, Riau Province in Sumatra, Indonesia was 80 per cent forested. Today only 30 per cent is left. The deforestation is driven by the insatiable hunger for timber of two pulp and paper companies: Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL) and Asia Paper and Pulp (APP).
Australia’s carbon pollution reduction scheme includes a nightmare vision of REDD. It would create a loophole big enough to allow Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution to continue and even expand.
Last month, the following letter was published in Guyana’s Stabroek News. It raises serious questions about President Bharrat Jagdeo’s proposals for REDD in Guyana. The author of the letter, Janette Bulkan, has so far received no response.
President Bharrat Jagdeo’s visit to Europe last week was reported enthusiastically in Guyana’s newspapers. Headlines like “The Norway climate deal a significant step forward” and comments such as “Guyana is getting significant backing, including financial support, from Norway, for its model to push saving rainforests as a central platform in the global plan to avert climate change disaster,” both from the Guyana Chronicle, are typical.
Conservation campaigners were misled into believing that the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) supported the inclusion of ‘avoided deforestation’ credits within the the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) ahead of Tuesday’s vote in the influential Environment Committee of the European Parliament.
A Canadian company called ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd is looking to sell carbon offsets from REDD projects. The company already sells carbon offsets to Shell, which Shell uses to ensure that it can continue drilling for oil. According to the press release below, the president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, Carter Roberts supports this. |
|||||
|
|
|||||
