Forced Relocation of Sengwer People proves urgency of canceling REDD

Mar 1, 2014

February 25, 2014

We, the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) together with the undersigned organizations and individuals, strongly condemn the massive evictions and forced relocation of the Sengwer Indigenous People, one of the few remaining hunter-gatherers of the world, from their ancestral home in Kenya’s Cherangany Hills.

SIGN BELOW – DEADLINE March 6, 2014 

2pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time

The Kenyan government calls the Sengwer People ‘squatters,’ despite the fact that they and their ancestors have lived in the Cherangany Hills since time immemorial; and that Article (63d) of the Kenyan constitution (2010) grants them inalienable rights to their ancestral lands.

Sengwer spokesman Yator Kiptum denounced the “disaster” carried out by a combined force of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and Administration Police, a paramilitary unit of the police, now evicting the Sengwer, destroying property and burning homes[1]. “The government of Kenya is forcing us into extinction,” he said.[2] According to international human rights law such as the Convention on Genocide, forced relocation of ethnic or racial minorities is a very grave violation and can constitute genocide.

World Bank’s complicity

We take great exception to the press statement issued by the World Bank[3] in which it attempts to distance itself from the forced relocation of the Sengwer People. The cause and effect is perfectly clear; the Bank in its highly controversial role as both carbon credit financier and broker is aiding and abetting the forced relocation of an entire Indigenous People through its Natural Resource Management Plan (NRMP) which includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), in the Cherangany Hills.

What is perhaps most disturbing about the statement is the World Bank’s offer to the Kenyan government, “to share best practices in resettlement in line with its safeguard policies. These seek to improve or restore the living standards of people affected by involuntary resettlement.” The World Bank is both admitting its complicity in the forced relocation of the Sengwer People as well as offering to collude with the Kenyan government to cover-up cultural genocide. Claims of being able to restore and improve the living standards of evicted people such as the Sengwer are crude, paternalistic, colonial in nature and above all smack of sheer arrogance on the World Bank’s part.

Background

From 2007 till date, there have been almost yearly forced evictions of the Sengwer People[4] with the latest evictions being the most violent of them all. It is no coincidence that the evictions began in 2007, the very same the year that the World Bank’s Natural Resource Management Project started[5].

In 2013, the Sengwer People moved to court to file an injunction against their imminent removal from their homes and in May an interim injunction was secured at the Eldoret high-court. These orders were further extended in November and on 18 January 2014; the same court issued further orders requiring that the police arrest anyone breaching the injunction until the matter of community rights to their land is resolved. The government of Kenya has continued to ignore these court orders, taking upon itself the role of judge and prosecutor of the Sengwer People’s case.

The Sengwer People are being accused of encroaching on and destroying the forests in the Cherangany Hills, leading to the drying up of rivers that provide water to nearby towns and villages. The government of Kenya states that evicting these ‘squatters’ is the only way to begin the ‘conservation’ of the ecosystems and specially the forests in the area. This is a complete obfuscation of the truth. The Sengwer People have always preserved these ecosystems in their ancestral land by practicing by living sustainably and are now facing complete annihilation under the guise of ‘conservation’ under REDD.

The Kenyan government insists on not distinguishing between the Sengwer People and a large group of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), including those affected by the 2007-2008 post-election violence, and victims of landslides who have settled in the Embobut Forest area. The government’s refusal to make this distinction is an attempt to falsely label the Sengwer People as “squatters.”

REDD driving Land Grabs and Forced Relocation of Indigenous Peoples

We are alarmed at the obvious connection between these evictions and the World Bank’s funding of the Kenyan government’s REDD+ ‘readiness’ program in the Cherangany Hills through the bank’s Natural Resource Management project (NRMP). REDD is a highly controversial emissions reduction scheme that uses forests, plantations and lands in the Global South as carbon offsets and supposed sponges of the fossil fuel carbon emissions and pollution from the Global North.

The head of conservation at the Kenya Forest Service, Mr. Solomon Mibei, is on record stating that “REDD+ mechanism is a future option.” He also admitted that the KFS is doing carbon financing workshops with communities. “At the moment, the KFS is conducting workshops with communities living around the Embobut forest and the Kakamega forest to educate them on carbon financing.” Furthermore, the Kenya Forest service has been designated as the REDD+ focal point for the coordination of national REDD+ readiness activities.

REDD+ allows rich polluting countries to shirk their historical responsibilities for and contribution to the climate crisis we now face by enabling them to shift the burden to ‘developing’ countries like Kenya. Instead of reducing emissions at source, which is the only sustainable way to stop the climate catastrophe, such schemes allow them to pretend to reduce emissions elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately as the Sengwer case shows, it is the poorest and most marginalized in developing countries who not only suffer the most from climate change but also the negative effects of the false solutions to climate change like REDD. These false solutions, above all, enable global economic interests to benefit from massive land grabs and the abuse of human and environmental rights.

The World Bank project initially claimed to address land claims of the indigenous communities, as part of the process of ensuring the fair and effective management of the Cherangany Hills forest. This was welcomed by the Sengwer People who thought it would be a great opportunity to address decades of marginalization and loss of access to their ancestral lands which they had faced under the hands of successive Kenyan governments.

But this initiative was soon dropped by the Bank which claimed that it was ‘too complicated’ but at the same time continued to fund the Kenyan government’s REDD+ work in the Cherangany Hills, thereby further entrenching the marginalization of the Sengwer People[6].

In January 2013, members of the Sengwer People made a formal complaint to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, the organ tasked with the duty of reviewing the impacts of the projects funded by the World Bank[7]. The Inspection Panel visited Kenya in May 2013 to assess the eligibility of the complaint and members of the Sengwer People described the loss of access to much of their ancestral lands as well as their traditional right to protect the forests which they have always depended on for their survival[8]. The Inspection Panel found the complaint to be admissible and a full investigation was recommended, with the final outcome of the investigation expected by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

Unfortunately, the abuses against the Sengwer People are not an exception. The violent eviction of the Ogiek People from the Mau Forest for UNEP-funded REDD is another example of Indigenous Peoples in Kenya being evicted for REDD.[9]

The No REDD in Africa Network’s Maputo Declaration (2013)[10], declared that REDD-type projects are leading to the displacement of forest dependent communities, servitude, killings, repression and other human rights abuses, and the Sengwer Peoples’ plight is a clear example of what we condemn and why there must be no REDD in Africa.

The No REDD in Africa Network has repeatedly denounced that  REDD+ is not merely a false solution to climate change, but is emerging as a new form of colonialism, economic subjugation and a driver of land grabs so massive that they may constitute a continent grab.[11] We must defend the continent from carbon colonialism.

The forced relocation of the Sengwer People by the AK-47 touting Kenya Forest Service is reminiscent of the forced removals of rural communities by the then South African government during the apartheid era. We had hoped that this kind of history would not repeat itself in the continent.

Demands to Government of Kenya:

1. We demand that the government of Kenya immediately and definitively halt the evictions of the Sengwer Indigenous People, return their ancestral lands and provide full reparations and compensation and provide guarantees that they will not be attacked again.

2. We demand that the government of Kenya should issue a formal apology to the Sengwer, duly recognizing these law-abiding citizens of Kenya of as the owners and best custodians of their territory and forests in the Cherangany Hills.

Demands to Governments and the United Nations:

1. We request that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Adviser on Genocide, the UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples,  the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples and the UN Expert Mechanism on Indigenous Peoples immediately coordinate, issue statements and take measures to halt the forced relocation and extinction of the Sengwer People, as well as propose concrete measures for the recovery of their territory, reparations, justice and guarantees of non-repetition.
2. We demand that governments, companies, carbon traders, the World Bank and the United Nations including UN-REDD, UNEP, UNDP and others immediately cancel these harmful REDD and other carbon offset schemes.
3. We request that the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Adviser on Genocide prepare a report on how REDD and carbon offsets are causing violations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4. We demand the creation of an International Truth Commission on the forced relocation of the Sengwer People and abuses associated with REDD, REDD-type projects, the Clean Development Mechanism and carbon trading and carbon offsets in the world; composed of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and experts on human rights, the environment and the climate.

Request to African Commission:

1. We invite the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to prepare a report on the impact of REDD and carbon offsets on the Indigenous Peoples, local communities and land grabbing in Africa.

In closing, we cordially request that the Government of Kenya, the United Nations and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to respond to these demands and requests, and take the corresponding action.

For the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN),

Signed by: Nnimmo Bassey & Anabela Lemos

Cc:

• President – Uhuru Kenyatta
• United Nations Secretary General – Ban Ki-Moon
• President of the World Bank – Jim Yong Kim
• UN High Commissioner on Human Rights – Navi Pillay
• UN Special Adviser on prevention of genocide – Adama Dieng
• UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples – James Anaya
• UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition – Pablo de Greiff
• UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect – Jennifer Welsh
• United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples
• African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities in Africa
• Coordinator of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Programme on Indigenous Peoples – Dr. Albert Barume
• UN-REDD Programme Policy Board and Secretariat
• UNEP, Executive Director Achim Steiner
• UNDP, Administrator Helen Clark
• Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)

LIST OF SIGN-ONS

International and Regional level organisations

No REDD in African Network (NRAN)

African Biodiversity Network

Indigenous Environmental Network

Health of Mother Earth Foundation

The Rules

World Rainforest Movement

National-level organisations

Justiça Ambiental (Friends of the Earth Mozambique)

Timberwatch, South Africa

Rainforest Resource and Development Centre (RRDC), Nigeria

Kenya preparing for REDD in the Embobut Forest and forcing Sengwer People “into extinction”

Feb 7, 2014

January 31, 2014

Last year the Government of Kenya was getting “ready” for REDD in the Embobut Forest, now it is violently evicting the Sengwer People and forcing them “into extinction.” According to Survival International, “as many as a thousand homes have already been torched.”[i]

Sengwer spokesman Yator Kiptum denounced the “disaster” caused by combined force of the Kenya Forest Service and Administration Police, a paramilitary unit of the police, which is now evicting the Sengwer not just from the Embobut Forest but from the entirety of the Cherangany Hills, destroying property and burning homes. “The government of Kenya is forcing us into extinction,” he said.[ii]

The extension of the evictions to all other areas in the Cherangany Hills forest complex to include Kapolet and Lelan/Kamolokon “means the removal of the entire population of Sengwer indigenous people living in the Cherangany Hills from their ancestral lands.”[iii] Some13,500 Sengwer live in the Cherangany Hills in Kenya’s Northern Rift Valley, and are one of the few hunter-gatherer groups left in eastern Africa.[iv]

According to Forest Peoples Programme, the Sengwer are not squatters. “The Sengwer have their rights to their ancestral forest lands enshrined in the Constitution and international law.” [v] The Sengwer obtained court orders to prevent further evictions to no avail.

Inspector Stephene Chessa who works for the Kenya Forest Service and is in charge of the Embobut evictions, denied anyone had been evicted by force. According to Mr. Chessa, the presence of the security forces is to ensure that the process is smooth.[vi] Funders of the Kenya Forest Service include the World Bank and the government of Finland.[vii]

Forest guards arrive in Kenya’s Embobut Forest in preparation for the evictions. © FPP

Last year, the World Bank funded the Government of Kenya’s REDD+ Program exclusively through its $68.5 million dollar Natural Resources Management Program, in the Cherangany Hills.[viii]

According its Inspection Panel report No. 77959-KE, the World Bank was “financing REDD+ readiness activities” as part of this program. As of last May, activities started include: “Identification of Grazing Systems as a REDD+ Strategy Option [and] Development of a Methodology for Monitoring Community Engagement in Forest Management and REDD+.”[ix] REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is a carbon offset mechanism that uses forests and land as sponges for Northern pollution.[x]

Solomon Mibei, Head of Conservation at Kenya Forest Service (KFS), said that “At the moment, the KFS is conducting workshops with communities living around the Embobut forest and the Kakamega forest to educate them on carbon financing.”[xi]

Homes of the Sengwer People in Kenya’s Cherangany Hills torched by forest guards © Justin Kenrick/ Survival

However, according to Forest Peoples Programme, KFS does not have a good track record protecting forests. “…when the KFS is in control then indigenous forest is fast destroyed, as profit-making plantations and agriculture replace the biodiversity of the indigenous forest.”[xii]

Possible partners for eventually doing REDD in Kenya include the Africa Development Bank, which is already working with communities on “forest conservation” exchange programs through a programme known as Green Zones Development Support Project (GZDSP).[xiii] Toyota[xiv] and Coca-Cola[xv] may also be prospective partners.

Last year, Sengwer representatives denounced previous KFS evictions in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 as well as the alleged shooting of the Sengwer woman Mrs. Beatrice Chepkorir in The Cherangany Hills Project Operation area of the World Bank-funded Natural Resources Management Project.[xvi] The Sengwer representatives also demanded that the Bank suspend funding for REDD+ until these injustices are addressed.[xvii]

This is not the first time in Kenya that Indigenous People suffer violent evictions from their ancestral territory that is slated for REDD. “The Mau Forest was made “ready” for UNEP-funded REDD with violent evictions of the Indigenous Ogiek People,” which threaten their cultural survival.[xviii] A landmark ruling on these evictions is expected to be handed down by the African Court this year.

The evictions of the Sengwer join the growing roster of land grabs and grave human rights violations caused by REDD ‘readyness” initiatives and forest carbon projects, which also include persecution, imprisonment, and killing.[xix] The evictions of the Sengwer may also confirm Friends of the Earth International’s concern that REDD could “foster an ‘armed protection’ mentality that could lead to the displacement of millions of forest-dependent people, including by force.”[xx]

“A false solution to climate change, REDD+ is emerging as a new form of colonialism, economic subjugation and a driver of land grabs so massive that they may constitute a continent grab. We must defend the continent from carbon colonialism,” declares the No REDD in Africa Network.

Even the United Nations admits that REDD+ could result in the “lock-up of forests,” “loss of land,” “conflict over resources,” “new risks for the poor” and “marginalize the landless.”[xxi]

There has been some debate as to whether REDD could potentially cause cultural genocide.[xxii] The evictions of the Sengwer People indicate that it very well may.

###

In China, a Plan to Turn Rice Into Carbon Credits

Dec 2, 2013

Biotech Firm Pushes Using Less Fertilizer; Ban on Altered Seeds

By Lauren Etter
Wall Street Journal

YINCHUAN, China — Agriculture contributes more to total global greenhouse-gas emissions than the entire world transportation sector, according to a United Nations-sponsored panel. To Eric Rey, that sounds like the makings of a business plan.

On a recent day, Mr. Rey pulled on a pair of rubber boots and waded into a muddy rice paddy — the place where he hopes to battle global warming and earn a fortune for his budding biotech company.

Mr. Rey, president and chief executive of Arcadia Biosciences of Davis, Calif., has ventured to this remote corner of northern China — a patchwork of flower fields and emerald rice paddies punctuated by ornamented mosques — to sell farmers a genetically engineered rice seed. He says the seed, still in development, will cut their need for nitrogen fertilizer, which is among their biggest costs — and a huge source of greenhouse gases. He then aims to sell the resulting carbon credits on a growing global exchange.

“Here’s an opportunity for farmers to make more money, for us to be more profitable and for the environment to benefit,” said Mr. Rey, a lanky 51-year old, beaming as he brushed his hand across the tips of the rice grains. “It’s a triple win.”

Entrepreneurs around the globe are racing to feed a $30 billion market for carbon credits, which offer companies a way to comply with emissions-reduction requirements without actually cutting their own output of greenhouse gases. The market arose in the wake of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which most industrial countries except the U.S. agreed to a collective 5% reduction in their greenhouse-gas emissions by 2012.

Tapping Agriculture

In a typical transaction, an industrial company that is having trouble reducing emissions can buy credits from another company that has figured out a cost-efficient way to cut its own carbon output beyond what is required. Many early carbon-credit projects focused on curbing emissions at industrial facilities, including reducing methane emissions at landfills. But entrepreneurs like Mr. Rey see huge potential in tapping into agriculture — the No. 4 producer of global-warming gas.

Agriculture contributes about 14% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is smaller than emissions from energy use, forestry and industry, but larger than transportation.

By focusing on rice in China, Mr. Rey may be tapping into a treasure trove. Much of the greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture come from nitrogen fertilizer. China is the biggest user of fertilizer and the world’s largest rice producer.

But his quest to turn Chinese rice into carbon credits faces big hurdles. His company needs to do field tests in China to prove that its genetically modified seeds can thrive there. China’s intellectual-property laws are weak and its farmers are set in their ways, leaving biotech firms stumped over how to make money from its vast agriculture sector. Monsanto Co., a pioneer in the Chinese market, has retreated in frustration.

Most daunting, he must persuade the Chinese government to allow companies to sell staple food crops, like rice, that have been bioengineered. Though genetically modified seeds are common in the U.S., European and Asian countries have been more cautious about their use.

Mr. Rey, a biotech veteran who enjoys adventures such as flying aerobatic planes or tracking baboons in Tanzania, isn’t deterred by the odds. “A set of rules is something that somebody made up in their mind,” he says.

He spent 15 years at Calgene, developer of the “Flavr Savr” tomato, the first genetically modified whole food approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Calgene was acquired by Monsanto in 1997 and that year, Mr. Rey set up his own consulting firm.

Growing Concern

• The Situation: Eric Rey has a plan to profit from the vast amount of global-warming gases created by the fertilizer used in growing rice in China.
• The Background: He is trying to sell a gene his company owns that he says allows rice plants to use less fertilizer. He plans to sell the reduced emissions on the growing global market for carbon credits.
• What’s Next: He is testing Chinese rice fields to get a base line for how much gas is emitted and is working with Chinese researchers on developing local rice that contains his company’s gene.

Read More

• World Bank report on the carbon trading market

One day in 2000, he got a call from John Sperling, a billionaire who made a fortune creating University of Phoenix, an online college. Mr. Sperling, an investor in biotech projects including cloning and human longevity, was seeking help on a project in Eritrea trying to raise plants that could grow in salt water to aid poor farmers. The project wasn’t successful, but the two found a common interest in using biotechnology to solve hunger and help farmers.

“The grand design is someday to create plants that are salt-tolerant, nitrogen-efficient and drought-resistant,” says Mr. Sperling. “That is the nirvana of agricultural engineering.”

In 2002, Mr. Rey, with funding from Mr. Sperling, formed Arcadia. Today, the company’s staff of 75 scouts research institutions for new technologies, hoping to develop and eventually license them. So far, it has nine technologies in the pipeline, including salt-tolerant plants, safflower oil enhanced with omega-6 fatty acids and tomatoes with a longer shelf life. The company expects to commercialize its first product in 2008.

Forgot to Fertilize

The year Arcadia was formed, its researchers came across work at the University of Alberta in the field of nitrogen-use efficiency. The Canadian researchers had been trying to create a plant that could thrive in salty soils. Instead they stumbled upon a plant that thrived without fertilizer after a lab director forgot to fertilize one of the trial seeds. Arcadia licensed the technology in 2002 for an undisclosed amount.

To date, Mr. Rey says Arcadia has invested “tens of millions of dollars” into the nitrogen technology — to develop genetically modified seeds or plants than can grow with half the amount of fertilizer normally required. The amount hasn’t exceeded $40 million, he says, but “the ongoing investment rate is pretty aggressive.”

In 2005, Mr. Rey’s company signed an agreement giving Monsanto rights to develop and commercialize the nitrogen-efficient technology for canola. Terms weren’t disclosed.

Others are also trying to develop such seeds. “Essentially all of the biotech companies have some program involving nitrogen use,” says Fred Below, professor of crop physiology at the University of Illinois. He says developing countries will be beneficiaries of this technology because they have a hard time affording fertilizer.

Rice’s Role

Mr. Rey first came across the idea that rice was a big contributor to air pollution in China in a conversation with researchers from the International Fertilizer Industry Association in January 2006.

A few weeks later, he was reading an article about carbon credits at power plants as he worked out on an elliptical trainer at a gym near his garden-surrounded home in Berkeley. If power plants could generate carbon credits, he thought, why couldn’t rice fields?

He began doing more research on sources of greenhouse-gas emissions. He learned that the biggest source of agriculture-related greenhouse gases is nitrogen fertilizer. That’s because only about half the fertilizer applied to fields is typically consumed by the plants. The rest seeps into the ground, becoming a primary contributor to water pollution, or is emitted into the air as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

In October 2006, Mr. Rey met with agricultural researchers visiting the U.S. from Ningxia, a tiny mountainous province in China near Mongolia. The researchers explained that China, the world’s biggest user of fertilizer, had a huge problem with runoff that was leaving lakes and rivers devoid of life. Rising fertilizer prices are hurting poor farmers.

Harsh Land

In Ningxia, the land is harsh and water is limited. To help crops grow, farmers dump heaps of fertilizer on the land, making the province one of China’s biggest per-acre fertilizer users. The researchers invited Mr. Rey to visit Ningxia to see if his nitrogen fertilizer technology could help.

Mr. Rey was intrigued, but was confronted with a problem other biotechnology companies face: How to make money in China?

Chinese farmers tend to save seed from harvest to replant the following year. Others save seeds and repackage them illegally to sell on the black market. Both practices deny biotech companies their main source of revenue — a fresh supply of seeds that must be bought or licensed each year.

Biotech firms also struggle to keep track of China’s myriad farms. The average size of a Chinese farm is less than one acre, compared with 440 acres in the U.S.

That problem is familiar to veterans like Monsanto, which became one of the first foreign companies to introduce a genetically modified cotton seed in China in the late 1990s. The company has since scaled back investments there and refrained from introducing its latest seed technology in part because of “the inability to effectively control the spread of the technology illegally,” according to Brett Begemann, executive vice president.

For Mr. Rey, the threads of a solution began to come together with what he calls the “carbon wrinkle.” Rather than charging farmers a premium for genetically modified seeds — the traditional business model — farmers would pay for the price of regular seed, plus about half of the carbon credits generated by their reduced fertilizer use.

That would give farmers an incentive not to cheat: The more of his rice seed they plant, the less fertilizer they use and the more carbon credits everyone gets to cash in.

In January, Mr. Rey arrived in Ningxia, a place he says he never could have located on a map a year ago, to meet with local officials. Decreasing fertilizer use is a potential “big savings for farmers and the regional economy,” says Liu Rong Guang, president of the government-run Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences.

But one of the first questions locals had was how poor farmers would pay for genetically modified seeds. Mr. Rey explained the carbon-wrinkle idea and interest increased, he says. It helped, he says, that Ningxia is already home to other carbon-credit projects, mostly generated by large wind farms.

His idea is still at least five years away from being fully implemented, in part because the carbon credit methodology needs to be accepted by a U.N. body.

To help make the case to the U.N., Mr. Rey recently journeyed about 100 miles outside Yinchuan to join Chinese researchers from the Ningxia Academy in an experimental rice paddy growing conventional rice. He plunged in with the researchers, to tend to a series of yellow metal boxes equipped with plastic tubes. The boxes were trapping nitrous oxide being emitted from the fields. Syringes sucked out the air into malleable metal bags.

Measuring Emissions

The measurements will show how much nitrous oxide is emitted from conventional rice using different amounts of fertilizer. That information will be the basis for research submitted to the U.N. seeking approval for the carbon-credit methodology.

So far, China has allowed the commercialization of genetically modified versions of cotton and some minor food crops, including tomatoes and sweet peppers. Commercializing bioengineered seeds for major food crops — such as corn, soybeans and rice — remains forbidden.

Some government agencies in China still harbor reservations about the safety of such crops, says Jikun Huang, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But he thinks that will eventually change as China’s population grows. “China considers biotechnology as a major importance to promoting agricultural productivity in the future,” he says.

By some estimates, China is expected to soon surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Mr. Rey thinks that by the time his technology is ready in a few years, China will have warmed up to the idea of using biotechnology to benefit the environment.

“It’s a no-brainer,” he says.

Click here to read: Rice, carbon markets and the Environmental Defense Fund

California ARB- Proposal:

Potential New Compliance Offset Protocol Rice Cultivation Projects

Introduction

The potential new Compliance Offset Protocol Rice Cultivation Projects will provide methods for quantifying reductions in methane emissions from flooded rice fields.  Methane emissions are a result of anaerobic decomposition caused by the flooding of fields containing organic matter.  The organic matter originates from soil amendments, plant residues and root exudates.  Methane production is affected by the duration of flooding, the rice variety and the availability of crop residues and organic matter.

All reductions must be fully documented, and accurately quantified.  ARB is considering using the DeNitrification-DeComposition (DNDC) biogeochemical process model to quantify changes in N₂O and CH₄ emissions due to the eligible practices.  Projects would be limited to the major rice growing regions in California and the Mid-South (Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) for which the DNDC model has been calibrated with empirical data.  ARB is considering three eligible practices for California: 1) replacing wet seeding with dry seeding, 2) early drainage at the end of growing season, and 3) rice straw removal after harvest; and four eligible practices for the Mid-South: 1) early drainage at the end of growing season, 2) rice straw removal after harvest, 3) intermittent flooding, and 4) staggered winter flooding.

The Offset Project Operator or Authorized Project Designee would be required to use this protocol to quantify and report greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions.  The protocol would provide eligibility rules, methods to quantify GHG emission reductions, offset project monitoring instructions, and procedures for preparing Offset Project Data Reports.  All offset projects would be required to submit to independent verification by ARB-accredited verification bodies.  Regulatory requirements for verification of Offset Project Data reports will be provided in the Cap-and-Trade Regulation

This protocol will be designed to ensure the complete, consistent, transparent, accurate, and conservative quantification of GHG emission reductions associated with a Rice Cultivation project.  The protocol will be comprised of both quantification methodologies and regulatory program requirements to develop an Rice Cultivation project for generating ARB offset credits.

ARB conducted a workshop on March 28, 2013 discussing protocol requirements, eligibility, and timeframe.  Workshop materials can be found at: http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/meetings/meetings.htm.

Reference Documents:

American Carbon Registry Rice Protocol

Climate Action Reserve Rice Cultivation Protocol Version 1.0 (December 14, 2011)

Climate Action Reserve Rice Cultivation Protocol Version 1.1 (June 3, 2013)

DNDC model

ARB is forming a technical working group to provide technical expertise and assistance in developing the potential protocol.  Contact Yachun Chow at (916) 322-7450 or via email at ychow@arb.ca.gov if you are interested in participating.

Technical Working Group Materials:

May 10, 2013 Technical Working Group Meeting         Agenda        Presentation

July 19, 2013 Technical Working Group Meeting         Agenda

October 1, 2013 Technical Working Group Meeting     Agenda        Presentation 1        Presentation 2

August 19, 2013 Workshop Materials:

We have been working diligently with stakeholders and the public to develop an ARB Compliance Offset Protocol to reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation.  That process has raised some questions which require more time to address.  Work is now underway to resolve these issues, and we expect to bring a Rice Cultivation Project Protocol before the Board by spring 2014.

A Pathetic REDD Package

Nov 28, 2013

On 12 November 2013, the Global Forest Coalition made the following intervention during the negotiations in Warsaw on methodologies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+):

“The Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide coalition of 54 NGOs and Indigenous peoples’ organizations promoting rights-based forest policies shares the concerns of our NGO and IPO colleagues about the extremely weak draft decisions that have been developed in the areas of drivers of forest loss and safeguards. We particularly wonder what we are doing here if this body, and the REDD+ mechanism it is designing, is not capable of addressing the real drivers of forest loss, most of which are linked to international commodity trade. Frankly, if REDD+ is not about addressing the real drivers of forest loss, we don’t think it is a mechanism that should be supported. So we strongly urge governments to focus on developing more effective non-market based approaches to address the international drivers of forest loss, and if they feel they cannot do that within the framework of the REDD mechanism, we urge them to do so within other Frameworks for Various approaches.”

The text that was adopted by the 19th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on the drivers of forest loss is without doubt the weakest text any international forest-related body has ever adopted on this issue. The negotiators could at least have had the decency to refer to the far more elaborate Proposals for Action and recommendations on addressing the underlying causes of forest loss the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests and the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity adopted 13 resp. 11 years ago. The REDD+ drivers text does not include any reference to the broadly recognized fact that the most important drivers of forest loss are linked to international commodity chains, and that these drivers will per definition lead to transboundary leakage of emissions if actions to address them are implemented at the national supply-side level only. Such transboundary leakage can already be detected as a result from the Brazilian efforts to reduce forest loss in neighboring countries like Paraguay and Colombia, where both soy expansion and the expansion of large-scale cattle ranching is mainly driven by Brazilian immigrants, and the massive leakage of emissions caused by the Chinese logging ban. For the climate, this means there is no positive result of such supply-side measures, but the countries themselves will be able to claim results-based payments, which is exactly what motivated a country like Brazil to suddenly become a pro-REDD champion. And please note it was Brazil that played the key role in derailing the REDD negotiations in 2012. To what extend the recent Norwegian contribution to the Amazon fund has played a role in buying their support for the 2013 deal can only be guessed, admittedly the clumsy EU suggestion in 2012 that middle income countries would not need financial support for REDD+ policies also caused the negotiations to turn sour in Doha. It is clear that REDD+ was always a profitable deal for Brazil, provided they have full and unlimited access to the funding.

Meanwhile, none of the big forest countries had any interest in a REDD+ decision that hinted at taking demand-side action to address the drivers of forest loss, even though reducing demand for key commodities is the only way to reduce forest loss without causing leakage. Especially biofuel policies provide a lot of opportunity for reducing commodity demand (as the demand is artificially created in the first place) but they are a red flag, especially for Brazil and Argentina, which acted fast to kill any reference to demand-side measures in the drivers text in June 2013. The chairs of the negotiations and many other countries were fine with this, in fact, one of the co-chairs stated openly at an NGO briefing in June that he felt that “drivers are better addressed somewhere else”, and not in the REDD+ mechanism. In fact, GFC itself already concluded in its latest report on REDD+ and the underlying causes of forest loss (http://globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/REDD-and-UC-report-final.pdf) that through its focus on national results-based payments REDD+ is per definition not the right mechanism to address the main drivers of forest loss. We also found that in the countries we analyzed (Brazil, Colombia, Uganda, Tanzania and India) the REDD+ policy discussions had not lead to any concrete measures to address the main drivers of forest loss in practice, even in the cases where they had been identified in the readiness process.

The Coalition of Rainforest Nations, as usual totally dominated by PNG as many of its members are not able to follow the (English….) negotiations themselves, Norway (especially trying to convince its own new government its billions were not wasted) and key other countries, including the Philippines as co-chair of the working group, had very strong financial interests to get any kind of deal on REDD+ as well. Sadly, the EU was coordinated on this issue by a country with at least as much interest in REDD+ offsets as Norway, namely the Netherlands – quite fascinating how two of the biggest fossil fuel producers in Europe played such a big role in these negotiations. So there was a strong willingness to agree on any kind of text, including on issues like MRV, reference levels and safeguard information systems, where countries are more or less free to provide any kind of information according to any kind of system they want, with only some vague principles and a rather non-sensical verification system to guide them on reference levels and MRV. In our report on the REDD+ negotiations in June we already classified the emerging package of REDD rules as the “Whatever Approach” (See: http://globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Forest-Cover-no43-June-2013-final.pdf).

All the REDD decisions adopted are pathetically vague and non-sensical from a legal point of view, using clauses like verifications that “might” happen, technical assessments that should be limited to “facilitative, non-intrusive exchanges”, and “summaries” of information on things as important as safeguards without any further guidance. Frankly, such texts are an insult to international law. Especially the weak decision on reference levels will lead to REDD+ contributing very little to additional emission reductions. Of course, there is a clear relation between the weakness of the reference level text and the weakness of the drivers text: If drivers remain unaddressed at the demand side, this inflates the baseline, and makes it possible for countries to demand far more funding to reduce forest loss.

So REDD+ has been developed as a mechanism that will not address the main drivers of forest loss. In fact it provides an incentive for the international community not to address demand-side drivers. Due to the ‘whatever approach’ it has taken to its own rules there is a great risk it will not contribute anything to mitigating climate change, in fact, if REDD+ would be financed through offsets it would seriously undermine the climate regime. The safeguards and safeguards information systems discussion has taken up a lot of attention from the NGO community following the negotiations, but only in countries where the NGOs and especially Indigenous peoples were able to put a very strong fist on the table, like Indonesia, these safeguards have provided instruments for some positive policy measures. In most other countries (like Paraguay), the NGO and IPO community is far too weak to promote or even monitor their implementation, and as a result the Government will be able to provide any kind of artificial information in its “summary” on how it has implemented the safeguards.

Last but not least, REDD has been developed as a results-based payment system with a small but quite significant omission: It is as yet not defined who or what will actually pay for the results. The fact that the REDD+ mechanism was adopted at the darkest and most unproductive Conference of the Parties the UNFCCC had even seen is significant for the real intentions of the mechanism, which was developed by a small group of isolated negotiators that seemed untouched by the drama’s that took place in the other negotiations, which ranged from tears and hunger strikes to walk outs by country negotiators and most of the NGOs. However, the lack of a clear financial agreement on what was previously announced as “the finance COP” will have very serious consequences for REDD as well. In fact, contrary to all existing international forest policies, REDD+ is 100% dependent on financial support. It is always easy to talk about ‘other people’s money’, and this is precisely what the REDD negotiators did when they mainly referred to the Green Climate Fund as having a “key role” as the potential source for results-based payments. Alas, finance negotiators have proven to be less interested in REDD+ than REDD+ negotiators interested in finance; when the Board of the Green Climate Fund discussed its priorities earlier in 2013 REDD+ was chosen as 1 of the 14 results-based areas only, side by side with entirely independent “sustainable forest management” and “sustainable land use” areas, making it clear that REDD+ is only one of the forest-related policy areas to be funded. More importantly, this fund remained basically empty in Warsaw, which rather saw a controversial declaration by the US that it expected most of the 100 billion USD that was promised by the developed countries in 2009 to come from the private sector. The EU had already clarified in 2010 that it did not expect more than 40% of this 100 billion to consist of public support from the developed countries to developing countries. A quick calculation (40/14 results-based areas) learns that public funding levels for REDD+ should not be expected to rise significantly above current levels of readiness support, and this is in the very best case scenario that the 100 (or rather, 40) billion commitment is ever fulfilled. According to the EU a remaining 40% is supposed to come from the private sector, but according the latest State of the Forest Carbon Market report forest carbon offset markets have already declined with some 20% since 2011 and Conservation International recently calculated that supply of REDD+ offsets on the carbon markets is currently some three times higher than demand. More importantly, a small victory for the climate justice movement and countries concerned about carbon markets in the dark Polish days was that negotiations on a new market mechanism were postponed due to profound disagreements about the need for an evaluation of existing market mechanisms before such a new one is established. It is not yet sure whether agreement on a New Market Mechanism will be reached before 2015 at all.

Meanwhile, other forest policies continued to gather momentum at the Warsaw COP. They are explicitly mentioned in the decision on results-based finance, and influential events like the Global Landscapes Forum showed clear support for holistic, integrated policies that fully take into account the many non-carbon benefits of forests, and the interactions between different types of land use. Here again, the REDD+ mechanism simply does not provide the right incentives for such holistic approaches as its financial incentives target carbon benefits only, with non-carbon benefits being at most something to ‘take into account’ as it is suggested they make the carbon-oriented approach of REDD+ easier to implement. Alternative non-market based approaches like the joint mitigation and adaptation approach proposed by Bolivia seem far more in line with the outcomes of the Global Landscapes Forum, and while these are still to be developed, they could very well provide a better framework to address international drivers of forest loss as well. These approaches also do not pretend to be 100% finance-dependent, which is not unimportant in light of the bleak financial outcomes of Warsaw.

In summary, this pathetic REDD package deal might as well mark the beginning of its end.

Simone Lovera
Executive Director
Global Forest Coalition
Bruselas 2273
Asuncion, Paraguay
tel: +595-21-663654
Skype: simonelovera
simone.lovera@globalforestcoalition.org
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org

“It’s time to stop this madness” – Philippines plea at UN climate talks

Nov 11, 2013

Last updated on 11 November 2013, 2:27 pm

Yeb Sano tells UN summit in Warsaw “colossal devastation” from Typhoon Haiyan should serve as warning to planet

Photo Credit: RTCC: http://www.rtcc.org

Philippines lead negotiator Yeb Sano has just addressed the opening session of the UN climate summit in Warsaw – calling for urgent action to prevent a repeat of the devastating storm that hit parts of his country at the weekend. A full transcript of his speech is below.

Mr. President, I have the honor to speak on behalf of the resilient people of the Republic of the Philippines.

At the onset, allow me to fully associate my delegation with the statement made by the distinguished Ambassador of the Republic of Fiji, on behalf of G77 and China as well as the statement made by Nicaragua on behalf of the Like-Minded Developing Countries.

First and foremost, the people of the Philippines, and our delegation here for the United Nations Climate Change Convention’s 19^th Conference of the Parties here in Warsaw, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your expression of sympathy to my country in the face of this national difficulty.

In the midst of this tragedy, the delegation of the Philippines is comforted by the warm hospitality of Poland, with your people offering us warm smiles everywhere we go. Hotel staff and people on the streets, volunteers and personnel within the National Stadium have warmly offered us kind words of sympathy. So, thank you Poland.

The arrangements you have made for this COP is also most excellent and we highly appreciate the tremendous effort you have put into the preparations for this important gathering.

We also thank all of you, friends and colleagues in this hall and from all corners of the world as you stand beside us in this difficult time. I thank all countries and governments who have extended your solidarity and for offering assistance to the Philippines. I thank the youth present here and the billions of young people around the world who stand steadfast behind my delegation and who are watching us shape their future. I thank civil society, both who are working on the ground as we race against time in the hardest hit areas, and those who are here in Warsaw prodding us to have a sense of urgency and ambition. We are deeply moved by this manifestation of human solidarity. This outpouring of support proves to us that as a human race, we can unite; that as a species, we care.

It was barely 11 months ago in Doha when my delegation appealed to the world… to open our eyes to the stark reality that we face… as then we confronted a catastrophic storm that resulted in the costliest disaster in Philippine history. Less than a year hence, we cannot imagine that a disaster much bigger would come. With an apparent cruel twist of fate, my country is being tested by this hellstorm called Super Typhoon Haiyan, which has been described by experts as the strongest typhoon that has ever made landfall in the course of recorded human history. It was so strong that if there was a Category 6, it would have fallen squarely in that box. Up to this hour, we remain uncertain as to the full extent of the devastation, as information trickles in in an agonizingly slow manner because electricity lines and communication lines have been cut off and may take a while before these are restored. The initial assessment show that Haiyan left a wake of massive devastation that is unprecedented, unthinkable and horrific, affecting 2/3 of the Philippines, with about half a million people now rendered homeless, and with scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of a tsunami, with a vast wasteland of mud and debris and dead bodies. According to satellite estimates, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also estimated that Haiyan achieved a minimum pressure between around 860 mbar (hPa; 25.34 inHg) and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated Haiyan to have attained one-minute sustained winds of 315 km/h (195 mph) and gusts up to 378 km/h (235 mph) making it the strongest typhoon in modern recorded history. Despite the massive efforts that my country had exerted in preparing for the onslaught of this monster of a storm, it was just a force too powerful and even as a nation familiar with storms, Super Typhoon Haiyan was nothing we have ever experienced before, or perhaps nothing that any country has every experienced before.

The picture in the aftermath is ever so slowly coming into clearer focus. The devastation is colossal. And as if this is not enough, another storm is brewing again in the warm waters of the western Pacific. I shudder at the thought of another typhoon hitting the same places where people have not yet even managed to begin standing up.

To anyone who continues to deny the reality that is climate change, I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of you armchair. I dare you to go to the islands of the Pacific, the islands of the Caribbean and the islands of the Indian ocean and see the impacts of rising sea levels; to the mountainous regions of the Himalayas and the Andes to see communities confronting glacial floods, to the Arctic where communities grapple with the fast dwindling polar ice caps, to the large deltas of the Mekong, the Ganges, the Amazon, and the Nile where lives and livelihoods are drowned, to the hills of Central America that confronts similar monstrous hurricanes, to the vast savannas of Africa where climate change has likewise become a matter of life and death as food and water becomes scarce. Not to forget the massive hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard of North America. And if that is not enough, you may want to pay a visit to the Philippines right now.

The science has given us a picture that has become much more in focus. The IPCC report on climate change and extreme events underscored the risks associated with changes in the patterns as well as frequency of extreme weather events. Science tells us that simply, climate change will mean more intense tropical storms. As the Earth warms up, that would include the oceans. The energy that is stored in the waters off the Philippines will increase the intensity of typhoons and the trend we now see is that more destructive storms will be the new norm.

This will have profound implications on many of our communities, especially who struggle against the twin challenges of the development crisis and the climate change crisis. Typhoons such as Yolanda (Haiyan) and its impacts represent a sobering reminder to the international community that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. Warsaw must deliver on enhancing ambition and should muster the political will to address climate change.

In Doha, we asked “If not us then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?” (borrowed from Philippine student leader Ditto Sarmiento during Martial Law). It may have fell on deaf ears. But here in Warsaw, we may very well ask these same forthright questions. “If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here in Warsaw, where?”

What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness.

We can stop this madness. Right here in Warsaw.

It is the 19^th COP, but we might as well stop counting, because my country refuses to accept that a COP30 or a COP40 will be needed to solve climate change. And because it seems that despite the significant gains we have had since the UNFCCC was born, 20 years hence we continue to fail in fulfilling the ultimate objective of the Convention.  Now, we find ourselves in a situation where we have to ask ourselves – can we ever attain the objective set out in Article 2 – which is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system? By failing to meet the objective the Convention, we may have ratified the doom of vulnerable countries.

And if we have failed to meet the objective of the Convention, we have to confront the issue of loss and damage. Loss and damage from climate change is a reality today across the world. Developed country emissions reductions targets are dangerously low and must be raised immediately, but even if they were in line with the demand of reducing 40-50% below 1990 levels, we would still have locked-in climate change and would still need to address the issue of loss and damage.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture and the situation is such that even the most ambitious emissions reductions by developed countries, who should have been taking the lead in combatting climate change in the past 2 decades, will not be enough to avert the crisis. It is now too late, too late to talk about the world being able to rely on Annex I countries to solve the climate crisis. We have entered a new era that demands global solidarity in order to fight climate change and ensure that pursuit of sustainable human development remains at the fore of the global community’s efforts. This is why means of implementation for developing countries is ever more crucial.

It was the Secretary general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 1992, Maurice Strong who said that “History reminds us that what is not possible today, may be inevitable tomorrow.”

We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway.

I speak for my delegation. But more than that, I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm. I also speak for those who have been orphaned by this tragedy. I also speak for the people now racing against time to save survivors and alleviate the suffering of the people affected by the disaster.

We can take drastic action now to ensure that we prevent a future where super typhoons are a way of life. Because we refuse, as a nation, to accept a future where super typhoons like Haiyan become a fact of life. We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families, suffering the devastation and misery, having to count our dead, become a way of life. We simply refuse to.

We must stop calling events like these as natural disasters. It is not natural when people continue to struggle to eradicate poverty and pursue development and gets battered by the onslaught of a monster storm now considered as the strongest storm ever to hit land. It is not natural when science already tells us that global warming will induce more intense storms. It is not natural when the human species has already profoundly changed the climate.

Disasters are never natural. They are the intersection of factors other than physical. They are the accumulation of the constant breach of economic, social, and environmental thresholds. Most of the time disasters is a result of inequity and the poorest people of the world are at greatest risk because of their vulnerability and decades of maldevelopment, which I must assert is connected to the kind of pursuit of economic growth that dominates the world; the same kind of pursuit of so-called economic growth and unsustainable consumption that has altered the climate system.

Now, if you will allow me, to speak on a more personal note.

Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in my family’s hometown and the devastation is staggering. I struggle to find words even for the images that we see from the news coverage. I struggle to find words to describe how I feel about the losses and damages we have suffered from this cataclysm.

Up to this hour, I agonize while waiting for word as to the fate of my very own relatives. What gives me renewed strength and great relief was when my brother succeeded in communicating with us that he has survived the onslaught. In the last two days, he has been gathering bodies of the dead with his own two hands. He is hungry and weary as food supplies find it difficult to arrive in the hardest hit areas.

We call on this COP to pursue work until the most meaningful outcome is in sight. Until concrete pledges have been made to ensure mobilization of resources for the Green Climate Fund. Until the promise of the establishment of a loss and damage mechanism has been fulfilled; until there is assurance on finance for adaptation; until concrete pathways for reaching the committed 100 billion dollars have been made; until we see real ambition on stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. We must put the money where our mouths are.

This process under the UNFCCC has been called many names. It has been called a farce. It has been called an annual carbon-intensive gathering of useless frequent flyers. It has been called many names. But it has also been called the Project to save the planet. It has been called “saving tomorrow today”. We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now. Right here, in the middle of this football field.

I call on you to lead us. And let Poland be forever known as the place we truly cared to stop this madness. Can humanity rise to the occasion? I still believe we can.

Update

During his speech, Sano added an unscripted pledge to fast during the conference, until meaningful progress had been made. He said:

“In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home and with my brother who has not had food for the last three days, in all due respect Mr. President, and I mean no disrespect for your kind hospitality, I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this COP until a meaningful outcome is in sight.”

– See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2013/11/11/its-time-to-stop-this-madness-philippines-plea-at-un-climate-talks/#sthash.J5pXtPrv.Fr5vObfX.dpuf

Climate Summit: Don’t turn farmers into ‘climate smart’ carbon traders!

Nov 11, 2013

Published on Thursday, 07 November 2013 20:26

Media release of La Vía Campesina | GRAIN | ETC Group

7 November 2013. Farmers produce food, not carbon. Yet, if some of the governments and corporate lobbies negotiating at the UN climate change conference to be held in Warsaw from 11-22 November have their way, farmland could soon be considered as a carbon sink that polluting corporations can buy into to compensate for their harmful emissions.

“We are directly opposed to the carbon market approach to dealing with the climate crisis,” says Josie Riffaud of La Vía Campesina. “Turning our farmers’ fields into carbon sinks – the rights to which can be sold on the carbon market – will only lead us further away from what we see as the real solution: food sovereignty. The carbon in our farms is not for sale!”

Carbon trading has totally failed to address the real causes of the climate crisis. It was never meant to do so. Rather than reducing carbon emissions at their source, it has created a lucrative market for polluters and speculators to buy and sell carbon credits while continuing to pollute. Now the pressure is increasing to treat farmland as a major carbon sink which can be claimed as yet another counterbalance to industrial emissions. The governments of the US and Australia, the World Bank and the corporate sector have long argued for this, and for the creation of new carbon markets where they can purchase land-based offsets in developing countries. Agribusiness is well positioned to profit from these, and some developing country governments hope that offering their forests, grasslands and farmland to polluters in the North could earn them revenue.

The November United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Warsaw risks pushing us deeper into this carbon market mess. Marcin Korolec, Poland’s minister of the environment and main organiser of the event, proudly announced that for the first time ever, representatives of global business will be formally part of the negotiations. A look at the list of official partners of the conference shows that they are amongst the most polluting industries of the world.

Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, but Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN points out that: “It is the industrial food system – with its heavy use of chemical inputs, the soil erosion and deforestation that accompanies monoculture plantation farming, and the ever-growing drive to supply far away export markets – which is the main culprit behind the climate crisis. Rather than promoting this with carbon markets, the world’s leaders should support peasant farming and agroecology as the solution.” GRAIN’s research has shown that a sustained focus on peasant-based agroecological practices oriented toward restoring organic matter to soils could capture 24-30% of the current global annual greenhouse gas emissions.

A week after the climate negotiators have flown home from Warsaw, most likely without having agreed to any meaningful action on the climate crisis, the World Bank and the governments of the Netherlands and South Africa will convene an international conference in Johannesburg to promote ”climate smart agriculture”, and set up a new alliance to achieve it.

But a look at the proposals on the table shows that it entails nothing more than business as usual: new genetically modified seeds developed by biotechnology corporations, more chemical fertilisers and pesticides by the agrochemical giants, and more ‘bio-intensive’ industrial plantation farming. “Climate smart agriculture has become the new slogan for the agricultural research establishment and the corporate sector to position themselves as the solution to the food and climate crisis,” says Pat Mooney of the ETC Group. “For the world’s small farmers, there is nothing smart about this. It is just another way to push corporate controlled technologies into their fields and rob them of their land.”

At the same time, these very corporations are developing other high-risk technologies, ranging from synthetic biology, to nanotechnology and geoengineering. There is no clear understanding of their impacts and these new dramatic technologies will wreak more havoc on our already fragile planet than cure the climate and environmental crises.

Agriculture’s central role of feeding people and providing livelihoods to smallholders around the world should be defended, says Elizabeth Mpofu, from Vía Campesina. “Rights over our farms, lands, seeds and natural resources need to remain in our hands so we can produce food and care for our mother earth as peasant farmers have done for centuries. We will not allow carbon markets to turn our hard work into carbon sinks that allow polluters to continue their business as usual.”

For more information:

Josie Riffaud, La Vía Campesina
 +33613105291
josieriffaud@yahoo.fr

Henk Hobbelink, GRAIN
 +34 933011381
henk@grain.org

Pat Mooney, ETC Group
 +1 6132412267
mooney@etcgroup.org

Notes

* La Via Campesina is the global movement of peasant farmers struggling for food sovereignty. GRAIN and ETC Group are international organisations that fight the industrial food system and support peasant based alternatives. They have joined forces in a partnership to advance peasant based agroecology.

* For Via Campesina’s positions on food and climate, see the Via Campesina position paper “Small Scale Sustainable Farmers Are Cooling Down The Earth”.

* For GRAIN’s paper on the role of the industrial food system in the climate crisis, and how peasant led agroecology is the real solution, see: “Food and climate change, the forgotten link”

* For ETC Group’s poster on the contributions of the Peasant Food Web to feeding the world compared to the industrial food chain, see:  “Who Will Feed Us? The Industrial Food Chain/The Peasant Food Web”.

Press Statement: Tom Goldtooth – Behind the backs of the People of California

Nov 1, 2013

San Francisco, Oct. 17 – Governor Jerry Brown of California was slated to receive the Blue Green Alliance’s Right Stuff award for environmentalism in San Francisco this evening but did not show up perhaps because he knew it was going to be protested. Outside of the awards ceremony at the Parc 55 Hotel, people protested including Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network who read the following statement.

PRESS STATEMENT OF TOM GOLDTOOTH

Behind the backs of the People of California,
Gov. Brown advances a policy harmful to Indigenous Peoples and Mother Earth

Contacts: Tom Goldtooth
Indigenous Environmental Network (218) 760-0442 ien@igc.org
Pennie Plant, Idle No More Solidarity Bay pennie@gatheringtribes.com

Photo Credit: Mending News

Despite being awarded, as I speak, for his supposed environmentalism, Governor Brown is moving ahead with a policy that grabs land, clear-cuts forests, destroys biodiversity, abuses Mother Earth, pimps Father Sky and threatens the cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples.

This policy privatizes the air we breathe. Commodifies the clouds. Buy and sells the atmosphere. Corrupts the Sacred.

This policy is called carbon trading and REDD. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. But REDD really means Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity. REDD does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at source. And REDD may result in the biggest land grab of the last 500 years.

The State of California is ALREADY using national forests and tree plantations as supposed sponges for its pollution instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at source. The infamous oil giant Shell is using forests in Michigan to offset its refinery in Martinez, California.[i] California is at the vanguard of REDD in the world and posed to do REDD internationally.

REDD is bad for the climate, bad for the environment, bad for Californians, bad for human rights and bad for the economy.

REDD-type and carbon offset projects are already causing human rights violations, land grabs and environmental destruction.[ii] California, you do not want Indigenous Peoples’ blood on your hands. You do not want to be complicit in the Continent Grab of Africa.[iii] Governor Brown, you do not want to contribute to the destruction of the climate by allowing corporate criminals like Shell and Chevron off the hook.[iv] California must not include REDD in its climate law. It is matter of life and death for communities and the climate, and, ultimately, even for Californians.

Officially, California is telling us there is no date to make a decision about international REDD. However, meanwhile behind the backs of the good People of California, the State of California is charging ahead with this false solution to climate change that will render the planet uninhabitable and threaten YOUR future. The Governor recently returned from China where he talked climate and REDD. Behind your backs, California is negotiating the fine print of REDD risk insurance with oil giant Chevron.[v] Yes, Chevron, California’s biggest polluter, infamous for its destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon and sending 15,000 Californians to the hospital last year after the explosion in its Richmond refinery.

Indigenous Peoples, environmental justice organizations and human rights advocates requested a meeting with Governor Brown to explain our grave global and local concerns with REDD but haven’t received even an acknowledgement of our request. But we are here right now!

• REDD is bad for the climate because it lets climate criminals like Shell, Chevron and fracking companies off the hook.
• REDD is bad for the environment because it includes clear-cutting, logging and tree plantations which destroy biodiversity.
• REDD is bad for Californians because it allows polluters to not reduce their pollution and cause more asthma and cancer.
• REDD is bad for human rights. REDD-type projects are already resulting in massive land grabs, violent evictions, forced relocation and carbon slavery.
• REDD is bad for the economy because the carbon market is crashing and investing in it is bad business.

Over a century ago, Chief Seattle asked “How can you buy and sell the sky?” Well, that is exactly what California is doing. That is what Governor Jerry Brown is allowing to be done. This does not deserve an award.

Sitting Bull says that ‘the warrior’s task is to take care of the future of humanity.”

The future of humanity is precisely what is at stake.

• Do we want more pollution?
• Do we want more cancer and asthma?
• Do we want more climate change?
• Do we want carbon trading?
• Do we want REDD?

It is time to defend Mother Earth and Father Sky. Your future depends on it.

Thank you.

[i] Reuters Point Carbon, Shell to buy 500,000 California forest carbon credits http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2224348

[ii] A Dozen of the Worst REDD-type Projects http://www.ienearth.org/docs/REDD-A%20Dozen-of-the-Worst-REDD-type-projects.pdf

[iii] The Worst RED-type Projects in Africa http://no-redd-africa.org/index.php/16-redd-players/84-the-worst-redd-type-projects-in-africa-continent-grab-for-carbon-colonialism

[iv] Exposing REDD, video, http://no-redd-africa.org/index.php/video/67-exposing-redd-the-false-climate-solution

[v] California To Put Buyers On The Hook For Forest Offsets http://www.forestcarbonportal.com/content/california-to-put-buyers-on–the-hook-for-forest-offsets?preview=13090906

Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and NGOs Opposing REDD Request Meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown

Oct 9, 2013

Download Letter (PDF)

INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK, IDLE NO MORE SOLIDARITY SF BAY  & FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, USA in Solidarity With:

CALIFORNIA STATE AND NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

ASIAN PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT NETWORK – COMMUNITIES for a BETTER ENVIRONMENT – GREENACTION for HEALTH and ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE – WEST COUNTY TOXICS COALITION – P.O.D.E.R SAN FRANCISCO – INTERNATIONAL INDIAN TREATY COUNCIL – GLOBAL EXCHANGE – GLOBAL JUSTICE ECOLOGY PROJECT – SEVENTH GENERATION FUND FOR INDIAN DEVELOPMENT, GRASSROOTS FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE, CLIMATE JUSTICE ALLIANCE

 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CARBON TRADE WATCH/EU & LATIN AMERICA – CENSAT AGUA VIVA/FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, COLOMBIA – OTHER WORLDS, INTERNATIONAL – WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT, INTERNATIONAL – JUSTICE IN NIGERIA NOW!, NIGERIA – CORNER HOUSE, UK – HEALTH OF MOTHER FOUNDATION, NIGERIA – GLOBAL ALLIANCE of INDIGENOUS PEOPLES and LOCAL COMMUNITIES on CLIMATE CHANGE AGAINST REDD and for LIFE, INTERNATIONAL – JUSTICA AMBIENTAL, MOZAMBIQUE – FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, MOZAMBIQUE – NO REDD IN AFRICA NETWORK, AFRICA – RAINFOREST RESOURCE AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE, CROSS RIVER TATE, NIGERIA – TIMBERWATCH, SOUTH AFRICA – COECOCEIBA, FRIENDS OF THE EARTH – COSTA RICA, THE RULES- INTERNATIONAL , FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, INTERNATIONAL

October 07, 2013

RE: Request for a response and meeting with Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. and Mary Nichols Chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board concerning AB 32 and Jurisdictional forest offsets abroad – REDD.

Dear Governor Brown,

We, the undersigned [and aforementioned] Indigenous peoples organizations, environmental justice and environmental non-governmental organizations, urge you not to include forest carbon offsets known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) in California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32. Similar REDD-type projects are already adversely affecting forest dwellers, particularly Indigenous peoples abroad, violating human rights and leading to huge land grabs and environmental destruction. ⁱ  Mary D. Nichols as the Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) also plays a key role in our concern with California REDD, as her priorities as chairwoman include moving ahead on the state’s climate change program (AB 32). CARB must not include REDD in AB 32. It could result in a situation of life and death for Indigenous and local forest dependent communities.

As you know, REDD is a carbon offset mechanism whereby the State of California proposes using forests in Mesoamerica, the Amazon, Africa, and other sub-national “partner jurisdictions” with tropical forests as “sponges” for the carbon pollution of polluting industries such as Chevron and Shell. For communities such as Richmond, California, this only furthers environmental justice issues for people living close to the Chevron refineries who have to endure more pollution in their communities, causing long-term health problems such as asthma, birth defects, cancer and depression. REDD prolongs these impacts by making offsets available to these polluting companies, allowing them to avoid reducing their polluting emissions.