While REDD is edging its way into the Paris Outcome, a series of protests and statements against REDD have taken place at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris. Here’s a round-up, with photographs, of some of the No REDD! activities in Paris over the past two weeks.
A crime against humanity
On 30 November 2015, the Indigenous Environmental Network put out a press release under the headline: “UN Paris Accord could end up being a Crime against Humanity and Mother Earth”. REDD is one of the false solutions targetted in the press release.
Nnimmo Bassey, co-coordinator of the No REDD in Africa Network, says,
“REDD may result in the largest land grab in history. It steals your future, lets polluters off the hook and is new form of colonialism. We demand that states and corporations stop privatizing nature!”
It’s a (No REDD) rap
Jendog Lonewolf produced a No REDD video:
Here’s what she says on her website about the video:
Jendog Lonewolf’s “No REDD” video, in conjunction with Indigenous Rising and the Indigenous Environmental Network critiques the UN’s REDD program that works as a poison pretending to be cure– destroying the biodiversity, forests, and local economies it feigns to protect. Through carbon credits, the program allows corporations to pollute even more while land grabbing and violently keeping Indigenous Peoples from their lands.
Against the REDD-ification of Africa
At a side-event in Paris, the No-REDD in Africa released a book titled, “Stopping the Continent Grab and the REDD-ification of Africa”. You can download the book here.
This publication by the No REDD in Africa Network aims to demystify REDD and REDD-type projects, and all their variants, and show them for what they are: unjust mechanisms designed to usher in a new phase of colonization of the African continent. From examples presented, it is clear that the REDD mechanism is a scam and the polluters know that they are buying the “right” to pollute.
California’s governor heckled
California’s governor Jerry Brown was heckled at the end of a speech in Paris. Protesters chanted “No REDD!”. As he left, Brown told the protesters, “I agree with you.”
No REDD protest at Solutions 21 Concert
The Indigenous Environmental Network staged an action in coordination with Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuhat the corporate funded Solutions 21 Concert. For his last song, Xiuhtezcatl invited representatives of the Global Grassroots Justice Alliance and the Indigenous Environmental Network’s Indigenous Rising to the stage, where they made a statement against fracking and REDD.
Xiuhtezcatl says,
“I am standing in solidarity with the front lines communities affected by fossil fuel extraction, as an indigenous youth representing the generation most affected by climate change. I strongly stand against false solutions such as fracking, carbon trading and REDD.”
REDD is a disaster for the environment
Friends of the Earth International, Global Alliance against REDD, Indigenous Environmental Network, Grassroots Global Justice, No REDD+ in Africa Network held a protest outside the conference centre.
Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International Forest and Biodiversity Program Coordinator, describes REDD as a disaster for the environment:
“Forests are not simply groups of trees and inert materials that can be reduced to ‘carbon stocks,’ commodities that can be traded on stock exchanges and markets. REDD could also create adverse incentives for deforestation. As REDD offset credits are only supposed to be generated when deforestation or forest degradation has been avoided, governments and corporations are supposed to demonstrate that, at a given time, they were planning to log or clear certain areas of forest. It is thus in their interest to be able to maintain high levels of planned deforestation.”
REDD is a contradiction and violation of the sacred
“This COP will determine how Africa will be In this interview by WST TV Boaventura Monjane, a journalist and activist from Mozambique speaks about the outcomes of the Paris Climate Talks, COP21 and argues that most of the solutions proposed by Conference Of the Parties and Corporations are marketed oriented and that mechanisms like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) are a new form of colonialism for Africa
The Jari Amapá REDD+ project covers an area of 65,980 hectares in the Jari Valley in the state of Amapá, Brazil. The project is run by three companies, one of which, Jari Florestal, has just had its Forest Stewardship Council certificate suspended after being caught in an illegal timber scheme.
The three companies are Biofílica Investimentos Ambientais, Jari Florestal, and Jari Celulose. The latter two companies are part of Grupo Jari (the first is a logging company, the second a pulp company). Biofílica is a São Paulo-based company. Here’s how it describes what it does:
Aiming to contribute to the creation and development of a solid and reliable environmental market, Biofílica invests in an innovative business model that promotes the reduction of deforestation, valuation of standing forests and their environmental services, protection of biodiversity and reduction of carbon emissions.
In 2010, Biofílica presented a proposal to Grupo Jari for the REDD project, and is running the project on land belonging to Jari Celulose. Carbon credits from the project are sold on the voluntary market. In 2011-2012, the project generated 200,000 credits, but only managed to sell 40,000 of them. 15% of the money from the carbon credits goes to Biofílica and 85% to Jari Florestal.
But before looking at the REDD project and the illegal logging, we should take a look at the strange history of the Jari pulp mill.
The Jari Project
In 1967, a US billionaire called Daniel K. Ludwig paid US$3 million for 1.6 million hectares of land in the Jari Valley. His plan was to build a pulp mill.
In 1978, Ludwig shipped a pulp mill and power plant from Japan to Brazil. (It took 12 weeks to transport.) He built roads, an airport, a deep water port, a hospital, four schools, and 3,000 houses for company employees in Monte Dourado. As well as pulp production, he planned kaolin and bauxite mining, buffalo ranching and rice cultivation.
Here’s a video about the construction of the pulp mill:
Ludwig established monocultures of Gmelina arborea to feed the pulp mill. But the trees were attacked by a fungus and the plantations failed.
The Brazilian military dictatorship initially supported Ludwig’s plans, but in the 1980s followingnewspaper reports that Ludwig was creating his own army, smuggling gold and diamonds, destroying the forest, and using slave labour, the military dictatorship became worried about the US colonisation of the Amazon.
in 1982, after investing US$1.3 billion, Ludwig handed over his Jari operations to a consortium of 23 Brazilian companies. No money changed hands, but the consortium took on the company’s debts. The Brazilian Development Bank, BNDES, supported the consortium with a US$180 million loan.
In 2000, the company was sold to the Orsa Group. The pulp mill was renamed Jari Celulose, and the Orsa Group is now called Grupo Jari.
Ludwig’s Jari Project had huge social and environmental impacts. The construction of the pulp mill attracted people looking for work. In 2001, the company employed 3,500 people, but 70,000 people lived in the area, many in shanty towns along the Jari River. Social problems include prostitution, drugs, poor sanitation, poor housing conditions, fires from faulty electrical installations, floods, and violence.
In addition, huge areas of forest were cleared to make way for plantations and to feed the pulp mill when the plantations failed. Local communities lost their land to plantations and many families moved to more remote areas, or to urban areas.
The company now has 120,000 hectares of mainly eucalyptus plantations, certified under the FSC system.
The Jari Amapá REDD+ project
The Jari Amapá REDD project is one of the projects reviewed by CIFOR in its “REDD on the ground” report. CIFOR’s researchers, Marina Cromberg, Mariana G Pereira, and Renata B Caramez, writethat in the area of the REDD project,
The rural population that has re-settled this area over the past decade suffers from a lack of formal land tenure and pollution from Jari Celulose (one of the companies of Grupo Jari), including contamination of soils and water from pesticides used in the eucalyptus plantations and siltation of streams from trucks transporting logs.
CIFOR notes that the REDD project developers see the threats to the forests to be “small-scale swidden agriculture, small- and medium-scale cattle ranching, and illegal small-scale logging by people living both inside and outside the area”.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the REDD project developers do not see the industrial tree plantations as a threat to the forests. Neither do they include the greenhouse gas emissions from the pulp mill, “because they are outside the scope of its REDD+ initiative”, CIFOR’s researchers note. They add that, “the industrial cellulose pulp production realized by Jari Celulose is a major emitter of GHGs”.
The project was certified in 2013 by VCS. The baseline was deforestation from 2000 to 2010, conveniently ignoring the removal of forests to make way for industrial tree plantations – that are clearcut every five years. The project has also applied for CCBA certification.
Here’s a small part of the REDD project on Google maps, showing a pattern of industrial tree plantations and remnants of forest:
In 2014, Rebeca Lima of Biofílica told CIFOR that,
“Our biggest challenge is land tenure clarification. It’s not only a problem we only have in Amapá but is an Amazon-wide issue. If land tenure’s not clear, we can’t distribute the benefits from the forest fairly—and without it, smallholders aren’t able to access rural credits.”
In three of the five villages where CIFOR’s researchers carried out interviews, people said that their first recommendation for the project would be to resolve land tenure. Nearly half of the people interviewed had insecure land tenure. Some of the villager’s comments reveal the tension with Grupo Jari:
“If Grupo Orsa (Grupo Jari) wanted to help, they would already have done that. They have forestry engineers, rural technicians, they have everything.”
“Grupo Orsa (Grupo Jari) is here with IMAP, giving fines…. It would be easier if they helped the families.”
“See the contradiction, the company from São Paulo (Biofílica) and the Fundação Jari come here to discuss a project that depends on the land tenure that Orsa (Grupo Jari) does not want to clarify.”
Illegal logging and the suspension of Jari Forestal’s FSC certificate
Jari Florestal is a logging company, with 545,000 hectares of FSC certified operations. But on 8 December 2015, FSC Brazil announced that Jari Forestal’s certificate had been suspended.
The suspension follows an investigation by Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry, Federal Police, the Brazilian Institute of Environment (IBAMA) and Federal Justice. The investigators call this sort of scheme “timber washing”. Under Brazilian law, forest management plans are allowed to log a certain amount of timber and the timber is given a tracking number.
Timber washing involves logging illegally, but using the tracking number from another logging operation to give the appearance of legality. The timber can then be exported, as if it were legal.
The illegal logging involved two species: ipe and maçaranduba. IBAMA discovered that 81% of the illegally logged timber was intended for Jari Florestal. For example, Jari claimed to have received two shipments totalling almost 9,000 cubic metres, from a logging operation 500 kilometres away in Juruti, Para. Transporting so much timber would need over 220 logging trucks.
Despite the large volume of timber, and the long distance involved, company records show that the timber arrived in only two days, which is impossible, not least because there is no road between Juruti and Jari Florestal’s sawmills in Munguba.
Between December 2014 and February 2015, more than US$7.1 million worth of timber was transported from just one of the fraudulent management plans.
In September 2015, Jari Florestal was fined US$1.5 million following another investigation by IBAMA, which revealed Jari Florestal’s involvement in illegal logging. The fraud included transactions with companies that did not exist.
Jari Florestal was also fined for building an open port for timber shipments on the River Aruanã. The ramp destroyed an area of 3,500 square metres in a conservation area and silted up the river. This photograph (from IBAMA) shows the scale of Jari Florestal’s illegal port on the River Aruanã:
Today, Daniel K. Ludwig’s purchase of 1.6 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest would be described as a land grab. The fact that Brazil had a military dictatorship at the time only makes matters worse.
One of Biofílica’s criteria when it was looking for possible REDD projects, was clear land tenure. But Jari’s land tenure is clear only because the rights of the people living there were completely ignored when Ludwig bought the land.
The FSC and VCS certification schemes have failed to improve the land rights of the people living in Grupo Jari’s plantation and logging operations. Just as they failed to reveal Jari Florestal’s involvement in a large scale illegal logging scheme.
The Jari Amapá REDD project is in any case something of a farce, since it excludes the emissions from the Jari Celulose pulp mill from the REDD project emission calculations. But what happens now?
Will Jari Celulose lose its FSC certificate? Will the VCS certification of the REDD project be withdrawn? Will the emissions from Jari Florestal’s involvement in illegal logging be taken into account in the REDD emissions calculations? Will some or all of the carbon credits already sold from the Jari Amapá REDD project be recalled?
Paris witnessed both explicit terrorism by religious extremists on November 13 and a month later, implicit terrorism by carbon addicts negotiating a world treaty that guarantees catastrophic climate change. The first incident left more than 130 people dead in just one evening’s mayhem; the second lasted a fortnight but over the next century can be expected to kill hundreds of millions, especially in Africa.
But because the latest version of the annual United Nations climate talks has three kinds of spin-doctors, the extent of damage may not be well understood. The 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) generated reactions ranging from smug denialism to righteous fury. The first reaction is ‘from above’ (the Establishment) and is self-satisfied; the second is from the middle (‘Climate Action’) and is semi-satisfied; the third, from below (‘Climate Justice’), is justifiably outraged.
Guzzling French champagne last Saturday, the Establishment quickly proclaimed, in essence, “The Paris climate glass is nearly full – so why not get drunk on planet-saving rhetoric?” The New York Times reported with a straight face, “President Obama said the historic agreement is a tribute to American climate change leadership” (and in a criminally-negligent way, this is not untrue).
Since 2009, US State Department chief negotiator Todd Stern successfully drove the negotiations away from four essential principles: ensuring emissions-cut commitments would be sufficient to halt runaway climate change; making the cuts legally binding with accountability mechanisms; distributing the burden of cuts fairly based on responsibility for causing the crisis; and making financial transfers to repair weather-related loss and damage following directly from that historic liability. Washington elites always prefer ‘market mechanisms’ like carbon trading instead of paying their climate debt even though the US national carbon market fatally crashed in 2010.
In part because the Durban COP17 in 2011 provided lubrication and – with South Africa’s blessing – empowered Stern to wreck the idea of Common But Differentiated Responsibility while giving “a Viagra shot to flailing carbon markets” (as a male Bank of America official cheerfully celebrated), Paris witnessed the demise of these essential principles. And again, “South Africa played a key role negotiating on behalf of the developing countries of the world,” according to Pretoria’s environment minister Edna Molewa, who proclaimed from Paris “an ambitious, fair and effective legally-binding outcome.”
Arrogant fibbery. The collective Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – i.e. voluntary cuts – will put the temperature rise at above 3 degrees. From coal-based South Africa, the word ambitious loses meaning given Molewa’s weak INDCs – ranked by ClimateActionTracker as amongst the world’s most “inadequate” – and given that South Africa hosts the world’s two largest coal-fired power stations now under construction, with no objection by Molewa. She regularly approves increased (highly-subsidized) coal burning and exports, vast fracking, offshore-oil drilling, exemptions from pollution regulation, emissions-intensive corporate farming and fast-worsening suburban sprawl.
A second narrative comes from large NGOs that mobilized over the past six months to provide mild-mannered pressure points on negotiators. Their line is, essentially, “The Paris glass is partly full – so sip up and enjoy!”
This line derives not merely from the predictable back-slapping associated with petit-bourgeois vanity, gazing upwards to power for validation, such as one finds at the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Climate Action Network, what with their corporate sponsorships. All of us reading this are often tempted in this direction, aren’t we, because such unnatural twisting of the neck is a permanent occupational hazard in this line of work.
And such opportunism was to be expected from Paris, especially after Avaaz and Greenpeace endorsed G7 leadership posturing in June, when at their meeting in Germany the Establishment made a meaningless commitment to a decarbonized economy – in the year 2100, at least fifty years too late.
Perhaps worse than their upward gaze, though, the lead NGOs suffered a hyper-reaction to the 2009 Copenhagen Syndrome. Having hyped the COP15 Establishment negotiators as “Seal the Deal!” planet-saviours, NGOs mourned the devastating Copenhagen Accord signed in secret by leaders from Washington, Brasilia, Beijing, New Delhi and Pretoria. This was soon followed by a collapse of climate consciousness and mobilization. Such alienation is often attributed to activist heart-break: a roller-coaster of raised NGO expectations and plummeting Establishment performance.
Possessing only an incremental theory of social change, NGOs toasting the Paris deal now feel the need to confirm that they did as best they could, and that they have grounds to continue along the same lines in future. To be sure, insider-oriented persuasion tactics pursued by the 42-million member clicktivist group Avaaz are certainly impressive in their breadth and scope. Yet for Avaaz, “most importantly, [the Paris deal] sends a clear message to investors everywhere: sinking money into fossil fuels is a dead bet. Renewables are the profit centre. Technology to bring us to 100% clean energy is the money-maker of the future.”
Once again, Avaaz validates the COP process, the Establishment’s negotiators and the overall incentive structure of capitalism that are the proximate causes of the crisis.
The third narrative is actually the most realistic: “The Paris glass is full of toxic fairy dust – don’t dare even sniff!” The traditional Climate Justice (CJ) stance is to delegitimize the Establishment and return the focus of activism to grassroots sites of struggle, in future radically changing the balance of forces locally, nationally and then globally. But until that change in power is achieved, the UNFCCC COPs are just Conferences of Polluters.
The landless movement Via Campesina was clearest: “There is nothing binding for states, national contributions lead us towards a global warming of over 3°C and multinationals are the main beneficiaries. It was essentially a media circus.”
Asad Rehman coordinates climate advocacy at the world’s leading North-South CJ organization, Friends of the Earth International: “The reviews [of whether INDCs are adhered to and then need strengthening] are too weak and too late. The political number mentioned for finance has no bearing on the scale of need. It’s empty. The iceberg has struck, the ship is going down and the band is still playing to warm applause.”
And not forgetting the voice of climate science, putting it most bluntly, James Hansen called Paris, simply, “bullshit.”
Where does that leave us? If the glass-half-full NGOs get serious – and I hope to be pleasantly surprised in 2016 – then the only way forward is for them to apply their substantial influence on behalf of solidarity with those CJ activists making a real difference, at the base.
Close to my own home, the weeks before COP21 witnessed potential victories in two major struggles: opposition to corporate coal mining – led mainly by women peasants, campaigners and lawyers – in rural Zululand, bordering the historic iMfolozi wilderness reserve (where the world’s largest white rhino population is threatened by poachers); and South Durban residents fighting the massive expansion of Africa’s largest port-petrochemical complex. In both attacks, the climate-defence weapon was part of the activists’ arsenal.
But it is only when these campaigns have conclusively done the work COP negotiators and NGO cheerleaders just shirked – leaving fossil fuels in the ground and pointing the way to a just, post-carbon society – that we can raise our glasses and toast humanity, with integrity. Until then, pimps for the Paris Conference of Polluters should be told to sober up and halt what will soon be understood as their fatal attack on Mother Earth.
Indigenous Peoples: UN Paris Accord could end up being a Crime against Humanity and Mother Earth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Dallas Goldtooth +33 75 1413 823 USA: 708 515 6158dallas@ienearth.org
Kandi Mossett +33 75 1414 195 mhawea@gmail.comNovember 30, 2015 (Paris) – Indigenous Peoples from the Americas attending the United Nations World Climate Summit in Paris warn that the Paris climate accord will harm their rights, lands and environment and do nothing to address climate change.“We are here in Paris to tell the world that not only will the anticipated Paris Accord not address climate change, it will make it worst because it will promote false solutions and not keep fossil fuels from being extracted and burned. The Paris COP21 is not about reaching a legally binding agreement on cutting greenhouse gases. In fact, the Paris Accord may turn out to be a crime against humanity and Mother Earth,” according to Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network based in Minnesota on Turtle Island also known as the United States. Goldtooth recently won the Gandhi Peace Award.
According to Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Alberta, Canada “After 21 years of these climate conferences, our First Nation wants to be hopeful this agreement truly stops a history of CO2lonialism and business-as-usual with expansion of fossil fuel exploitation on and near indigenous territories. We are here to protect, defend and renew our Mother Earth, not to rubber stamp an agreement that allows polluters to continue to burn the planet. False solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, agrofuels and nuclear energy will probably be the basis of the Paris Accord and the so-called decarbonization of the global economy. False solutions to climate change instead of solving the climate crisis, are resulting in land grabs, human rights violations and will allow global warming to spiral out of control.” Lameman is featured in the film, “This Changes Everything” directed by Avi Lewis and based on the book by Naomi Klein.
Indigenous leaders throughout the world are particularly concerned about REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), a United Nations carbon offset mechanism that uses forests, agriculture and many other ecosystems as sponges for northern industrialized countries pollution instead of reducing emissions at source.
“Our world is melting. Climate change and global warming is a reality in my home,” says Allison Akootchook Warden from Kaktovik, a village in the Alaska arctic. “The failure of the United States, Canada and world leaders to take real action to address the climate crisis violates our rights. The draft Paris Accord is full of carbon market mechanisms that are already causing harm to the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic Circle.”
Kandi Mossett, Tribal Citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nations in North Dakota and campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network, whose home is surrounded by coal-fired power plants and inundated with fracking and flaring of natural gas states, “The current US Clean Power Plan allows the US to continue with carbon trading schemes such as REDD+ designed to allow more extraction and combustion of fossil fuels for a profit. The whole concept is a false solution to the climate crisis because it allows the US to buy up “carbon credits” often on Indigenous lands in other countries while simultaneously destroying Indigenous homelands in the US essentially making us sacrifice zones for the good of the economy; Indigenous peoples are not expendable and will not sit idly by and allow this desecration to continue without a fight.”
According to the Global Alliance against REDD, “Instead of cutting CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, the UN, the US, the EU, China, Norway and climate criminals like BP, Total, Shell, Chevron, Air France and BHP Billiton are pushing a false solution to climate change called REDD.”
According to Nnimmo Bassey, co-coordinator of the No REDD in Africa Network, “REDD may result in the largest land grab in history. It steals your future, lets polluters off the hook and is new form of colonialism. We demand that states and corporations stop privatizing nature!”
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Here are some photos of the It Takes Roots Delegation in the Human Chain Action on November 29th in Paris.
(Dec 1, 2015) Indigenous leaders, Tom Goldtooth, Gloria Ushigua, Alberto Saldamondo, and Berenice Sanchez spoke at the COP 21 at a Press Conference on how REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) violates Natural Law and the Sacred. REDD, a carbon offset mechanism with forests and ecosystems, is a major part of the false solutions to climate change promoted by the United Nations draft climate agreement at the world climate summit in Paris.
Photo features:
•Berenice Sanchez, Food Sovereignty Expert
•Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network
•Gloria Ushigua, President of Sapara Women’s Association
•Alberto Saldamando, International Indigenous Rights Lawyer
via New Internationalist Magazine
The climate negotiations have done worse than nothing to prevent climate change. Nigerian activist Adesuwa Uwagie-Ero takes us on a historical journey, and suggests some ways to shift the international process onto a path toward climate justice.
As governments from more than 190 nations prepare to gather in Paris to discuss a new global agreement on climate change, Nigeria is still battling with fundamental problems. These include increasing poverty levels of citizens, floods, gas flaring in the South, increased threat of desertification in the North, lack of sector coordination, and a population explosion. All these have direct implications for our food supply systems, water scarcity and health.
The sorry state of the Nigerian environment is best seen through the lens of the impacts of the oil and gas sector. A United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) assessment documented the level of ecocide inflicted on the Ogoni environment over 50 years of reckless exploitation. UNEP surmised that it will require about three decades of work to detoxify the Ogoni environment, where active oil extraction was shut down in 1993.
Four years after the launch of that report, little has been done about this clear ecological emergency. Only recently has the Buhari-led Nigerian administration committed the sum of $10 million to the clean-up. It is time to place the ecological question at the heart of our political debates and action plans. We are the people of the environment: our lives, culture and production are embedded and intertwined with nature.
The powerful browbeat the weak
Current commitments on greenhouse gas emission cuts will run out in 2020, so in Paris governments are expected to produce an agreement on what happens for the next decade, and potentially beyond. The optimism that fossil fuels will remain the dominant energy source into the foreseeable future is delusory and not founded in fact. The world may ramp up extreme extraction such as fracking, but that will not stop the shift away from climate-changing fossil fuels occurring.
As the exploitation of nature reaches the zenith of unreasonableness, traders are now seeing nature as an object for speculation and wholesale commodification. Good concepts such as sustainable development are being turned on their heads. The concept of ‘Green Economy’ on which even the brownest sectors cling turns out to be a platform for insisting that nature cannot be defended. It must be assigned a monetary value; its intrinsic value is absolutely ignored.
The conferences of parties (COP) to the climate change convention have over the years turned into sessions where the powerful browbeat the weak and efforts are made to avoid responsibility and to act in narrow national or regional interest.
The rapid slide down this slope took root at COP15 in Copenhagen. It was deepened at COP16 in Cancun where the concept of ‘consensus’ got redefined as ‘agreement by the majority’.
COP17 in Durban took the medal as the conference whose critical achievement was the blatant postponement of action while the earth burns. Nations like the US, Canada, Japan and Australia openly throw spanners in the works. Some go as far as foreclosing any participation in legal and accountability formats.
COP18 at Doha was a sigh, as leaders kicked the noisy decision-making can further down the road. In the negotiations following Doha, the talks in Bonn and Geneva continued to show the strains between developed, emerging economies and differently developed nations – especially with regard to emissions reductions commitments and mitigation actions.
At the negotiations held in May 2013 at Geneva the developed countries pushed for a legally binding ‘spectrum of commitments’ from both developed and developing countries. However, their stance was based on targets determined by each government according to their national capabilities and circumstances – not by what science requires. They suggested that these would be reviewed periodically, with the aim of keeping global temperature rise in line with the 2 degree Celsius goal.
These trends leave us with the burning question: has the COP process really helped the world tackle climate change?
Carbon colonialism
Climate change has become big business, and false solutions are celebrated. Whereas it has been clear for a long time now that global warming is mostly man-made and is due to the huge amount of greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere by polluting activities involving the use of fossil fuels, preferred actions taken by nations and industries have been patently false actions.
These actions are mostly predicated on the specious notion of carbon offsetting. The notion itself is built on the creed that financial markets hold the key to solving humankind’s problems.
Carbon was first placed on the market at the Kyoto COP in 1997. It means polluters can keep polluting, provided they pay for it in cash (a carbon tax) or imagine that some trees somewhere else in the world are absorbing an equivalent amount of carbon as they are emitting. Polluters perform acts of indulgence through offsets.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) covers some such offset schemes, where projects that help reduce carbon emissions earn carbon credits. Some really obnoxious projects get listed under the CDM.
Gas-to-power projects utilizing gas that would otherwise be flared seem to make sense, except that gas flaring has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984. There has also been a High Court ruling against Shell over its gas flares at Iwerekhan, Delta State. The court ruled that gas flaring is illegal, unconstitutional and an affront to people’s rights. That judgment was delivered in November 2005 but the flares continue to roar.
Projects that qualify for the CDM are expected to be ones that bring in ‘additionality’. But Nnimmo Bassey, former Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action, makes the point that ‘any compensation for such an activity flies in the face of reason. Gas flares are the most cynical manifestations of corporate insolence in the face of climate change and environmental health. The flares release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous and sulphur oxides with other harmful substances that greatly affect human health.’ Just when we thought we had overcome slavery we are getting dragged into not just carbon colonialism, but carbon slavery.
Seeing REDD
Market mechanisms threw Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) into the ring at the Bali climate meeting of 2009. REDD and its variants allow polluters to keep on at their business of polluting while ‘showing’ that trees in a forest or plantation elsewhere absorb the carbon they emit. Thus REDD projects permit pollution and cannot be said to reduce emissions. The name itself is a sad joke: REDD does not stop deforestation, but at best defers or displaces it. A REDD scheme is a business scheme, pure and simple.
A declaration from the Climate Space at the Tunis World Social Forum in March 2013 insisted ‘we cannot put the future of nature and humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms like carbon trading and REDD. REDD, like Clean Development Mechanisms, is not a solution to climate change and is a new form of colonialism. In defence of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and the environment, we reject REDD+ and the grabbing of the forests, farmlands, soils, mangroves, marine algae and oceans of the world, which act as sponges for greenhouse gas pollution…’
No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) recalls a situation in Mozambique, where a study found that thousands of farmers in the N’hambita REDD project were paid meagre amounts for seven years for tending trees. ‘Because the contract is for 99 years, if the farmer dies his or her children and their children must tend the trees without any further pay or compensation. This has been interpreted as a clear case of carbon slavery.’
Agrofuels and technofixes
Another false solution has been the presentation of agrofuels as a replacement of fossil fuels, when in fact it keeps the fossil fuels paradigm and is equally polluting. Moreover, it has triggered massive land-grabs. Even at its peak agrofuels cannot replace fossil fuels because the amount of land needed to cultivate crops and the feedstock needed for production is simply not available on planet Earth.
Geo-engineering and agricultural genetic engineering are other false solutions that lull humans into thinking that they can keep current polluting lifestyles and find techno-fixes for their addiction.
Criteria for climate justice
So what must be done? Time is ticking fast, the peoples of the world must continually press for climate justice, understanding that no nation, rich or poor, is immune to the challenges posed by global warming. Reflections on the challenge can leave us utterly exasperated, considering the corporate capture of governments and the refusal of states to take actions that would benefit the people and the planet, and not just the corporations.
This has been amply illustrated by the tragic weather events that have fairly democratically impacted nations around the world. These effects are undeniable: sea-levels are rising, Arctic ice is melting and may lead to changes in ocean circulation, sea-surface temperatures are rising, sea water is acidifying, due to an increase of dissolved carbon dioxide, we are seeing a heavier rainfall pattern, hurricanes and floods, emerging crop diseases and crop failures, intense droughts and desertification, to mention just a few impacts. These negatively affect human lives and that of other species.
Urgent actions are needed across the globe. These include:
Urgent actions are needed across the globe. These include:
Rapid transition from dependence on fossil fuels – including in transportation, power generation and agriculture;
A just global climate treaty that recognises historical responsibility, climate debt and the need for legally binding emissions reduction;
Elimination of market mechanisms (including CDM, REDD, REDD+) and all other false solutions from the climate regime;
Recycling of waste and reducing consumption in line with planetary limits;
National laws that build mechanisms for climate mitigation and adaptation actions, including coastal protection and combating desertification;
Stop gas flaring in the Niger Delta and at Badagary communities in Nigeria immediately;
Stop fracking and other extreme extraction, including drilling in the Arctic region;
Educate grassroots communities and the creation of community climate defence committees that would set rules for physical developments as well as monitor impacts of climate change;
Universal respect of Mother Earth’s rights as articulated at the Cochabamba People’s Summit on Climate Change;
Leave the fossil fuels in the soil. Besides global warming, the environmental cost of fossil fuels cannot justify a continued reliance on the resource. Reflect on Shell’s pollution of Ogoni land. Think about the open scars created by tar sand extraction in Alberta.
Awake, arise, mobilize!
Our narrative must be the story of our lives, told by us and dipped in our experiences. As Arundhati Roy puts it, ‘If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low to the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them and are their source of livelihood.
The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment.’
It is our life. We know how the rain has beaten us and for how long. Indeed we did not inherit the Earth; we borrowed it from our children.
Our narrative must not be stuck in the crisis narrative imagined by others. We must awake, arise, mobilize and work for the transformation of our society and planet – by all legitimate means available and necessary.
Adesuwa Uwagie-Ero is a campaigner with Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria.
– See more at: http://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2015/11/26/escaping-carbon-slavery-the-view-from-nigeria/#sthash.9KE6lqfu.dpuf
From the heart of San Francisco Chinatown to the Amazon – people across borders unite to Stop REDD!
Mr. Ushigua, a leader of the Sapara People of Ecuador and Pam Tau Lee, chairperson Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco at the Climate Justice March on Nov. 21, 2015.
Attac Gabon and Grain recently put out a statementopposing REDD and carbon trading as a way of addressing climate change. The statement is posted here in full in English and French.
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems
Attac Gabon is the Gabonese branch of Attac, an international movement working towards social, environmental and democratic alternatives in the globalization process.
REDD and carbon trading will not resolve the climate crisis
Attac Gabon and GRAIN
As with other mechanisms supported by “world climate governance”, we doubted from the beginning that the Reduction of Emissions caused by Deforestation and the Degradation of Forests (REDD) mechanism would be likely to resolve the global climate crisis, ever since it was introduced in discussions on climate change. Now more than ever, the hidden face of this mechanism is revealed with the new market mechanism that is being devised and that may be adopted at the COP 21 in Paris in December 2015. The ground is a good place to sequester carbon, and speculators, businesses and multinationals see a great opportunity to make money and increase their profits. This time, real damage can be done. Very serious damage, because this time, the stakes are high; agriculture has become another target of the carbon trade.
Agriculture, which has been relegated to a minor role in these negotiations on climate change for some years, has reappeared, obviously not to the advantage of the people but to benefit the carbon trade and the world financial system. A few welcome the renewed focus, but it poses a problem for the rest of us.
The great majority of the preparatory proposal documents for REDD (commonly called R-PP) being worked out in Africa single out agriculture as the principal driver of deforestation, being careful not to point out that it is industrial agriculture with its focus on productivity and intensive use of chemical products which is the cause, to the detriment of small farms which have for decades always known how to respect the climate and protect the environment.
These accusations, which are intended to once again place the responsibility on one sector in order to better apply measures of “sanctification” through carbon trade competition, are simply criminal, all the more so considering the historic role and responsibilities of native peoples in the conservation of ecosystems through their traditional practices that respect the environment.
So the food system that generates between 44% and 57% of greenhouse gases (GHG), and which could be the sector through which we reduce a good part of emissions and cool the planet, becomes the sector through which most business can be done.[1] As we know, farmland has the capacity to store carbon and to contribute to cooling the planet. As a result, it becomes worthy of interest and every effort is now made so that agriculture, long neglected, can be brought back into the negotiations and take its place as a “major contributor” in decreasing emissions.
In Paris, this hostage-taking that results in agriculture finding itself unable to fulfil its role of feeding the planet but instead relegated to a purely commercial role through the carbon trade, will become clearer and the world will legitimize a system that, as we know very well, will not solve the problem of climate change.
REDD will be firmly integrated into the carbon trade, endorsed by all to the detriment of agriculture.
Thanks to the carbon trade and to the new measures which may be implemented, REDD+ will commercialize forest carbon and, henceforth, carbon tenure. This new carbon tenure market, a new market-based mechanism, will accentuate land-grabbing and put communities at risk and drive them into extreme poverty. Just as the carbon trade has never been for the benefit of communities and peoples, this new carbon tenure trade will not be a market to support communities but one to enrich multinationals and elites, including African ones, through speculation, carbon sale, promoting flawed technologies for reducing greenhouse gas, and intellectual property rights.
Speculation has never been in the interest of the people, and we can soon expect to see the damage resulting from the battle that the multinationals will engage in on the African continent. As the African saying goes, “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that pays the price”, and the farmers, herdsmen and other African producers must not be allowed to become the grass trod upon by neoliberal interests.
Another very real fact, and one which clearly shows that REDD+ will not be the solution for communities and the people, is the participation of international financial institutions, led by the World Bank, in virtually all REDD+ pilot projects in Africa at the current time.. These institutions, which are far from being philanthropic, are permanently in attendance and “facilitate” processes. Thus we find the World Bank very much in evidence as project partner for COMIFAC (Commission of Forests of Central Africa) in the Congo Basin, or the French Development Agency (AFD), which, through the Debt Relief and Development Agreement (C2D), a debt refinancing mechanism, provides financial aid to the Ivory Coast, subject to conditions, of course, such as the presence and use of French “expertise”.
REDD+ will therefore not contribute to reducing GHG, because it wavers not only when it comes to institutional decisions, but also where strategy and operational methods are concerned, thus aggravating the basic socio-economic problems of grass-roots communities.
Mainly held at the mercy of ministerial structures lacking real power over crucial issues such as land rights and common law, REDD+ is headed for the wall, for protest from marginalized communities which, instead and in place of being consulted, are invited to informational meetings and confronted with done deals.
It is therefore still an illusion to think that REDD+ can defend the rights of communities and farmers and furnish a real framework for dialog with members of local civil society. Instead, it will reinforce its “marriage” to the private sector and the banks. So it is important to protest against this flawed solution and to establish a balance of power in order to achieve real social justice and put an end to inequality.
La REDD+ et sa finance carbone ne résoudront pas la crise climatique
ATTAC Gabon et GRAIN
A l’instar d’autres mécanismes plébiscités par la « gouvernance climatique mondiale », nous doutions depuis le début de la possibilité du mécanisme Réduction des Emissions provenant de la Déforestation et de la Dégradation des forets (REDD) à résoudre la crise climatique mondiale depuis son intrusion dans les débats sur les changements climatiques. Aujourd’hui plus que jamais la face cachée de ce mécanisme apparait avec le nouveau mécanisme de marché qui est en train de se concocter et qui risque d’être adopté à la COP 21 de Paris en Décembre 2015. Le sol est un bon puits carbone et les spéculateurs, les businessmen et les multinationales y voient une belle occasion de se faire de l’argent, d’augmenter leurs chiffres d’affaires. Et cette fois ci cela risque de faire mal comme on le dit. Très mal même car cette fois l’enjeu est de taille et l’agriculture est aussi la cible de ce commerce carbone.
L’agriculture qui pourtant avait bien été reléguée depuis plusieurs années à un rôle minimal dans ces négociations sur les changements climatiques est donc de retour mais visiblement contre les populations et pour le bonheur de la finance carbone et du système financier mondial. Un retour applaudi par certains mais qui pour nous pose problème.
La grande majorité des documents de proposition de préparation à la REDD (communément appelé R-PP) en élaboration en Afrique pointe l’agriculture comme le moteur principal de la déforestation, se gardant bien de préciser que c’est l’agriculture industrielle avec son modèle productiviste et son utilisation intensif de produits chimiques qui l’est, au détriment de l’agriculture paysanne qui a toujours su au fil des décennies prendre soin du climat et protéger l’environnement.
Ces accusations, dont l’objectif est encore une fois de rendre responsable un secteur afin de mieux lui appliquer des mesures de « sanctification » avec le concours de la finance carbone sont simplement criminelles d’autant plus si l’on considère le rôle historique et les responsabilités des peuples autochtones dans la conservation des écosystèmes à travers leurs pratiques traditionnelles respectueuses de l’environnement.
Alors que le système alimentaire qui génère entre 44 et 57% des émissions de Gaz à Effet de Serre (GES) et pourrait être le secteur par lequel l’on réduit une bonne part des émissions et refroidisse la planète, il devient le secteur par lequel le plus de business se fera.[1] Les terres agricoles comme on le sait, possèdent cette capacité de stocker le carbone et de contribuer au refroidissement de la planète. Du coup, elles deviennent dignes d’intérêt et tout est maintenant mis en œuvre afin que l’agriculture qui avait été longtemps négligé puisse revenir dans les négociations et prendre la place de ‘’grande contributrice ‘’ à l’atténuation.
A Paris cette prise en otage qui fait que l’agriculture se retrouve aujourd’hui empêcher de jouer le rôle de nourrir la planète mais se retrouve aujourd’hui dans une perspective purement commerciale à travers la finance carbone va se faire plus claire et le monde va légitimer un système que nous savons bien ne résoudra pas les changements climatiques.
La REDD sera bien installée dans le marché carbone et elle aura la caution de tous pour « braquer » l’agriculture.
La REDD+ grâce au marché carbone et aux nouvelles dispositions qui risquent d’être mises en place va commercialiser le carbone forestier et dorénavant le carbone foncier. Ce nouveau marché carbone foncier qui est un nouveau mécanisme de marché viendra accentuer les accaparements de terres et conduire les communautés à la précarité et à l’extrême pauvreté. Comme le marché carbone n’a jamais été pour le bien-être des communautés et des populations, ce nouveau marché carbone foncier ne sera pas un marché pour aider les communautés mais un marché pour enrichir les multinationales et élites, y compris africaines, à travers des outils comme la spéculation, la vente du carbone, la promotion des fausses technologies de réduction de Gaz à effet de serre, les Droits de Propriété Intellectuel.
La spéculation n’ayant jamais été du côté des peuples, il faut s’attendre à des dégâts bientôt dans les combats que les multinationales vont se livrer sur le continent Africain. Comme le dit ce dicton Africain : « quand des éléphants se battent, ce sont les herbes qui paient le prix » et les paysans, éleveurs et autres producteurs africains ne devrait pas être cette herbe devant les intérêts du néolibéralisme.
Une autre réalité bien présente et qui montre clairement que la REDD ne sera pas la solution des communautés, la solution du peuple est qu’en ce moment en Afrique la quasi-totalité des projets pilotes REDD+ voient la présence des Institutions Financières Internationales avec la Banque mondiale en tête. Ces institutions qui sont loin d’être des philanthropes sont permanemment présentes et « facilitent » les processus. Ainsi on retrouve très clairement la Banque Mondiale comme agence d’exécution d’un projet de la COMIFAC (Commission des Forets d’Afrique Centrale) au niveau du Bassin du Congo, ou même l’AFD qui a travers le Contrat de Désendettement et de Développement (C2D), un mécanisme de refinancement de la dette soutien financièrement à la Cote d’Ivoire, mais bien évidement avec des conditionnalités comme la présence et l’utilisation « d’expertise » française.
La REDD ne sera donc pas cette contributrice à la réduction des GES car non seulement elle balbutie sur ses choix institutionnels, mais aussi sur sa stratégie et sur son mode opératoire tout en aggravant les problèmes socio-économiques des communautés à la base.
Etant confié pour une grande partie à la merci de structures ministérielles n’ayant pas de réels pouvoirs sur les questions essentielles comme le foncier, le droit coutumier, la REDD+ se dirige bien vers le mur, vers la contestation par les communautés marginalisées qui en lieu et place des séances de consultations reçoivent des séances de partages d’informations et sont mises devant le fait accompli.
Il demeure donc illusoire de continuer à penser que la REDD+ puisse défende les droits des communautés et les droits des paysans et fournir un vrai cadre de dialogue avec les acteurs des sociétés civiles locales. Elle va plutôt renforcer son « mariage » avec le secteur privé et les banques. Il importe donc de faire barrage à cette fausse solution et construire un rapport de force pour mettre en œuvre une véritable justice sociale et mettre fin aux inégalités.
We are united to oppose and reject the commodification, privatization and plunder of Nature, which include REDD+ and other market-based mechanisms including biodiversity and conservation offsets that put profit above the well being of humanity and the planet.
Yesterday, activists in Durban, South Africa launched the Durban Declaration on REDD. The Declaration opposes REDD, and rejects the “commodification, privatisation and plunder of Nature”.
The Declaration was launched at an event organised under the Civil Society Alternative Programme, which runs parallel to the World Forestry Congress, also taking place this week in Durban.
Renowned environmental and social activist Nnimmo Bassey, co-coordinator of the No REDD in Africa Network, explained why he opposes REDD:
“All forms of REDD amount to two things: licensing polluters to keep polluting and grabbing lands and other resources from forest and peasant communities. REDD+ started as land grab, in Africa it is becoming a continent grab and if not checked it will turn into a planet grab.”
On the panel with Bassey was Anabela Lemos of Justiça Ambiental – Friends of the Earth Mozambique. She said that,
“Both the World Forestry Congress and the United Nations want to use REDD to grab Africa as a sponge for Northern industrialized countries’ pollution, instead of cutting emissions at source. Mozambique is already struggling with land-grabbing and human rights violations, REDD is going to exacerbate those problems and create more poverty. Already a third of Mozambique has been targeted for REDD.”
The Durban Declaration on REDD
September 2015
We, local communities, peasants movements, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations from Africa and all over the world, call upon the United Nations, the World Forestry Congress, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank and states to reject top-down forms of development, including false solutions to climate change and forest and biodiversity conservation that only serve the dominant market economy.
We are united to oppose and reject the commodification, privatisation and plunder of Nature, which include REDD+[1] and other market-based mechanisms including biodiversity and conservation offsets that put profit above the wellbeing of humanity and the planet.
These mechanisms include the “financialization of nature,” which commodifies, separates and quantifies the Earth’s cycles and functions of carbon, water, forest, fauna and biodiversity – turning them into “units” to be sold in financial and speculative markets. However, Mother Earth is the source of Life, which needs to be protected, not a resource to be exploited and commodified as a ‘natural capital.’
REDD+ is also the pillar of the Green Economy. REDD+ is being misleadingly billed as saving the world’s forests and climate and is the anticipated main outcome of the UN’s Paris Accord on climate change in December 2015. In addition, REDD+ is a false solution to climate change that is already including forests, plantations and agriculture in the carbon Reports show that deforestation and the related emissions continue, and that REDD+, instead of reducing them, is harming and vilifying forest-dependent communities and those who produce the majority of the world’s food – small scale farmers. Furthermore,
REDD+ promotes monoculture tree plantations and genetically modified trees
REDD+ increases land grabs and human rights violations
REDD+ restricts access to forests, threatening livelihoods and cultural practices
REDD+ causes violence against peasants, Indigenous Peoples, women and forest-dwelling communities
REDD+ is combined with other offsets including payment for environmental services (PES)
REDD+ imposes market driven neo-liberalism on forests, which undermines and monetizes community conservation and social/cultural processes and creates inequalities
REDD+ projects tend to force subsistence communities into the cash economy and exploitative wage-labor
REDD+ hinders and prevents much needed policies that support endogenous, bio-cultural approaches to biodiversity conservation and restoration.
Therefore, we join with the No REDD in Africa Network and the Global Alliance against REDD to demand that governments, the United Nations and financial institutions stop the disastrous REDD+ experiment and finally start addressing the underlying causes of forest loss and climate change!
Put forward by the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) and the Global Alliance Against REDD, with endorsement and support by the following. To be presented to the World Forestry Congress 2015, the UNFCCC COP21 and beyond:
No REDD in Africa Network
Global Alliance Against REDD
Indigenous Environmental Network
JA!/Justica Ambiental – Friends of the Earth Mozambique
All India Forum of Forest Movements/India
CENSAT Agua Viva – Friends of the Earth Colombia
Womin (Womens on Mining)
Foundation Help/Tanzania
Centre from Civil Society/University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Democratic Left Front
[1] REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is a global initiative to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests and all other ecosystems to compensate governments and companies or owners of forests and agriculture in developing countries not to cut their forests or to reduce their rate of deforestation and forest degradation as a market mechanism to avoid GHG emissions. REDD+ expands REDD to develop methods for carbon sequestration through conservation of forest (and wetlands, agricultural systems) carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries.
PHOTO Credit: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project.
Durban, Sept.8, 2015 – Loggers and the United Nations want to grab African forests for REDD+, which promotes monoculture plantations and genetically modified trees and violates human rights, denounced the No REDD in Africa Network at the World Forestry Congress held in Durban, South Africa.
“Hands off Africa! Loggers go home! No REDD!” activists from the Civil Society Alternative Space chanted outside the World Forestry Congress. REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is a carbon offset mechanism that is a false solution to climate change and the pillar of the Green Economy, the privatization of Nature and the upcoming Paris Accord of the UN climate convention.
“All forms of REDD amount to two things: licensing polluters to keep polluting and grabbing lands and other resources from forest and peasant communities. REDD+ started as land grab, in Africa it is becoming a continent grab and if not checked it will turn into a planet grab,” Nnimmo Bassey, renown Nigerian environmentalist and co-coordinator of the No REDD in Africa Network.
“Stop the disastrous REDD+ experiment!” demand the No REDD in Africa Network, the Global Alliance against REDD and over 65 organizations from all over the world, who signed the Durban Declaration on REDD.
REDD-type projects in Africa have resulted in violent evictions, threats to cultural survival, multi-generational carbon slavery and constitutes neocolonialism, according to the Worse REDD-type Projects in Africa, a compilation of the Network.
Anabela Lemos of Justiça Ambiental –Friends of the Earth Mozambique explains that “both the World Forestry Congress and the United Nations want to use REDD to grab Africa as a sponge for Northern industrialized countries pollution, instead of cutting emissions at source. Mozambique is already struggling with land-grabbing and human rights violations, REDD is going to exacerbate those problems and create more poverty. Already a third of Mozambique has been targeted for REDD.”
Ruth Nyambura, a political ecologist and eco-feminist from Kenya, has analyzed the official narrative to promote REDD. “REDD de-centers critiques of the extractivist economic policies, and weaves a narrative that not only allows the scape-goating of communities at the frontlines of the impacts of the climate crises, but also requires that they adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change using the same framework of markets, which caused the crises in the first place.”
Once again, the world’s governments will meet at the end of this year within the United Nations convention framework to supposedly deal with the real and tangible problem of climate change. However, the agenda of the climate negotiations – mainly driven by governments of industrialized countries and corporate lobbying groups – follows the mantra of capital accumulation, which in terms of climate change it is translated in the carbon market. This mantra has led to a further increase of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and environmental destruction in general. This growing destruction is “accepted” and even promoted, as long as it is “offset” by a project elsewhere. It is primarily traditional, forest-dependent peoples who suffer the consequences; not only with the impacts of severe droughts, floods and many other changes in the climate, but also through the plundering and looting of their territories, due to the expanded extraction legitimated by the carbon market. The last (public) draft of the climate agreement to be implemented post-2020, and which is expected to come out of the negotiations this year in Paris, France, opens the door wide to market mechanisms such as REDD at a global scale (1).
What does this mean?
Carbon market mechanisms such as REDD have allowed the continuation, legitimization and intensification of destructive activities such as mining, oil, gas and coal, monoculture plantations, agribusiness, among others. This extractive model has resulted in dispossession, violence, criminalization, destruction and loss for hundreds of communities worldwide, and with them, their cultures, spirituality, knowledge, autonomy and control over their lives and territories (2). How can we speak of a mechanism that seeks to “stop deforestation” or “benefit forest peoples” when the underlying logic is to expand industrial scale extraction? Despite all the propaganda and speeches created to make us believe that REDD is a “viable solution”, experience teaches us that what it is really seeking is to maintain an economy of capital accumulation which controls more territories and fills the pockets of just a few (3).
In this context, in December 2014, in the run-up to the climate negotiations that were held in Lima, Peru, over 150 organizations and movements from around the world launched a Call to Action to reject REDD and extractive industries, to curb capitalism and defend lives and territories (4). The Call stated that “One of the fundamental pillars of the new global capitalism is ‘environmental services’. This involves the further financialization and commodification of nature, and signifies subjugating it to capital. The carbon market, biodiversity offsets and water markets are part of this kind of capitalism.” And adds that “With REDD+, forests’ and soils’ capacity to absorb carbon and retain it, and plants’ capacity to grow, photosynthesize, conserve water, grow and generate biodiversity are being quantified, monetized, appropriated, privatized and financialized, just as with any other commodity. The ‘environmental services’ trade also fuels the impunity of polluters and destroyers: instead of complying with laws that prohibit polluting and deforestation, they can ‘compensate’ for these ills. This trade also diverts attention from combatting climate change, as it does not address the cause.”
An important step in this Call was to clearly articulate the criticism of REDD with its implications in the expansion of the extractive model, as its proponents constantly use a discourse of “local participation,” “improving forest management,” “improving living conditions and development of local populations” and even “implementing territorial rights”. Nevertheless, as stated in the Call,“Corporations like Shell Oil or Rio Tinto mining corporation; tree plantations and pulp and paper producers like Green Resources and Suzano; agribusiness firms like Wilmar, Monsanto and Bunge; multilateral agencies like the UNDP and FAO; conservation transnationals like Wildlife Works, WWF, The Nature Conservancy or Conservation International; consulting firms, public and private banks and many governments elaborate, support and fund REDD+ (…) These mechanisms undermine the real solutions to climate change, as they serve as a distraction from changes to the modes of production and consumption and towards economies and societies that are free from fossil fuels”
However, the pro-carbon market and REDD campaign intensifies as we approach the negotiations this year, where an agreement on REDD is expected to be reached, disregarding the evidence gathered about the harmful impacts of this mechanism. “Climate negotiations, which are increasingly controlled by corporate power, do not try to save the climate, nor protect forests and soils, eradicate poverty or respect indigenous peoples’ rights. On the contrary, they cravenly protect predatory corporations and reinforce a destructive and patriarchal model.”
Therefore, we once again denounce that the decisions to move forward with carbon markets and related mechanisms, taken in conference rooms by white-collar representatives, do not reflect the reality of peoples and forests, and much less reflect the urgent need to initiate a real transition away from an economic model thirsty for fossil fuels. To continue with the carbon market mantra would mean to continue with the imposition of destructive projects on those people who have defended their forests and territories for generations. We reiterate the request to organizations, social movements, groups and networks to join the Call to Action to strengthen the voices coming from the forests which teach us the true consequences of these mechanisms. To fight against REDD+ is also to fight capitalism!
The new Pope Francis’ “Laudato Sí” encyclical addressing the ecological crisis, particularly the climate crisis, has been much discussed in the last month. It is uncommon to see so many organizations and individuals discussing a papal encyclical. Although it did not take into account important issues such as the place and role of women in these matters, the document was quite incisive and effective in its analysis and questioning of the current globalized capitalist over-consumption and production model. With this, the encyclical reinforced what social movements and other groups have been pointing out and denouncing for a long time.
In this document, the Pope also questioned some of the false solutions to the climate crisis that have been presented to the people of the world. The document states that carbon trading “can lead to a new form of speculation, which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide“. It also affirms “in no way does it [this mechanism] allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors”. Some defenders of the carbon offset mechanism, which allows the selling and buying of carbon credits, also known as carbon trading, were upset. The question then is: What does the criticism publiched by some of them reveal?
Such defenders start their answers affirming that the sale and purchase of carbon credits is an excellent and effective tool since it already has shown results, with projects that even were “certified” and awarded “quality labels”. This defensive posture reveals an intransigent desire to protect carbon trading, without a willingness to acknowledge the widespread conclusive criticism of carbon market mechanisms as a whole (1), as well as the experiences on the ground with tools that aim at commodifying carbon in tropical forests, such as REDD (2). Likewise, carbon market defenders cannot provide even basic developed responses to the content of each enquiry raised in the Pope’s statements.
Despite some praises to the analysis of the causes of the climate crisis in the papal encyclical, defenders end up evaluating the proposed solutions as weak and unrealistic, partly because it would cost an amount of money that would not exist. For them, defending a “radical change” is synonymous with not being “down to earth”. This reveals how they try to convince us that we must accept the world as it is, especially the fact that it is dominated by a capitalist market economy. Apparently they do not care that this economy is controlled by just a few hundred corporations, which despite being largely responsible for the climate crisis, receive all sorts of concessions from our governments – and for that there is money – and do not accept limits to the continuous expansion of their markets and profits at the expense of the majority of the people and the destruction of the environment. Some examples can be seen in the articles in this bulletin on the growth of large-scale monoculture projects in Papua, as well as mining expansion in Madagascar and the criminalization of social movements in India for fighting against the construction of a dam. The fact that carbon market advocates do not speak about, much less defend, the urgent need to dramatically curb these concessions, reveals how they live and collaborate with the world of financial institutions and companies representing big capital. Those are also the institutions and companies that so far have taken full advantage of the existence of carbon trading and these are the key players taking advantage of this new market and its speculative potential. In their anxiety to show the success of carbon trading, proponents also reveal another position: the “technician” or “specialist” who “knows” and understands that his/her role is to inform men and women who (still) “do not know” about these so called “complex” issues like “CO2″ and “carbon credits”, since only the “technician” or “specialist” (generally from the North) really understands those issues.
Communities affected by REDD projects have suffered first-handed. The “technicians” who come to the communities to propose projects decide which information the “beneficiaries” of the project will have access to. They rarely inform for example, that REDD does not reduce the impacts of the climate crisis because it allows pollution and destruction to continue, so in practice it is in fact a diversion from the main problem. Moreover, the time and energy invested in REDD discussions within climate conferences have confirmed why there are still no decisions to approve and implement real solutions, such as a drastic reduction of carbon emissions by the main responsible parties. “Specialists” do not inform either that if continuing with this situation for much longer, climate change will be intensified, and will particularly affect the livelihoods of rural communities and/or those living in the forest – because the climate crisis even compromises the future of the forests which many communities depend on. They also fail to mention that due to REDD projects, other communities neighboring main polluters in countries like the US or Canada, which buy carbon credits to supposedly “offset” their emissions, will keep suffering more and for longer because of polluting activities, such as extraction and/or refining of oil; activities that would have now been “compensated” with REDD. These communities are often indigenous and/or black communities which have been suffering from environmental racism for years due to the fact that they are neighbors of the oil companies (3)
Finally, there are advocates who argue that the Pope’ criticism is not applicable since the carbon market mechanism was already accepted by governments, i.e., it is already part of the negotiations for a new global climate agreement to be decided in Paris later this year. This reveals how carbon market advocates have made progress in their strategy to capture governments to serve their interests. But above all, it reveals that these advocates do not seem to be bothered by the disturbing fact that communities generally are not invited, and much less can influence the extremely important decisions that will define the direction the world will take in relation to the climate change struggle – or lack thereof, and which impacts will be felt by everyone. The disinterest in allowing more popular involvement and voice has a reason: If communities were actually present, they could see up close how many of their representatives -governments and the UN – are “prisoners” of the interests of a small group of corporations and NGOs, which in order to avoid structural changes, have been “selling” false solutions to the climate crisis for years, mainly the idea of carbon trading, including REDD. If people really were represented and present in these discussions, they could rebel and change the course of events.
We reaffirm the need for our governments to make decisions that “the present circumstances require” by the end of the year in Paris. The “radical change” advocated for years by many organizations and social movements merely lies in exercising to take conclusions based on the analysis of the facts that led and aggravate environmental destruction and climate change; namely, being “down to earth”! Our governments should also act accordingly, if they were serious about their role and if they cared about the future of the people they supposedly represent. It also means that false solutions like carbon trading and REDD, which do not represent any actual or structural change, must be rejected.
We call on everyone to join the Call to Action to reject REDD and the extractive industries, already signed by over 150 organizations and social movements worldwide – see also the article in this bulletin – which was released in the run up to the climate conference in Lima, Peru, in 2014
In his recent encyclical “Laudato Si,” the Pope urges action on climate change and specifically criticizes the sale of “carbon credits.”
The Earth “is protesting for the wrong that we are doing to her, because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God has placed on her. We have grown up thinking that we were her owners and dominators, authorised to loot her.”
Buying and selling carbon credits, the Pope wrote, “may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”
The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.
Since REDD is intrinsically linked to carbon trading, the Pope is also implicitly rejecting REDD.
The Vatican recently hosted governors and mayors from around the world to talk about climate change, including Governor Jerry Brown of California, a champion of cap-and-trade and REDD. We hope that the Pope challenged the Governor and made him see the light.
Both the Global Alliance against REDD and the No REDD in Africa have rejected California REDD.
On 22 April 2013, the No REDD in Africa Network sent a letter to Jerry Brown, Governor of California, opposing the inclusion of REDD offsets in California’s Global …
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
Contacts:
Attac Gabon and Grain recently put out a statementopposing REDD and carbon trading as a way of addressing climate change. The statement is posted here in full in English and French.
