Why REDD/REDD+ Is NOT a Solution
Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
Click here to Download the No REDD Papers PDF
All humans and all life are affected by climate change, however, Indigenous Peoples and local land-based communities worldwide are more vulnerable and therefore are confronting immense challenges. Changes in the climate, environment, the exploitation of economic globalization, free trade agreements and a continuation of western forms of development threaten indigenous and local land-based communities on a local and global level. The survival of indigenous cultures worldwide, including the languages and right to practice their cultural heritage continue to be affected by a modern industrialized world with an economic growth paradigm that lacks awareness and respect for the sacredness of Mother Earth. As “guardians” of Mother Earth, many indigenous tribal traditions believe that it is their historic responsibility to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth and to be defenders of the Circle of Life which includes biodiversity, forests, flora, fauna and all living species.
Indigenous Peoples participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate negotiations and other the UN Convention on Biological Diversity are in the frontlines of a power structure that minimizes the importance of indigenous cosmologies, philosophies and world views. These power structures reside within the UN process and prop up inequalities found in industrialized countries, the more developed of the developing countries, the World Bank and financial institutions. These powerful actors have economic systems that objectify, commodify and put a monetary value on land, water, forests and air that is antithetical to indigenous understanding. Indigenous peoples, North and South, are forced into the world market with nothing to negotiate with except the natural resources relied on for survival.
With many indigenous communities it is difficult and sometimes impossible to reconcile their traditional spiritual beliefs within a climate mitigation regime that commodifies the sacredness of air, trees and life. Climate change mitigation and sustainable forest management must be based on different mindsets which give full respect for nature, the rights of Mother Earth and not on market-based mechanisms. History has seen attempts to commodify land, food, labor, forests, water, genes and ideas, such as privatization of our traditional knowledge. Carbon trading follows in the footsteps12 of this history and turns the sacredness of our Mother Earth’s carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought or sold in a global market. Through this process of creating a new commodity – carbon – Mother Earth’s ability and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate. Carbon trading will not contribute to achieving protection of the Earth’s climate.
It is a false solution which entrenches and magnifies social inequalities in many ways. It is a violation of the sacred – plain and simple.
We recognize the need for industrialized countries to focus on new economies, governed by the absolute limits and boundaries of ecological sustainability, the carrying capacities of Mother Earth, a more equitable sharing of global and local resources, encouragement and support of self sustaining communities, and respect and support for the rights of Mother Earth.
Long term solutions require turning away from prevailing paradigms and ideologies centered on pursuing economic growth, corporate profits and personal wealth accumulation as primary engines of social well-being. The transitions will inevitably be toward societies that can equitably adjust to reduced levels of production and consumption, and increasingly localized systems of economic organization that recognize, honor and are bounded by the limits of nature that recognize the draft Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.1
“In recognizing the root causes of climate change, participants call upon the industrialized countries and the world to work towards decreasing dependency on fossil fuels. We call for a moratorium on all new exploration for oil, gas, coal and uranium as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels, without nuclear power, with a just transition to sustainable jobs, energy and environment. We take this position and make this recommendation based on our concern over the disproportionate social, cultural, spiritual, environmental and climate impacts on Indigenous Peoples, who are the first and the worst affected by the disruption of intact habitats, and the least responsible for such impacts.
Dialogue is needed amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders and especially the public/civil society and their governments to re-evaluate a colonial law system that doesn’t work. A body of law needs to be developed that recognizes the inherent rights of the environment, of animals, fish, birds, plants, water, and air outside of their usefulness to humans.
This would address the question as to the law and rights of nature, however with the framework of indigenous natural laws or within the framework of indigenous Original Instructions. Most colonial western law limits nature and what North America Indigenous peoples term as the Circle of Life, as mere property or natural “resources” to be exploited.
Many Indigenous Peoples in Copenhagen at the UNFCCC COP 15 were demanding action; not false hopes and empty promises. Developed countries use tactics to continue carbon13 colonialism. As Indigenous Peoples, many of us are raising the bar. We are mobilizing with social movements, workers, women, youth, small farmers and the business sector with a consciousness for social responsibility and will make demands in Cancun at the COP 16 and beyond Cancun to South Africa in 2011 and the Rio +20 in 2012 the most stringent emission target reductions and real solutions. As Indigenous Peoples, we are the guardians of Mother Earth, and making principled stands for the global well-being of all people and all life.
On my mother’s bloodline, I am On my mother’s bloodline, I am Dine’, an indigenous tribal nation spanning from Alaska, throughout Canada to the southwestern region of the United States. The deep profound spiritual concepts of Mother Earth and Father Sky being part of us as the Dine’ and the Dine’ being part of Mother Earth and Father Sky is woven into our “Way-Of-Being” even before we are born, when we are in the womb of our birth mother.
It is our belief the Dine’ must treat this sacred bond with love and respect without exerting dominance for we do not own our mother or father.
The four sacred elements of life: air, fire/light, water and earth in all their forms must be respected, honored and protected for they sustain life. These sacred elements cannot be owned and traded as property. We, the Dine’, the people of the Great Covenant, are the image of our ancestors and we are created in connection with all Creation. Mother Earth and our place in the Universe embody deep thinking, what we call “Nahasdzaan doo Yadilhil bitsaadee beehaz’aanii” or in the closest English translation, “Natural Law”.
On the other side of my family, amongst our Dakota Oyate (People), we understand our relationship and responsibilities to the natural world and to all life – animate and inanimate. We have an expression concluding our prayers whereby we say, “Mitakuye Owasin”, in English translation meaning “All My Relations”. This saying defines the relational precepts we have towards recognizing the rights of Mother Earth, and all life, and the responsibilities we have to remember the responsibility of our place in creation.
REDD/REDD+ in the negotiations2
Many Indigenous Peoples are starting to call REDD/REDD+ “CO2lonialism of forests” or capitalism of the trees and air”. The newspaper The Australian calls it a “classic 21st century scam emerging from the global climate change industry.”
This is because in reality, REDD/REDD+ is bad for people, bad for politics and bad for the climate. It will inevitably give more control over Indigenous Peoples’ forests to state forest departments, loggers, miners, plantation companies, traders, lawyers, speculators, brokers,14 Washington conservation organizations and Wall Street, resulting in violations of rights, loss of livelihood – and, ultimately, more forest loss.
The reasons are simple. Industrialized-country governments and corporations will pay for the preservation of Indigenous Peoples’ forests only if they get something in return. What they want is rights over the carbon in those forests. They need those rights because they want to use them as licenses to continue burning fossil fuels – and thus to continue mining fossil fuels at locations like the Albertan Tar Sands in Canada, the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Niger Delta and Appalachian mountaintops in the United States. They will get those rights by making deals with – and reinforcing the power of – the people that they regard as having “authority” over the forests, or whoever is willing and able to steal forests or take them over using legal means. These people are the very governments, corporations and gangsters who have time and again proved their contempt for the rights and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. The result is bound to be new and more extensive forms of elite appropriation of Indigenous and other territories.
REDD/REDD+ can’t be fixed by attempts to detach it from the carbon markets
Existing REDD/REDD+ projects have already set in motion this transfer of power, nor is there any way that REDD/REDD+ can be “fixed” to alter these political realities. It can only reinforce them. For well-meaning environmentalists to deny this is to indulge in a very dangerous naiveté.
First and foremost, REDD/REDD+ is – and is always in danger of being – a component of carbon markets. While many of the details of REDD/REDD+ are being worked out by well-intentioned economists, lawyers, environmental NGOs, and forest conservationists and technicians with no particular commitment to carbon markets, the money behind it was always going to come mainly from industrialized countries and large corporations looking for more pollution licenses to enable them to delay action on climate change. Even among the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, the consensus is already clear: finance for REDD/REDD+ projects will come from carbon markets.
If REDD/REDD+ plans go forward, billions of tones of demand for tradable REDD/REDD+ pollution licenses will be generated by UN-backed carbon markets including the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme, bilateral agreements and the voluntary market. Even the technical structure of REDD/REDD+ reflects its market orientation: REDD/REDD+ posits a numerical climatic equivalence between saving forests and reducing the burning of fossil fuels. This equation is indefensible scientifically; its only function is to make different things tradable15 in order to generate fossil fuel pollution licenses.3 A non-market REDD/REDD+ would not need to claim this false equivalence between biotic and fossil carbon.
As an alternative to the carbon market mechanisms of REDD/REDD+, there is an emerging movement of friendly countries, NGOs and Indigenous Peoples organizations (IPOs) proposing a hypothetical REDD/REDD+ that is not connected with the carbon markets. However, these strategic and tactical solutions are risky with no guarantees that these proposals will end up being pushed aside by the more powerful actors with a stake in developing this prospective trillion-dollar market.4 To act as if REDD/REDD+ might someday be financed by a repayment of the ecological debt the North owes the South, or by a benevolent fund using public or non-market donations, could be naïve. Red flags go up expressing the danger zones of blindly supporting REDD/REDD+, of any kind, as well as any attempt to “fix” REDD/REDD+, that would inevitably mean support for the carbon markets.
Assuming REDD/REDD+ is irretrievably linked with carbon markets, then at least three important conclusions follow:
(1) There is no way to stop REDD/REDD+ from dividing Indigenous and forest dependent communities from each other. Every time a forest dependent community signs a contract to provide pollution licenses for fossil fuel-dependent corporations, it will be potentially harming communities elsewhere who are suffering from the fossil fuel extraction or pollution for which those corporations are responsible. No possible reform or regulation of REDD/REDD+ could prevent this; it is built into its structure as a carbon market instrument.
(2) Of course, it would be theoretically possible, with great effort, for Indigenous and forest dependent communities who wish to sign REDD/REDD+ contracts to secure the free, prior and informed consent of all the other communities elsewhere who would be harmed. Many local communities of these forested areas have values respecting humanity and the concepts of the well-being of community, however, most members of these REDD/REDD+ projects have not been thoroughly informed of the offset reality on how these projects create toxic hotspots violating the indigenous and human rights of communities far away. But unless this consent is obtained in every case – and the list of communities across the globe who would need to be consulted would be huge with many REDD/REDD+ projects – REDD/REDD+ is bound to pit community against community. Already, a project using aboriginal North Australian Indigenous knowledge of fire management practices to generate pollution licenses for ConocoPhillips has provoked the following reaction from Casey Camp-Horinek, a tribal member of the Ponca indigenous nation in the US, which suffers from the actions of the company in North America: “Indigenous Peoples who participate in carbon trading are giving ConocoPhillips a bullet to kill my people.”5 16
(3) There is no way to stop REDD/REDD+ from dividing Indigenous and forest dependent communities who sign REDD/REDD+ contracts from other communities for whom climate change is a concern. As part of carbon markets, REDD/REDD+ will inevitably slow action on global warming; that is what carbon markets are structured to do.6 REDD/REDD+ will thus heighten climate dangers for Arctic, indigenous lands, small-island states and low-lying and coastal communities, as well as, eventually, everyone else. Again, no possible reform of REDD/REDD+ could prevent the damage it would do to the climate cause, as long as it is linked to carbon trading. Pretending that such reforms are possible only perpetuates the damage. The very structure of REDD/REDD+ makes it impossible that it could ever be made “Indigenous-friendly”.
(4) There is no way to stop REDD/REDD+ from being a speculative plaything of the financial markets – to the detriment of the climate and human rights alike. Already, the biggest investors in carbon credits are not companies that need them in order to meet their government-regulated pollution targets.7
REDD/REDD+ can’t be fixed by trying to ensure that the money “goes to the right place”
REDD/REDD+ proponents often assert that, even though REDD/REDD+ may be bad for the climate, at least it will be good for forests because it will channel large sums of money to nature conservation and biodiversity protection. Leaving aside, for the moment, the difficulty that any program that accelerates global warming will also accelerate forest destruction, this is to overlook the historical lesson that every proposal to solve the problem of deforestation and forest degradation through large sums of money has failed.8 This failure is due to at least three reasons:
(1) The problem of deforestation is not caused by too little money. It is caused by too much money – money in the wrong hands. More specifically, it is caused by the disproportionate political power and global political organizational capabilities of forest destroyers. What is needed to stop deforestation is not well-funded forest global conservation schemes or new markets for ecosystem services, but, rather – for example – a restructuring of trade, finance and consumption, moratoriums on oil extraction and large infrastructure projects in forests, curbs on logging, agrofuels and commercial plantations, and an increase in the political power of those with the deepest interest in saving forests: the communities that depend directly on them. Making supplementary sums of money available – no matter to whom, and no matter in what amounts – will not help forest conservation unless the underlying causes of deforestation are both understood and addressed. There is no evidence that any major supporter of REDD/REDD+17 has the slightest inclination to tackle these underlying causes, although they are well known. Quite the reverse – all of these actors support the forces that have been most responsible for deforestation in the first place.
(2) Even if REDD/REDD+ could be reformulated as a plan to make available huge financial rewards for the Indigenous protectors of forests, it does not follow that Indigenous Peoples would be able to collect and use the rewards. As ecological anthropologist Michael R. Dove from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has observed, “whenever a resource at the periphery acquires value to the center, the center assumes control of it (e.g., by restricting local exploitation, granting exclusive licenses to corporate concessionaires, and establishing restrictive trade associations). The pattern is clearly expressed by a peasant homily from Kalimantan, which states that whenever a ‘little’ man chances upon a ‘big’ fortune, he finds only trouble. He is in trouble because his political resources are not commensurate with his new-found economic resources. He does not have the power to protect and exploit great wealth and so, inevitably, it is taken from him.”9
The truth of Dove’s words are borne out by the record of recent schemes to reward Indigenous and other communities for “traditional knowledge” used in corporate drug development. In the end, the communities that were originally pictured as beneficiaries turned out to be inconvenient entities for buyers and bio-prospectors to deal with, leading to their replacement by ranchers (Argentina), governments (Chile), urban plant merchants (Mexico), or state land agencies and universities (Mexico). Planners were unable to find sites that contained “in one neat package the plants, knowledge, people, territory and decision-making authority, all congealed in the name of [a] participating community” that would receive funds for community development and conservation. Troubled researchers at the United States National Institutes of Health concluded that, in Mexico, treating plant collection as a commodity transaction “breaks the link” among people, plants and territory that the whole deal was supposed to encourage. Anthropologist Cori
Hayden observes: “offers of market-mediated inclusion also contain within them the conditions for ever-greater forms of exclusion and stratification.”10
An even more brutal kind of property rights evolution has taken place in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – of which REDD/REDD+ could soon become a part. In the beginning, sellers of CDM carbon credits were supposed to be local developers of renewable energy, community-friendly tree-planters and other actors who could help the South move toward a low fossil-fuel development path while defending local rights. Given the realities of buyers, developers, lawyers, brokers, bankers and consultants, this turned out to be unworkable. Transaction costs and the predicament of political bargaining, measurement, contracting, investment, cost control, “risk management” and regulation meant that the sellers turned out instead to be the big-corporates Jindal Vijaynagar Steel in India, Rhodia Group that makes specialty18 chemicals, Tata Group, a conglomerate of corporations in India, and the Votorantim Group, the largest private economic conglomerate in Brazil, all in the business of collecting a premium for activities that on the whole thwarted the struggle to moderate climate change. Nor was it usually possible in practice for carbon money to be used to benefit local people. Instead, carbon money has harmed them and rewarded their oppressors.11
The pattern is already being repeated in REDD. Out of 100 pilot projects – almost all of them connected with carbon trading – many are already stained with the blood of the Indigenous and other peoples they claim to benefit, involving land grabs, evictions, human rights violations, fraud and militarization. In Kenya, the Mau forest is being made “ready” for a UNEP-funded carbon offset project by forceful and often violent eviction of its inhabitants, including the Indigenous Ogiek People.12 In Papua New Guinea, carbon traders are accused of coercing villagers to “to sign over the rights to their forests” for REDD/REDD+.13 The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) was explicit at the Bali climate negotiations in 2007:
“REDD/REDD+ will not benefit Indigenous Peoples, but in fact will result in more violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. It will increase the violation of our human rights, our rights to our lands, territories and resources, steal our land, cause forced evictions, prevent access and threaten indigenous agricultural practices, destroy biodiversity and cultural diversity and cause social conflicts. Under REDD/REDD+, states and carbon traders will take more control over our forests.”
(3) REDD/REDD+’s very design ensures that money will flow to forest destroyers, not to forest protectors. To create a REDD/REDD+ commodity, precise measurements of how much deforestation REDD/REDD+ projects prevent is necessary. That market requirement automatically produces a perverse incentive for countries with low levels of deforestation to cut more trees now in order to be able to claim later that they are sharply reducing deforestation and thus deserve more REDD/REDD+ finance.14 These perverse incentives are already at work in Guyana, where President Jagdeo has launched an “avoided threatened deforestation” scheme.
An editorial in Guyana’s Kaieteur News in May 2009 argued that Guyana “should precede full steam ahead with the exploitation of our forestry resources. In addition to placing our future development more firmly in our own hands, it will ironically make our arguments for REDD/ REDD+ even stronger.”15 Adding to the likelihood of REDD/REDD+ money flowing to the worst forest destroyers is the definition of “forests” used by the UNFCCC, which includes monoculture tree plantations and clear cuts (euphemistically referred to as “temporarily un-stocked areas”).
Under this definition, the Brazilian government’s plans to replace part of the Amazonian forest with oil palm plantations would not count as deforestation.16 Industrial loggers could also benefit from REDD/REDD+ by claiming to be practicing “sustainable forest management,” while criminalizing Indigenous agricultural and forest practices.19
REDD/REDD+ can’t be fixed by saying that efforts are being made for REDD/REDD+ projects to require the “Free Prior Informed Consent” (FPIC) of affected communities or compliance with the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) or other codes or principles
(1) To act as if REDD/REDD+’s structural dangers could be “controlled” by pressing for principles such as FPIC, UNDRIP or World Commission on Dams standards to be applied is to indulge corporations and governments in a false-sense of hope that could damage millions of people’s lives. First, many countries do not even recognize the existence of Indigenous Peoples, let alone their rights, so neither the principle of FPIC nor UNDRIP will act as protection. Neither FPIC nor UNDRIP are considered legally binding by the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC nor by any state except Bolivia. During the Nairobi climate negotiations, the President of the Executive Board of the CDM stated publicly that the “Clean Development Mechanism has nothing to do with human rights.”17 In recent negotiations in the “REDD text” within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, efforts by Indigenous Peoples to negotiate strong language on indigenous rights in accordance with UNDRIP has resulted in attempts by the US and other countries to respond with weakened language. It is important to be mindful that the right to FPIC has already been violated in REDD/REDD+ pilot projects and in preparatory plans in several countries.18 Other internationally-recognized principles such as the standards urged by the World Commission on Dams have similar limitations.
(2) Even if FPIC and UDRIP magically became legislated, implemented and be enforceable law across the world within the next few years, it is our opinion as an Indigenous-based advocate organization that they would have to be applied to all the communities affected by each REDD/REDD+ project, not just the one hosting the project. For example, to get the free prior informed consent of Indigenous communities affected by the Northern Australia fire management offset project, the consent of Indigenous communities affected by ConocoPhillips operations in North America would also need to be obtained, as well as other communities damaged by ConocoPhillips practices elsewhere. This would obviously make REDD/REDD+ commercially unviable: either REDD/REDD+ or FPIC would have to be scrapped. Hence, to avoid delay, it would be more practical to oppose REDD/REDD+ straightforwardly, at the outset.
(3) Whatever the merits of FPIC and UNDRIP, they are, again, incapable of forcing REDD/REDD+ projects to address the underlying causes of deforestation. Even if it were possible to make compliance with the principles of FPIC and UNDRIP a condition for every REDD/REDD+ project, REDD/REDD+ would remain a contributor to both deforestation and global warming, as well as an additional piece of artillery for the use of the corporate and nation-state forces that oppose 20 Indigenous rights. To proceed as if FPIC and UNDRIP could “fix” REDD/REDD+, therefore, is ironically ultimately to endorse the violation of the rights of Indigenous people as well as all others who value climatic stability.19
Conclusion
The bottom line concerning the question of how to address the issues of increasing climate change is to stop extracting and combusting fossil fuels. There are no other solutions. REDD/REDD+ is not a solution. The push at the Cancun UNFCCC 16th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) will be to reach an agreement on a REDD-plus (REDD+) mechanism in Cancun, Mexico. The UN-REDD Programme, the World Bank and others want to launch the REDD+ readiness initiatives. The link between emissions trading and the world of offsets to the vested interests of the pro-REDD marketers is deeply rooted. Real alternatives to the carbon market mechanism of REDD/REDD+ cannot simply become a re-spin of REDD. It is not enough to add a clever adjective, purport to be “fund-based”, get certified or pretend to not ultimately rely on the carbon market and the privatization and commodification of trees, forests and air.
Fortunately, real alternatives to REDD/REDD+ already exist and include:
Focusing on land tenure dilemmas in forested countries. Collectively demarcating and titling Indigenous Peoples’ territories and land where most of the world’s forests are found. This has proven to be one of the most effective measures for reducing deforestation; Implementing at the global, national, regional and local levels the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other relevant international human rights norms and standards which establish moral and legal obligations to protect and promote the full enjoyment of Indigenous Peoples rights and sovereignty in all issues related to climate change, including rights to lands, territories and resources, their traditional knowledge and their free, prior and informed consent;
For other forest dependent communities, ensure the implementation at global, national, regional and local levels international human rights norms and standards which establish moral and legal obligations to protect and promote the full enjoyment of human rights related to climate change, land, water, and a healthy environment; Efforts to stop deforestation must address the underlying causes of deforestation and focus on ending the demand-side drivers in importing countries; Addressing governance and poverty;21 In so far as finance is required to stop deforestation, funds should be invested in national programs and infrastructure that directly support alternative rights-based forms of forest conservation, sustainable management, natural regeneration and ecosystem restoration that are already known to work, such as community-based forestry.
- Slashing demand for beef, pulp, lumber, palm oil and agrofuels;
- Drastically reducing monoculture plantations and logging concessions;
- Declaring a moratorium on new fossil fuel and mining extraction and dam construction on or near indigenous land;
- It is becoming clear that to separate REDD/REDD+ from the carbon market, it would need to be totally reframed and renamed within the debates and UNFCCC negotiating texts. This would be difficult within the UNFCCC “Bracket-UN-bracket Community” and would require countries with political will to step up to this need.
The mining and combustion of fossil fuels must be drastically reduced with a commitment to a carbon-free economy by 2050. Within the UNFCCC, the governmental parties to the climate negotiations must be lobbied to target aggregate GHG emissions of developed countries by 50 per cent from 1990 levels by 2017.20 The world governments must commit to the global goal of preventing Mother Earth’s temperature from rising more than 1º Celsius. Given the important role the Arctic plays in the global climate system, a precautionary approach would therefore suggest a long-term target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at levels at or below 300 parts per million (ppm).21 This is more aggressive then the 350ppm target, but mitigating the climate crisis demands drastic action. This would rule out a domino effect of sea-ice loss, what is called an “albedo flip”, a warmer Arctic, a disintegrating Greenland ice sheet, black carbon (black soot), more melting permafrost, and further secondary or “knock-on” effects of massively increased greenhouse gas emissions, rising atmospheric concentrations and accelerated global warming.22 It must be noted that industrialized developed countries are advocating for only a 450ppm stabilization goal.
The “Shared Vision” text within the UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) must have strong language mobilized by the People of the World undertaking a balanced, comprehensive series of financial, technological and adaptation measures, measures addressing capacity building, production patterns and consumption, and other essential measures such as recognition of the rights of Mother Earth in order to restore harmony with nature and to save our native forests.
There is a need for a new paradigm in this world, in relation to how it defines its’ relationship to Mother Earth. This paradigm requires a change in the human relationship with the natural22 world from one of exploitation to one that recognizes its relationship to the sacredness of our true mother/grandmother – Mother Earth. Economic globalization and industrialized societies’ economic system is not sustainable.
“We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution. The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself. Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.” – Cochabamba Peoples’ Agreement (Accord), April 2010
Mother Earth is turned into nothing more than a source of raw materials. Human beings are seen as consumers and a means of production, that is, persons whose worth is defined by what they have, not by what they are. Humanity is at a crossroads: we can either continue taking the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or take the road of harmony with nature and respect for the Circle of Life.
The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human beings. The industrialized economic system has imposed upon us a mindset that seeks competition, progress and unlimited growth. This production-consumption regime pursues profits without limit, separating human beings from nature. It establishes a mindset that seeks to dominate nature, turning everything into a commodity: the land, water, air (carbon), forests, agriculture, flora and fauna, biodiversity, genes and even indigenous traditional knowledge.
1 The Mystic Lake Declaration, From the Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change (National) Workshop II: Indigenous Perspectives and Solutions, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prior Lake, Minnesota, November 21, 2009. http://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/draft-universaldeclaration-of-the-rights-of-mother-earth-2/
2 The following four sections are revisions from the paper, “Just Say No to REDD”, written and published by the Indigenous Environmental Network, November 2009.
3 Larry Lohmann, “Toward a Different Debate in Environmental Accounting: The Cases of Carbon and Cost-Benefit’, Accounting, Organizations and Society Vol. 34, Issues 3-4, April/May 2009. pp. 499–534, available at www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate.
4 These countries were not even able to ensure that a reference to the Conference on Biological Diversity was included in the REDD/REDD+ methodology text at the meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice of June 2008 in Bonn. 23
5 See National Indian Education Association http://www.niea.org/media/news_detail.php?id=291&catid.
6 See, e.g., Larry Lohmann, ed., Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 2006. available at http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate.
7 Corner House Briefing No. 40, “When Markets Are Poison: Learning about Climate Policy from the Financial Crisis”, , http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate.
8 The Tropical Forest Action Plan of the late 1980s and 1990s is one example.
9 Michael Dove, “Centre, Periphery and Biodiversity: A Paradox of Governance and a Developmental Challenge,” in Stephen B. Brush and Doreen Stabinsky, Valuing Local Knowledge: Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights, Island Press 1996. pp. 41–67.
10 Hayden, Cori, “Bioprospecting: The ‘Promise’ and Threat of the Market”, NACLA Report on the Americas 39 (5), 2006. pp. 26-31. See also “Chronicles of a Disaster Foretold: REDD/REDD+ with Carbon Trading”, www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate.
11 See, for example, Carbon Trading, op. cit. supra note 6, and Mausam (Indian journal on climate), both available at http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate.
12 REDD/REDD+ Monitor, http://www.REDD/REDD+-monitor.org/2008/10/06/global-forest-coalitionattacks-REDD/REDD+/.
13 Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2009, http://www.smh.com.au/environment/i-am-a-topforeigner-in-papua-new-guinea-says-carbon-kingpin-20090903-fa0m.html
14 REDD/REDD+ Monitor, “World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility would Reward Forest Destroyers in Indonesia,” http://www.REDD/REDD+-monitor.org/2009/03/02/fcpfs-poster-child-wouldreward-forest-destroyers-in-indonesia/; and New York Times, 22 August 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/science/earth/22degrees.html.
15 REDD/REDD+ Monitor, 24 June 2009, http://www.REDD/REDD+-monitor.org/2009/06/24/offsettinga-dangerous-distraction/.
16 Global Forest Coalition, REDD/REDD+ without Rules: Another Disaster in the Making, http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/forest%20cover/ForestCover-no27-september2008.pdf; REDD/REDD+ Monitor, “REDD/REDD+ will Fail with the Current Definition of Forests,” http://www.REDD/REDD+-monitor.org/2009/09/08/REDD/REDD+-will-fail-with-the-current-definition-offorest/#more-2776. See also UNFCCC Decision 11/CP.7 Annex 1 (a), http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/spanish/cop7/cp713a01s.pdf.
17 In response to a question from an Indigenous representative of the Assembly of First Nations, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, in a meeting with civil society in June 2009 in Bonn, read a previously prepared statement that stated that the UNFCCC Copenhagen deal will not be bound by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples because it is not a legally binding instrument.
18 REDD/REDD+ Monitor, “Lack of Meaningful Consultation on R-PINs in Suriname, Indonesia, Liberia and Panama,” http://www.REDD/REDD+-monitor.org/?s=R-PINS.
19
20 International Indigenous Peoples Technical Workshop with States on the UNFCCC Negotiations Xcaret, Quintana Roo, México, 27-29 September 2010.
21 http://target300.org/index.html
22 Climate Change and Trace Gases, by Hansen, Sato, Kharecha, Russell, Lea and Siddall, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, Published online 18 May 2007, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, http://www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf 24
What are ‘carbon offsets’?
Carbon trading allows industrialized countries and corporations to avoid reducing emissions at source. It takes two main forms: “cap and trade” and “carbon offsets.”
Carbon offsets are ‘emissions-saving projects’ that in theory ‘compensate’ for the polluters’ emissions. The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the largest such scheme with 2,400 registered projects in developing countries and almost 3,000 further projects awaiting approval, as of October 2010.
This scheme allows polluting governments and corporations, which have the historical responsibility to clean up the atmosphere, to buy their way out of the problem with cheap projects that exacerbate social and environmental conflicts in the South. Moreover, it delays any real domestic action where a historical responsibility lies and allows the expansion of more fossil fuel explorations and extractions.
The ‘carbon credits’ generated by these projects can be used by industrialized governments and corporations to meet their targets and/or to be traded within the carbon markets. In addition to the CDM there are also voluntary markets, undertaken largely for purchase by individual consumers in the North at the expense of communities and biodiversity in the South. Therefore, while cap and trade in theory limits the availability of pollution permits, “offset” projects are a license to print new ones, thus, supporting the same industries and practices that cause social and environmental problems for local communities, such as gas flaring, incineration and large dams. Offsets provide legitimacy for continued fossil fuel-based energy use and consumption in the North and act as a backdoor to avoid the responsibility of reducing emissions at source.
he Indigenous Environmental Network is battling “carbon cowboys,” and exposing the false climate solutions and scam carbon credits of the carbon market, which allows the world’s worst polluters to continue polluting.
ns Declaration at Kari-Oca II. Photo Ben Powless.
of Alaska.