REDD Monrovia April 2010. “People who live with the forests don’t want REDD.”

REDD

MonroviaApril 2010

“People who live with the forests don’t want REDD.”

“We conserve forests because forests are life, not a commodity.”

“Wherever developed countries emit gas, that’s where they have to reduce it!”

“You have to act justly.” [Thai lowland villagers protesting coal-fired developments, etc.]

“Stop selling dignity. [Stop selling] carbon credits.”

“Thai farmers are the people suffering the effects of global warming, not the ones causing it.”

“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, states and carbon traders will take more control over our forests.”

The International Indigenous Peoples

Forum on Climate Change, 2007

“… our demand for an immediate suspension of all REDD initiatives and carbon market schemes … human rights violations caused by the CDM and other carbon trading and offset regimes.”

IIPFCC, 2008

REDD

…What is it?

Where carbon is stored

Active Carbon Pool

Fossil Carbon Pool

Atmosphere

Oceans Forests, other Vegetation, Soil

“There is so much carbon buried in the world’s coal seams [alone] that, should it find its way back to the surface, it would make the planet hostile to life as we know it.”

Tim Flannery, 2005

CARBON POOLS (billion tonnes)

Atmosphere 720-760Oceans 38,400-40,000Rock >75,000,000Land biosphere

living biomass 600-1,000dead biomass 1,200

Fresh water 1-2Fossil fuels >4,130

coal 3,510oil 230gas 140other 250

Source: Falkowski et al., Science, 2004

The industrialized countries could do it.

For example, fuel use in the UK could be cut by 87 per cent and carbon-based fuels eliminated using existing technologies.

Roger Levett

But industrial countries don’t like this idea …

Many firms and policymakers are afraid that that would be “too expensive” and want to continue business as usual.

… And US economists, traders, policymakers and environmentalists found a way to delay spending the money industrialized countries need to spend …

They said: “Maybe we can tackle global warming without worrying about reducing fossil fuel use right away …”

Find a lot of substitutes for reducing fossil fuel use … and trade them.

=

+

$$

Carbon credits

Pollution rights

= Licenses to pollute with CO2

A license to kill …

A license to pollute …

Demand from industrialized countries for pollution rights is growing …

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1997 2000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2020

?… and the market is getting bigger fast (US$b)

Projected to be the “world’s biggest commodity market” … started from close to 0 in the 1990s and may soon reach $5 trillion.

REDD

… What will the effects be on communities?

Uganda

In 1993 the Ugandan government declared Mount Elgon a national park and forcibly evicted indigenous people. In 2002, rangers evicted another 300 families. The Benet

people are suing for the return of their land.

Villagers stand amid corn planted on what the government says is national park, but which they claim has belonged to them for generations. To plant the corn, the

villagers chopped down trees planted by the Dutch FACE Foundation as part of a carbon trading project.

A tree planted by the FACE Foundation. The land behind it up to the tree line recently held planted trees, but has been cleared for planting by villagers who

say the land belongs to them.

Ezera Wandeka, 72, was one of the richest farmers in one village on the border of Mount Elgon National Park until his fields were declared to be illegally inside the

park, and he was evicted.

Wandeka kept the title to his land after rangers set fire to his home and evicted him and other farmers.

What people in the Uganda forest department said

“We just have to admit that we know nothing about the trade in CO2, neither how it will function nor how much the foreign investor will profit from it.”

9 November 2009:

Police to Move Into Mau as Notice Expires Security personnel were on Monday mobilised for possible deployment into the Mau forest after the expiry of a two-week notice ordering illegal settlers to leave.

To show that it was serious about getting the settlers out of the forest, the government mobilised a team of security officers for briefing at the Londiani Forest College.

The team comprised rangers from Kenya Forest Service and Kenya Wildlife Service, officers from the National Youth Service Unit and policemen from the regular and administration units. They will jointly “provide security” as the settlers move out.

Daily Nation (Nairobi)

Many forest communities may lose their land if it is needed to “offset” fossil fuels …

11 November 2009:

Kenya promises climate effort Kenya said on Wednesday it would work to restore tree cover and explore renewable energy options as its contribution to combatting climate change ahead of next month's environmental summit in Copenhagen. Part of the effort will include a plan to save the Mau forest, one of the few remaining in the east African country, Prime Minister Raila Odinga said.

A major source of controversy in Kenya in recent weeks has been the planned relocation of some 20 000 families from homes in the Mau Forest Complex, the country's biggest closed-canopy forest and a vital water catchment area.

News24.com

In Papua New Guinea, carbon traders are accused of coercing villagers to “to sign over the rights to their forests” for REDD.

Sydney Morning Herald

3 September 2009

… and what are the effects on communities far away?

People threatened by fossil fuel extraction and pollution …

“Keep oil in the soil.”

“Our people are sick and dying from the refineries. Trading schemes knowingly concentrate pollution, exacerbating existing ‘hot spots’ in our communities of color.”

Dr. Henry Clark, West County Toxics Coalition

Meanwhile, “in Nigeria, gas flaring is already prohibited and companies like Chevron and Shell have been paying a penalty for non-compliance. So, oil industry offset projects … claiming to reduce gas flaring assume non-compliance.”

Asume Osuoka,

Gulf of Guinea Citizens Network

“Eni-Agip, an Italian transnational oil corporation, attempts to disapprove Nigerian law in its presentation to the CDM, maintaining that ‘whilst the Nigerian Federal High Court recently judged that gas flaring is illegal, it is difficult to envisage a situation where wholesale changes in practice in venting or flaring, or cessation of oil production in order to eliminate flaring will be forthcoming in the near term.’ … what is lacking in Eni-Agip’s argument is the analysis of their own role in promoting instability and local dislocation, or how new gas infrastructure projects would contribute to exacerbating local tensions.”

“Carbon trading reflects one of the worst forms of neoliberal fanaticism and attempts at re-legitimating corporate rule experienced in past decades.”

No need to stop emissions from a natural gas refinery if you can …

=… implement indigenous fire control somewhere else … because “CO2 = CO2”

8

Carbon Dioxide EquivalentsCarbon Dioxide Equivalents

CH4=

“Indigenous Peoples who participate in carbon trading are giving [oil companies] a bullet to kill my people.”

Casey Camp-Horinek,

Ponca indigenous nation

US

Who benefits?

The Nature Conservancy,

World Bank

Merrill Lynch

Environmental Defense

Dow Chemical

International Timber Trading Organization

Chicago Climate Exchange

Plantation industries

Conservation International

Baker & MacKenzie

various United Nations organizations

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Van Ness Feldman

John Kerry

National Resources Defense Council

Al Gore

Government of Norway

MAJOR SUPPORTERS OF REDD

Who (and what) benefits?

$$

PEDRO MOURA COSTA, co-founder of Oxford-based EcoSecurities, 44, made 4.8 million pounds ($10 million) when he sold some shares in the firm which helps convert emission cuts into tradable carbon credits. His remaining shares are worth about 37 million pounds ($73 million).

Q: How did you get rich?

A: I saw the carbon market could be big business and the Kyoto Protocol confirmed my views.

Richard Sandor, ex-Chicago Board of Trade, inventor of interest rate futures in 1970s

“‘Frankly, the debate [over offsets] just makes me want to scream,’ Sandor told me. ‘The clock is moving. They are slashing and burning and cutting the forests of the world. It may be a quarter of global warming and we can get the rate to two per cent simply by inventing a preservation credit and making that forest have value in other ways. Who loses when we do that?’”

Michael Specter, The New Yorker, February 2008

In the Kyoto Protocol, these loopholes were designed and installed by the US …

(FOOTNOTE:

Al Gore benefits from the pollution-rights market he helped create through his interests in Generation Investment Management, the largest shareholder in CAMCO, owner of one of the world’s largest carbon credit portfolios.)

For more information and free books

www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climatewww.carbontradewatch.org/www.redd-monitor.orgwww.ienearth.orgwww.ejmatters.orgwww.sinkswatch.orgwww.wrm.org.uywww.risingtidenorthamerica.orgwww.ipocafrica.orgwww.internationalrivers.orgwww.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/dangerous_obsession.pdf

Download Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power from http://www.dhf.uu.seor from http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climateor order your free paper copy fromkarin.andersson.schiebe@dhf.uu.se