REDD+ is bad for climate: Indigenous groups
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Indigenous groups protest REDD+ at Cancun, saying the climate law will give governments, industry and commerce further control of forests
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Despatches from Cancun, December 6, 2010: Indigenous groups are fighting against the introduction of a new UN climate law, with the acronym REDD+, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, the plus referring to the protection of forest communities.
Indigenous groups have warned that the law may undermine mitigation policies and worsen environmental and social problems. They today released NO REDD, a reader which contains groundbreaking research, exposing links between REDD and carbon trading, international finance institutions like the World Bank, extractive industries, genetically modified trees and biotech companies.
The case studies include the Socio Bosque programme in Ecuador, threat to indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation in Peru, corruption and coercion in a REDD scheme in Papua New Guinea, and the real face of “community participation” in Indonesia.
It highlights how REDD is being pushed by powerful interests to allow continued pollution, since industrial countries can offset their emissions by paying poor countries with forests to plant trees to absorb the carbon. However, these industries increase their profits even while they damage the rights of indigenous people and forest-dependent communities and thus, the forests and communities themselves.
Ann Petermann of the Global Justice Ecological Programme told journalists that the report reveals the underlying causes of deforestation and criticised the loose UN definition of forests, which including GM trees. The toss-up, as she saw it, was between biological forests and industrial plantations, from which only the richest countries and companies would benefit.
According to Tom B K Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environment Network, “REDD+ is bad for politics and bad for the climate. It will give more control over indigenous peoples’ forests to state forest departments, loggers, miners, plantation companies, traders, lawyers, speculators, brokers, Washington conservation organisations and Wall Street, resulting in violations of rights, loss of livelihood – and, ultimately, more forest loss.”
In the Reader, he refers to how forest areas have also been exploited for their oil and coal, like the Albertan Tar Sands in Canada, the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Niger Delta and Appalachian mountaintops in the US.
Given the impasse in Cancun over the extension of the Kyoto Protocol or a new convention, it is likely that REDD+ and a Green Fund may be the only outcomes of the UN summit here.
REDD+ will also have a bearing on the 100 million adivasis, many of whom are embroiled in the Naxal rebellion in central India.
Infochange News & Features, December 2010