The world’s first commercially financed REDD project, and the first to meet the standards of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) – criteria for identifying projects that “simultaneously address climate change, support local communities and conserve biodiversity” – is in Ulu Masen, Aceh, where Bank of America Merrill Lynch has purchased carbon credits from 7,690 square kilometers of protected forest.

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As forest areas boom in value, investors, traders, and northern governments will contest for these lands. Governments still declare ownership of about 65 percent of the world’s forests, while only about 9 percent are legally owned or designated for use by communities and indigenous peoples. And national and local leaders may become the target of efforts to use bribery to obtain forest-related agreements that fail to consider the rights of those most affected.
The End of the Hinterland provides examples of conflicts between forest communities and outsiders:
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In Papua New Guinea, a native leader, Abilie Wape, from the Kamula Doso Peoples, was kidnapped and forced at gun point to give away the rights for the carbon stored in the idigenous’ forest. In Kenya, a UNEP-funded REDD project in the Mau forest has led to evictions and threatens the cultural survival of the Ogiek hunter-gathers.
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A January 7 statement by the Durban Group for Climate Justice coalition also condemned REDD as an “ineffective and unjust solution to climate change”Click to read Article

Nine member organizations of the Global Forest Coalition examined REDD strategies and activities in their countries. The studies result in a palette with different shades of ‘REDD’.
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Red Realities

Realites-du-systeme-REDD

Realidades-REDD”

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Excerpt of story
… Changing the system

“System Change - Not Climate Change,” is the title of the final statement from Klimaforum09, signed by some 360 organizations from around the world.

Drafted months ago and discussed over the last week in the Danish capital, this “People’s Declaration” argues that “there are solutions to the climate crisis,” and puts forward six demands.

“What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all people and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to present and future generations,” it states.

The signatory organisations called on governments to take urgent climate action, most importantly the “complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every five-year period.”

They also demanded “an immediate cut in GHG (greenhouse gases) of industrialized countries of at least 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020,” and “recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.”

The statement goes on to reject “purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous solutions,” such as “nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically ‘climate-readied’ crops, geoengineering, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).”

The “real solutions” are “based on safe, clean, renewable, and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as transitions to food, energy, land, and water sovereignty.”

The signatory organisations also proposed that an “equitable tax on carbon emissions” be established instead of “the regime of tradable emission quotas,” and that multilateral financial bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund “be replaced by democratic and equitable institutions functioning in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”

They also demanded a “mechanism for strict surveillance and control of the operations of TNCs (transnational corporations).”

“Irrespective of the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, there is an urgent need to build a global movement of movements dedicated to the long-term task of promoting a sustainable transition of our societies,” the statement concludes.

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Fiu Elisara, an indigenous expert at the climate change conference, says the accord ignores the concerns of indigenous people. He says this includes REDD, which is designed to offer financial incentives to conserve forests, but will not filter through to local communities.

“The way it’s working any funding out of REDD will be through an inter-governmental process and it’s basically benefitting the culprits, or compensating the loggers for example, because the criteria is such that the intention to de-log will actually amount to the logging companies and the emissions trading companies to actually benefit from REDD funding.”

Fiu Elisara says communities in the Indonesian province of Papua have been killed to make way for REDD projects.

JOHN SAUVEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREENPEACE UK

“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty.

“It seems there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest, let alone caring much for the millions of people who are facing down the threat of climate change.”

CLICK to PLAY:VITAL SIGNS OF WARMING WORLD

Companies, including your utility company and even some environmental groups are lobbying for a mandatory “cap and trade” system that would penalize heavy polluters and reward companies that invest in clean power. Under the plan companies whose emissions are under their “cap” would get credits that could be sold to producers who go over their limit.

LEARN HOW THE “CAP AND TRADE” SCHEME WORKS -Play along as a company making investment decisions in a simulated market using such a system.

CLICK to PLAY:PAYING TO POLLUTE