On this edition of Fault Lines, Avi Lewis travels to Bolivia to explore the country’s climate crusade from the inside.
It is the story of an emerging movement, based in the global south, raising questions about who owes what to whom in confronting the climate crisis.
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High hopes are pinned on an international plan to protect forests. But doubts remain over whether the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation project, known as Redd, will actually reduce deforestation and carbon emissions
• John Vidal explains Redd
….In a Mar. 9 letter from Goldtooth to Morales, himself indigenous Aymara, the activists states that the fact that the only country in the world with an indigenous head of states is hosting the Noel Kempff climate project - considered a star example - is being used by carbon credit traders to justify and promote REDD…
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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
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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.
CLICK to PLAY:VITAL SIGNS OF WARMING WORLD
CLICK: Don’t Greenwash REDD
December 2009, at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Indigenous participants are increasingly concerned about REDD.
REDD stands for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”. The idea, as agreed by United Nations climate negotiators in Bali in 2007, is that because preserving forests is good for the climate, governments, companies or forest owners in the South should be rewarded for keeping them standing instead of cutting them down.
However, several Indigenous Peoples representatives say that REDD is bad for people, and bad for climate. They call REDD “CO2lonialism of forests.”
Many human rights and environmental groups say that REDD will inevitably give more control over Indigenous Peoples’ forests to state forest departments, loggers, miners, plantation companies, traders, lawyers, speculators, brokers, Washington conservation organizations and Wall Street, resulting in violations of rights, loss of livelihood – and, ultimately, more forest loss.
CLICK: By Chris Lang, 14th December 2009
…Late on Friday night a draft REDD text was leaked to observers in Copenhagen. The draft REDD text has no mention of targets for ending deforestation and includes only weakened language on safeguards….
Urging recognition of Forest Peoples’ Rights
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Article REDD-Monitor, 2nd April 2009
…..“REDD proposals will only lead to forest protection if needs and rights of local communities are being effectively addressed,” wrote FERN in a report released in November 2008. Continuing the theme, FERN’s EU Forest Watch this month comments on the importance of forest peoples’ rights. FERN highlights the case of Indonesia, where the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has raised concerns about the country’s draft regulation on REDD………
