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.
CLICK:The REDD Mafia