Issue 145 – August 2009

While for the majority of humanity climate change spells disaster, a few corporate-minded people perceive it as a good business opportunity. The way they see it, climate change is about carbon emissions and carbon can be traded as a commodity in the global market. This market – so they say – can be worth billions or even trillions of dollars and they expect it to bring them huge profits. Never mind if this market has any value at all in terms of halting climate change; the only thing that counts is its value as a profit making investment.

In mid-July the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board accepted a new methodology proposed as part of the controversial Plantar project in Minas Gerais, Brazil (see background on Plantar on WRM bulletins 84,http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/84/Plantar.html, 70 and 72).

The inclusion of forests on the carbon market in its REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) format was adopted by the United Nations System through the UN-REDD Programme. In 2008, the UN Secretary General presented the UN-REDD Programme, implemented by three UN agencies: FAO, UNEP and UNDP, in close collaboration with the World Bank. This is a programme involving plans and credits to compensate for carbon emissions, which has been rejected by many social, environmental and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, that denounced the REDD initiative as a false solution to climate change. 

The UK-based New Forests Company is establishing tree plantations in Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania. The company states that “Whilst based on commercial forestry economics, our projects are underwritten by carbon credits … in compliance with the Clean Development Mechanism. This means that its profits from the sale of wood will be increased by selling “carbon credits” to polluting industries in the North. It also means that companies buying these carbon credits should be also held responsible for the impacts of these plantations on local peoples and the environment.

Forests are big news these days. Preventing deforestation will help us address climate change (at least if the carbon stored in the forests isn't traded, allowing emissions to continue elsewhere). Yet forests have never been under such serious threat. Reducing deforestation is a good idea. Stopping it altogether would be better. Paying the Indigenous People and local communities who protect the forests would be even better. That is supposed to be the idea behind the Big New Plan to save the forests: REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). So why does REDD not attempt to address the drivers of deforestation?

According to a research paper produced by Daniel Slutzky from the Conicet Centre for Urban and Regional Studies quoted by journalist Claudio Scaletta (1), in the Province of Salta “until the mid nineties sugar cane, tobacco and citrus, together with kidney beans were the traditional crops.” Later the kidney bean cycle shrunk because of the rise of the soybean. Today this crop occupies over fifty percent of the cultivated land in the Province and continues to expand.”

Keng Kham is a community located along the Pang River, that flows down from the mountain and into the Salween River in southern Shan State of Burma. The community had an estimated total population of 14,800 before the Burma Army started in 1996 an anti-insurgency campaign that forced relocation and made the majority to flee to Thailand. Now it has dwindled to some 3,000 in 114 villages.

The Tana River Delta is one of the most important wetlands in Africa and among the largest and most important freshwater wetland systems of Kenya. It covers an area of 130,000 ha where a mix of savannah, mangrove swamps, forest and beaches provides good grass throughout the dry season. Local Orma and Wardei pastoralists have used the delta for centuries.

For over a decade, the World Rainforest Movement has been denouncing that -by certifying large scale tree plantations- the FSC is greenwashing the destructive activities of plantation companies in Southern countries (for further information seehttp://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/index.html). More importantly, WRM has stressed that by doing so, the FSC is undermining local peoples’ struggles against monoculture tree plantations.

The indigenous people of Teluk Meranti in the Kampar Peninsula, Riau, Sumatra, are resisting efforts by a pulp and paper company to take over their customary lands.

An internal audit has revealed that the World Bank’s private sector arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has allowed commercial interests to override its social and environmental standards in making major loans to the oil palm sector in Indonesia.. The uncontrolled expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has become synonymous with widespread clearance of forests and peatlands, massive CO2 emissions and the theft of indigenous peoples’ lands. Yet the government plans to expand from a current 7 million hectares of plantings to more than 20 million hectares over the next decade.

On the World Indigenous Peoples Day – 9th August 2009 – the Malaysian Indigenous Peoples Organisations Coalition called on for Malaysian State governments “to stop large-scale plantations and other extractive activities on our customary lands until effective measures to safeguard our rights and the environment are in place”.

On 1 August 2009, members of the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA) met in the locality of Villa Serrana, Uruguay, to examine the reasons for the alarming expansion of monoculture tree plantations aimed at the production of charcoal, pulp, timber and agrofuels (agrodiesel and ethanol derived from wood), mainly intended for export.  Representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay exchanged information and experiences regarding the different types of plantations: eucalyptus, pine, oil palm, teak and gmelina.