Bulletin Issue 198 – January 2014

Content of this article: Introduction - Box: What is being traded in ‘Ecosystem Service’ Markets? From PES to ‘offset’ payments for ‘environmental services’ - Different types of PES - From simple trade to complex financial market transaction - Spot the differences

Some 6000-7000 indigenous people and other communities in Embobut Forest in the Cherangany Hills of the ElgeyoMarakwet County, in Kenya, are threatened with forced eviction. For many years the Government has been trying to move the indigenous inhabitants of Embobut off their land by burning their homes. They have done this in the name of a fortress conservation approach which seeks to remove local people from their lands.

    A court in the province of Aceh, Sumatra has found palm oil company PT Kallista Alam guilty of illegally burning forested areas in the Tripa region. As a result of pressure from national and international organizations, the company had been denounced in 2012 for the illegal burning and clearing of Tripa’s peat forests. Now the court has sentenced the company to paying a fine for the record sum of 9.4 million dollars, in addition to 21 million dollars for the reforestation of the area illegally cleared.

In October 2013, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) denounced the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project, on the grounds that its execution would impact on their ancestral lands, which had been illicitly seized to open the way for the dam’s construction. COPINH further charged that the lack of consultation with indigenous communities meant that the concession for the dam had been granted illegally.

REDD Monitor website with articles and blog in English. Most widely read website with information and analysis critical of REDD and trading in ‘ecosystem services’ www.redd-monitor.org

Academic article by R. Muradian and others. http://r1.ufrrj.br/cpda/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Conservation-Letters.pdf

FERN Briefing that describes “how biodiversity offset schemes have fared so far and shows that the picture is far from rosy”. With examples showing how biodiversity offsets are used in the UK and France to undermine local opposition against unnecessary large infrastructure projects. Available at: http://www.fern.org/sites/fern.org/files/Biodiversity3_EN.pdf (FR available soon)

Article from IATP explains the connection between the Green Economy and PES trading related to water. Available at: http://www.iatp.org/files/2012_03_09_GreenEconomyWater_SV.pdf

Leaflet produced by Les Amis de la Terre France that shows why making nature, ecosystems and water tradable will not solve our current global crisis. It also criticises the finance sector’s ‘Natural Capital Declaration’ which outlines new market mechanisms which the finance sector aims to use as part of the so-called ‘green economy’. Available at: http://www.criticalcollective.org/?publication=nature-is-not-for-sale

A short animated film about the takeover of nature by financial markets and the real alternatives coming up from civil society. An initiative of SOMO, European ATTAC Network, Food & Water Europe, Friends of the Earth, Carbon Trade Watch, WEED, Ecologistas en Acción, AITEC and Campagna per la riforma della Banca Mondiale.

Only available in Spanish.  Por Diego Cardona, CENSAT Agua Viva Friends of the Earth Colombia, Available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/html/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Esp_Biodiversidad_12_2013.pdf