When forests become a commodity – How do you preserve the right of indigenous people?

Intact worldwide rain forests act as carbon sinks and currently absorb 15% of CO2 emissions caused by the release of burnt fossils fuels into the atmosphere. Deforestation represents an estimated 12-20% of CO2 emissions in the world and thus contributes to global warming.

At the Copenhagen climate conference, all participating nations agreed that the global temperature rise should be kept under 2C° to prevent an irreversible climate run-away. Therefore, “we” all agree that forests should be protected from logging, clearing and fires. That is world leaders argument to introduce the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme. But, what forests are they talking about? What does it mean for local people? Why is that scheme controversial?

 

The causes behind deforestation

The causes behind deforestation are numerous and complex, and range from agriculture to minerals extraction. Rising population numbers have caused the urban infrastructure such as roads, dams and cities to be extended at the expense of forests. At the same time, It impacts on agriculture by clearing forests to grow crops and feed livestock. In short, deforestation is the direct consequence of scarce availability of farm land to fulfill the needs of an ever growing urbanised population.

Forests are also a lucrative business. Trees can for instance be logged to make goods such as furniture and paper, or maintained to harvest their valuable leaves or e.g. rubber. The highest danger for the preservation of forests however, comes from mineral extraction, notably gold, and global markets economy behind them. The increasing demand on the world markets for raw material, prominently driven by companies based in Western world countries, are putting more and more pressure on countries with still large virgin rain forests, to give in, and trade their natural forest resources for the consumption driven demand.

The role of rain forests as ecosystems

Unfortunately though, such activities ignore the important role of forests in maintaining eco-systems and biodiversity for the planet Earth as a whole, for increasingly rare or nearly extinct species, and last but certainly not least for the livelihood of numerous tribes of indigenous people. For the latter, rain forests are their reservoir for survival, be it through edible and medicinal plants, bush-meat, fruits, honey, shelter, firewood and many other goods, as well as through cultural and spiritual values.

“Defend life”, a video by the World Rain Forest Movement (WRM) illustrates what the rain forest means to local people, and what happens when rainforests are cleared to make space for monoculture tree plantations.

What is REDD?
Although the REDD scheme has only been added to the global Cop15 accord last December in Copenhagen, pilots projects already exist. According to industrialised nations in favour of REDD, deforestation is the consequence of low monetary value placed on intact forests. They suggest that paying forest owners for their conservation in rain forest rich (but economically disadvantaged) countries will help protect the rain forest.

BBC Q&A about REDD

How does REDD work? And why we should worry?

REDD is part of the market-based flexible mechanism called Clean Development Mechanism, which aim at meeting CO2 reduction targets. It is, roughly, based on an accounting scheme based on how much carbon a country/corporation has avoided discharging into the atmosphere by NOT cutting trees. Large polluters, that have been awarded carbon credits by their governments under the Carbon Cap & Trade scheme, can then invest their credits into forests projects in rain forest countries in order to offset/absorb their emissions. These offsetting projects are mainly financed by banks on the base of future lucrative speculation gains.

Watch a debate between to experts on Cap & Trade: A Critical Look at Carbon Trading

In contrast to industrialised nations, which assume that deforestation is the consequence of low monetary value placed on intact forests, indigenous people fear – and rightly so, based on their past experiences notably with the REDD pilot projects – that putting a price on rain forests will, rather help to preserve them, increase land tenure by large companies and governments who will be standing to be rewarded by REDD funds.

This is why at Copenhagen, indigenous people demanded that their consent was to be taken into account on their ancestors’ land before any project authorisation is granted to corporations. Yet, despite the failure to protect indigenous livelihood in currently ongoing REDD pilot projects, the REDD scheme still was approved and is to go ahead and scale-out globally.

The danger of replacing rainforest with tree plantations

A key issue and major concern in the discussions around REDD is the fairly lax definition of ‘forest’.

In the words of the Word Rainforest Movement:

“The latest definition given by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, formally the main body responsible for forests within the UN system, is so broad that most green urban areas can be considered major forest eco-systems.”

The fact that such a highly valued thing as the rain forest has been so poorly define by the UN, effectively means that tree monoculture plantation can qualify for REDD and receive subsidies … Or more to the point:

Imagine palm oil, Agrodiesel and Ethanol plantation rewarded with subsidies at the same time as turning out huge profits. Sounds like eating the cake and have it – an ecological-economical perpetual motion machine.

Sadly, that is how the startling reality looks like in West Papua in Indonesia were ancient forests are replaced with Palm oil – as documented by Aljazeera in December 2009.

Conclusion:

The driving demand on raw material will put high pressure on countries with rain forests, making it hard and harder for them to stand up against the pressure and preserve their natural resources. Because of the REDD schema’s broad definition of the term “forest”, in fact any green plantation will potentially be in the position to claim subsidies for carbon avoidance emissions.

To make matters worse, there is no such thing as an international standard or agreement of to measure or calculate carbon absorption – it’s open doors for false claims and achievement pretenders.

Renowned climate experts believe that pollution permits and cheap offsetting projects in rain forest rich countries allow polluters to continue business as usual instead of motivating them to invest into clean technologies that cost, on the short term, significantly more than just sticking to the status quo. Credible claims state that the market based approaches only delay both, the transition to a low carbon economy and the shift from fossil fuel into renewal energies.

Finally, the one side question that is hardly ever asked, and never answered: Who guarantees, and how, that the subsidies are indeed going to local communities, when they are distributed through public, governmental channels of countries that are not always well known for their reliability and accountability to their citizens?