REDD+ gets the thumb down from forest-dependent communities
IPS News reports that organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits.
"It is a system where you pour a lot of money into forests that will attract powerful international investors who will make big profits," said Simone Lovera, managing director of Amsterdam-based Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide network of more than 50 non-governmental organisations and Indigenous Peoples' Organisations.
Lovera spoke during the UN 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) in Durban. REDD+ has been touted as a global scheme to conserve forests, enhance carbon stocks and support sustainable forest management. Lovera does not contest that deforestation and forest degradation - caused by agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development or destructive logging - are key climate change culprits. According to the UN they account for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.
REDD+ is a system of performance-based payments that are financed through global carbon markets. The U.N. predicts that REDD+ finance could reach up to 30 billion dollars per year and go to develop the poor, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services. But indigenous communities say this is not so - they say that it is big, international forestry businesses that ultimately benefited from the carbon deals, not the locals who have lived in and off the forests for many generations. Instead, locals are kicked off their land to make space for large monoculture plantations aimed at offsetting carbon emissions in the north.
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