FoE raises issue of rights and REDD

Friends of the Earth International (FoE) will be releasing a new report that exposes some of the major governance challenges of an international carbon payment scheme, particularly the risks for forest-dependent communities. A global REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) payment mechanism will be one of the main topics during UNFCCC’s 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP-14) conference in Poznan, Poland.

Today in The Guardian, FoE climate and energy coordinator Joseph Zacune said the report, “re-focuses us on the question, who do forests belong to? In the absence of secure land rights, indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities have no guarantees that they’ll benefit from REDD.”

The article cited RRI as another organization concerned about the consequences of a REDD scheme in a context of insecure forest tenure. Forest peoples with customary tenure over forest areas maybe be excluded from benefits unless states formally recognize their ownership.

For more information, check out

• FoE’s program on climate and energy justice.
• Discussions and presentations on REDD and governance from this blog
• “Climate Change and Governance in the Forest Sector,” a report from RRI and Intercooperation.

ITTC-44, and an EC position on climate and deforestation

Yati Bun, Foundation for People & Community Development, Papua New Guinea, addresses the ITTC. Photo courtesy IISD.

Last week, the 44th session of the International Tropical Timber Council (ITTC) took place at the headquarters of the International Tropical Timber Organization in Yokohama, Japan. Among other resolutions, the Council approved a program on REDD and on Enhancing Environmental Services in Tropical Forests. The Government of Norway has pledged US$3.5 million, while other countries’ contributions bring the total up to US$8.6 million.

During the meetings, the European Commission (EC) released a thirteen-page statement on deforestation and climate change, titled ”Addressing the challenges of deforestation and forest degradation to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.” Intended to document the EU position at the upcoming climate change negotiations in Poznan, Poland. The paper calls for the creation of a Global Forest Carbon Mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries.

While the details of this plan have yet to be established,  the position paper recognizes that the mechanism must protect the rights of forest-dependent communities. The lack of clarity surrounding these rights is seen as a key driver of deforestation, as “ineffective governance, linked to poorly enforced land-use policies and uncertain land-tenure regimes. To be effective any global approach to deforestation will have to address these drivers directly.”

Greenpeace announces “Forests for Climate Initiative”

Greeenpeace attempts to block a shipment of palm oil from Indonesia.

Greenpeace recently announced its proposal for a forest carbon payment mechanism to reduce deforestation in tropical countries.   

The “Forests for Climate Initiative” was launched in Jakarta, hosted by the Indonesian Minister of Environment Rachmat Witoelar. On the same tour, Greenpeace activists stalled shipments of palm oil from Indonesia (see photo above) on the grounds that the country’s development of oil palm plantations is accelerating deforestation.

One way in which Greenpeace attempts to differentiate its plan from other REDD mechanisms is through the support of forest communities and their integration in the initiative. FFC purports to be ”the only mechanism that involves local and indigenous forest peoples’ representatives, to ensure their rights and livelihoods are respected.”

Greenpeace is currently in the process of matching donor funds to projects on the ground that meet their criteria.

IP Consultation on REDD in Philippines

The CBD Secretariat, UN-REDD, Tebtebba and the UN University Traditional Knowledge Initiative are convening a meeting this week on “Global Indigenous Peoples Consultation on REDD,” Nov. 12-14 in Baguio City, Philippines.  The three-day event aims to bring together international indigenous leaders to inform them on the debate on REDD and strategize on how indigenous peoples can best engage in REDD schemes. The agenda is available in English and Spanish here. 

Many authors have recognized that secure tenure rights for indigenous people will be crucial to benefit from REDD and other carbon financing measures. As CIFOR Director Frances Seymour writes in “Forests, Climate Change, and Human Rights: Managing Risk and Trade-offs,”

As payments for conserving forests for carbon storage become increasingly likely, State and non-state actors alike will have strong incentives to passively ignore or actively deny the land and resource rights of indigenous, traditional, and/or poor forest users in order to position themselves to claim compensation for forest stewardship in their stead.”

For more on IP responses to REDD programs, check out these interviews with Joji Carino (Tebtebba) and Mina Setra (AMAN), provided by our friends at BLADE, the (anglophone-friendly) blog of the Norwegian development journal Bistandsaktuelt.

Conclusions and Follow-up

As the conference concluded, several action steps were identified. As summarized by the Closing Session Chair, they are as follows:

1. Revise the “Foundations for Effectiveness” document (previous version here) based on the conference inputs and circulate it to conference participants.
2. Begin the process of creating an independent civil society advisory and auditing group to advise, guide and monitor the international negotiations and funds on climate change mitigation and adaptation.
3. Finalize conference recommendations and next steps identified during the conference including but not limited to:

• Drafting, translating and circulating a two page summary of the main conference discussions for conference participants to use in their work with national governments and civil society;
• Organizing a conference/workshop with the purpose of educating participants on carbon finance and the implications for forest peoples’ rights;
• Holding annual or bi-annual meetings like the Oslo conference to facilitate learning and keeping track of forest and climate change initiatives;
• Convening a meeting between civil society and climate change negotiators;
• Convening a meeting on standards and international climate change and forest funds;
• Organizations will work to draft and insert text on rights into the UNFCCC agreements.

We look forward to organizations and individuals volunteering to carry these steps forward. The conference Steering Committee is composed of Lars Lovold, Rainforest Foundation Norway; Joji Carino, TEBTEBBA; Marcus Colchester, Forest Peoples Programme; Arvind Khare, Rights and Resources Initiative;  Ruth Meinzen-Dick, CAPRi; Kyeretwie Opoku, Civic Response Ghana; and, Carmenza Robledo, Intercooperation.

We would like to thank all the participants, blog contributors, the many presenters, panelists and chairs whose great contributions made the conference such a success. Thanks also to the Rainforest Foundation Norway for their hard work with the conference logistics and to the Government of Norway, whose participation and support for the conference were essential to its success.

PNG Supreme Court rules Rimbunan Hijau concessions illegal

Photo by Greenpeace-Schellema

The Papua New Guinea Eco-Forestry Forum reported today that the PNG Supreme Court has overturned the Malaysian conglomerate Rimbunana Hijau’s rights to log in the vast Kamula Dosa concession. 

Eco-Forestry Forum, a PNG civil society group, has contested the legality of RH’s claim to the concessions since it was granted by a National Court in 2007. After delaying the case for almost two years,  RH conceded that their logging activity in this 791,000 ha forest area of PNG’s Western Province was illegal just moments before the trial hearing began.

Click here to read the press release.

Eco-Forestry Forum Executive Director Thomas Paka declared the ruling “a great victory for civil society and non-government organisations in general.” Chairperson Kenn Mondiai cautioned that there is still “widespread illegal logging in PNG facilitated by the government…This is only a tip of an iceberg.”

As early as 2002, a three-year investigation by the PNG Ombudsman Commission found that the decision to grant RH logging rights to Kamula Doso “aroused widespread concern.” In 2006, two reports by RRI partner Forest Trends sought to raise awareness on illegal logging in PNG. Attorney Annie Kajir was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006 for fighting corruption in PNG’s government and forest sector.  

Despite claims of being “a genuine partner in PNG’s Nation Building Process,” Rimbunan Hijau has been accused of illegal logging, unsustainable harvesting, corruption and exploiting employees in PNG. RH or its subsidiaries are also actively logging in other countries, including Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Malaysia and Russia.

Who’s Afraid of REDD? Reflections from Ben Vickers, Senior Program Officer at RECOFTC

This opinion piece is authored by Ben Vickers, Senior Program Officer at RECOFTC

“REDD,” as it happens, is Norwegian for “scared.” So, did the notorious forest-based climate change mitigation mechanism invoke fear in the hearts of delegates at the Oslo conference on Rights, Forests, and Climate Change last week? Hardly. The event, jointly organized by Rights and Resources Initiative and Rainforest Foundation Norway, inspired a well-balanced critique of the prospects for REDD. The dominant emotions were hope and caution, in roughly equal measure.

Hope was evident most clearly in the consensus shown by a diverse group of participants—government officials from North and South, inter-governmental organizations, universities, environmental NGOs and campaigners, representatives of indigenous peoples and forest users’ groups—that issues of equity, rights, and tenure are crucial to negotiations on forests and climate change. In his address to the conference, Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Minister for Environment and International Development, asserted that there is “no way for world leaders to avoid the issue of rights” for indigenous and local people in the design of REDD. The topic of this conference already has their attention; the task before participants was to demonstrate the most effective way of addressing rights within the forest and climate change agenda.

Several encouraging examples were given of progress within the forest sector. From Nepal, senior representatives from both government and civil society were on hand to explain how the lessons of community forestry are now being applied to the development of a national REDD strategy. Recognizing the success with which local people have managed and conserved forests, the government of Nepal has included representatives of community forest groups from the outset in the design of a REDD readiness plan supported by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). On an international scale, groundbreaking research, presented by Prof Arun Agrawal from the University of Michigan, showed how community forestry can result in win-win solutions in terms of improved livelihoods and forest carbon stocks. He emphasized that such solutions were most likely where communities had control of relatively large areas of forest land and enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in forest management.

Ghana provides a model of good practice in another field of forest policy reform. In September, it became the first Southern country to sign a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union, setting minimum verification standards for timber exports. This success was largely thanks to the full and constructive inclusion of civil society organizations on both sides of the negotiation process, according to Kyeretwie Opoku of Civic Response, the African focal point for RRI. Such an inclusive process, if replicated in the context of the FCPF, would allow the concerns of all stakeholders in the forest sector to be reflected in the national strategy for REDD, substantially increasing the chances of the mechanism benefiting local livelihoods as well as facilitating real emission reductions of greenhouse gases.

Andy White, coordinator of RRI, injected a note of caution, referring to the “wall of capital” that is currently bearing down on forest institutions in the developing world in expectation of windfall profits from future forest carbon markets. These institutions are, mostly, woefully lacking the governance structures required to regulate and distribute this influx in an efficient and equitable manner. Furthermore, it was generally acknowledged that conference delegates, and their respective organizations, had a sketchy knowledge, at best, of the theories and workings of carbon markets. This made the absence of private sector representatives at the conference, carbon finance companies, brokers and venture capitalists, all the more regrettable.

The potential of REDD and the commercialization of forest carbon to foment conflict was noted, but the consequences of this for the design and implementation of REDD were not explicitly addressed. A significant potential source of conflict is the current ambiguous tenureship of forest carbon itself, a new, unique, and loosely-defined “commodity.” The value of carbon stokes fears of a land grab in tropical forests, particularly in areas where local and indigenous peoples’ rights are currently poorly defined, poorly protected, or unrecognized.

The concerns of civil society groups regarding the ability of forest carbon markets to either secure genuine emission reductions or to protect local rights, eloquently voiced at the recent climate change talks in Accra, were again stressed in Oslo. Graham Floater of the UK government’s Office for Climate Change presented the findings of the recent Eliasch Review, which concluded that a carbon market operating under a cap-and-trade system is the only way to generate the finance (US$11–19 billion annually) needed to halve worldwide deforestation rates by 2020. Floater agreed with civil society representatives, however, that insufficient thought had so far been given to a regulatory framework for this market. There was a strong call for entry to forest carbon markets to be conditional, under international agreement, on minimum national standards of tenure and rights recognition, based in large part on the UN 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

REDD, by definition, will reward avoided loss of forest carbon only and will not explicitly recognize and value rights. There may well be a need for additional financing mechanisms, such as a dedicated international fund, to channel benefits to forest communities with no history of deforestation. However, international negotiators are increasingly aware that, without safeguarding rights, REDD will be stillborn. The continuing, diligent participation of civil society groups is required to inform negotiators on appropriate methods to secure these rights, based on past experience, and thus ensure that REDD is, indeed, nothing to be scared of.

Ben Vickers
RECOFTC Senior Program Officer
ben@recoftc.org

Key Issues in REDD Baselines and Monitoring

Guest post from Phil Shearman, PhD, from the Remote Sensing Centre at the University of Papua New Guinea.

As someone who spends his life squinting at satellite pictures to determine what is going on 800km below, the urgency of the discussions in Oslo and their implications on the lives of local people has been most pressing. I wanted to raise three developing issues in regard to the technical aspects of baseline setting and monitoring of REDD.

1. Creation of baselines and data management - Many if not most countries selected for the “REDD-Ready” program do not have accurate baselines of their forest cover. It’s highly unlikely that this capacity-building initiative will enable countries to prepare their own accurate baselines within four years. Another obstacle is that national forest authorities will need to share their data with other parties, despite their poor track record on transparency. This is vital if the rights of local people are to be respected and benefits from REDD secured.

2. Degradation: The other “D” - Despite uncertainty on the definition and measurement of forest degradation, this concept must be maintained within REDD considerations. Confusion arises in part from the definitions of “forest” used by the IPCC– for instance, an area can have 10-30% canopy cover and still constitute a forest. Ecologically, a 90% reduction in canopy cover is disastrous, but under current guidelines this degraded forest would be indistinguishable from old-growth forest. If degradation is not included, it could allow forests to be hollowed out by the logging industry without impacting a country’s forest coverage statistics – on which REDD payments may be calculated.

3. Oversight: Whose numbers can you trust? - When it comes to forest statistics, the default has been to faithfully reproduce national reported figures. However, self-monitoring is not a good idea. Without external oversight, there is little reason to expect that these figures will be accurate. This is going be all the more difficult if the same organization (the Designated National Authority) is doing the monitoring and managing the interface between local people, project beneficiaries, and REDD payments from donors. Independent verification of deforestation and degradation mapping may be needed to increase transparency, reduce potential for corruption and increase REDD’s effectiveness.

Some of these issues could be overcome fairly quickly if the UN or World Bank put out for international tender the creation of national baseline maps. This can be done within quite a reasonable timeframe, and would allow countries to start out on the REDD journey with accurate forest maps that are compatible across countries. While “sovereignty” arguments could be made against this, it would allow those countries serious about REDD to participate quickly and transparently, while giving the international community confidence in the reality of their investments.

For more detail, view the full viewpoint paper.

Session 10: Practical steps to establish mechanisms for effective implementation at national and global levels

The speaker of this panel sessions were asked to reflect on the last two days and offer recommendations as to what to do with regard to the UNFCCC process and the climate change funds and initiatives. Speakers were Haddy Sey, Phillip Shearman, Sandra Smithey, Lars Løvold, Joji Cariño, and Carmenza Robledo.

The chair of the session, Saskia Ozinga summarized the recommendation as follows:

• There was a clear call for participation by civil society in all processes and at all levels
• Effective monitoring is difficult when we are talking about carbon. It takes lot more money to do properly than is currently on the table, and there is a need to establish effective oversight and control to reduce uncertainty.
• We cannot forget about degradation. The definition of forests need clarification and degradation requires even better monitoring.
• It was advocated strongly that forests are more than carbon stocks and livelihoods and biodiversity issues have to be included. The presentations of the World Bank and UN-REDD showed that these initiatives are only monitoring carbon.
• Recognition of local rights should be a prerequisite to REDD money, and Norway does include this in their policy. There was the question whether prerequisites are enough or if there should be clear conditions for funding.
• The group should start lobbying for the inclusion of specific text into the UNFCCC agreement to be reached in 2009 in Copenhagen: (1) explicit mentioning of rights as part of the binding text, (2) referral to international obligations by states with regard to indigenous rights (Declaration of the Rights for Indigenous Peoples and the Convention for Biological Diversity) and human rights more generally; (3) that REDD schemes do not only have to be national approaches but that also subnational approaches can be recognized.
• We do not understand carbon markets, which are already quite complicated. The inclusion of forests into these markets would make them even more complicated. It is recommended that the group educate itself on this topic.
• There was support to strengthen civil society process and open the UNFCCC, following a proposal made in the previous session by Arvind Khare.
• We have to realize REDD is happening. There are however other tracks and mechanisms and that there need to be the possibility under UNFCCC and other international processes to recognize ideas from local people to implement adaptation and mitigation measures. This includes the establishment of a fund for indigenous peoples and other local communities to develop their own way of adaptation and mitigation measures.
• Developed countries should not be let off the hook; the presentation on the Eliasch report also emphasized that REDD was conceived as a way to allow th developed world to pay less.
• The bottom line is that government should not be able to spend money that undermines local people’s rights as a condition to get REDD funding.

Lars’s presentation:

Session 9: Approaches and mechanisms to ensure equitable and effective implementation

William Sunderlin, Senior Researcher, RRI
William’s presentation covered several critiques of REDD that he, Arild Angelsen and Timmons Roberts have developed. The critiques focused on the effectiveness (reductions in greenhouse gases), efficiency (the costs versus benefits) and equity (who benefits and who is negatively affected) of implementing REDD programs. If REDD does not take rights into account, said William, it will benefit large landowners, it will increase state control over forests, and it will aggravate moral hazards by restricting rewards to the worst deforesters. William explained some steps countries can take to ensure rights: expand the extension of community ownership rights not just their access rights, and enforce community ownership rights along with creating an enabling context for exercising rights. He concluded that there are clear instrumental reasons and clear ethical reasons to include rights in REDD, and we must convince governments and funders that rights are essential for REDD performance.

Simon Counsell, Director, Rainforest Foundation UK
Simon started his presentation by asking what we are monitoring and who is doing the monitoring. Using remote sensing, he said, misses a large part of the picture, and it risks identifying the wrong culprits of deforestation and carbon emissions. In DRC, for example, there is evidence that over a longer term the slash and burn agriculturalists’ production techniques recuperate the carbon lost during cutting by allowing the forest to grow back during the fallow period. Within any REDD context (and even without REDD), Simon suggested the following minimum standards for monitoring: independent forest monitoring; freedom to investigate and publish findings, and creation of national reporting panels. He asserted that effective and honest monitoring can only be assured through involving local communities. He concluded that forest carbon is only going to be as permanent as the land tenure of indigenous peoples.

Kyeretwie Opoku, Coordinator, Civic Response
Kyeretwie presented the experiences of the multi-level and multi-stakeholder consultations and engagements in the context of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement negotiations between Ghana and the European Union. He explained how the VPA (a bilateral timber-trade agreement focusing  on illegal logging and certification) became a vehicle for pro-community forces in Ghana and in Europe to push for the rights of forest communities. The civil society engagement, he said, represented the most substantial participation of civil society in forest policy and law development in Ghana’s history. He suggested that civil society working on ensure rights in climate change negotiations can learn from Ghana’s VPA experience in how to mobilize, network and strategize around international agreements. He concluded by emphasizing that levers to shift power exist, and that political will for rights can be generated by pushing the right levers.

Arvind Khare, Director of Finance and Policy, RRI
Arvind’s presentation built on the emerging recommendations for civil society advice and guidance to global, national and local initiatives on mitigating and adapting to climate change. He explored two examples of civil society advisory groups to international agreements and organizations. Khare emphasized that the complexity of climate change issues means that the UNFCCC and governments need the best information and analyses available, but he noted that there is no established mechanism to insert input, advice and guidance from civil society into the international agreements and funds. He finished his presentation by proposing that a civil society advisory and auditing group be formed following the Oslo conference with the tasks of assessing the international climate change funds and providing advice and guidance on how to ensure the rights of forest peoples are ensured in any forest-climate intervention.