Protecting
the world’s forests needs more than just money
Governments meeting in Bali, Indonesia
for the 13th Conference of the Parties/3rd Meeting of the Parties
to the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), 3-14 December 2007, need to recognise that this may be our
last opportunity to stop runaway climate change and that with 18-20%
of annual carbon emissions being caused by deforestation, protecting
our forests is a key part of this.
This problem is made even more important because forests are a key
part of the earth’s carbon and hydrological cycles. Without
forests rainfall will fail in many regions. Yet forests themselves
are being impacted by climate change and may already be losing their
ability to regulate the planet’s climate. Further increases
in temperature threaten to increase heat stress and drought, causing
forests, particularly tropical forests, to become net sources of emissions,
rather than stores. Furthermore, deforestation can also trigger irreversible
ecosystem die-back.
Governments and intergovernmental
organisations, including the World Bank, have responded by submitting
a number of proposals concerning ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation’
(RED) and, in the case of the Bank, a proposal to launch a Forest
Carbon Partnership Facility. However, these proposals, especially
those that argue that forests should be included in carbon markets
as offsets, fall far short of what is needed to combat climate change
swiftly and effectively.
Carbon trading and offsetting
are being used as a smoke-screen to ward off legislation and delay
the urgent action needed to cut emissions and develop alternative
low-carbon solutions. At the same time they encourage businesses,
governments and people to continue with or even increase unnecessary
polluting activities - reducing life to a commodity to be bought and
sold.
Despite all these concerns, because
carbon finance mechanisms hold the prospect of spectacular commercial
profit in what may become one of the largest commodity markets in
the world, they are at the top of many governmental and commercial
agendas here in Bali.
Yet the UNFCCC’s project-
and trading-based emissions reductions schemes to date have been totally
ineffective in terms of their ability to significantly reduce emissions.
The UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was launched
in Kyoto in December 1997, was intended to allow countries with emissions
reductions targets under the Kyoto Protocol to invest in projects
that lead to developing countries being able to reduce their emissions
more cheaply.
The CDM has not worked. Projects
have tended to lead to excessive profits for business, whilst generating
investment for many projects that would have happened anyway. Several
years of carbon trading have not stopped increasing rates of greenhouse
gas emissions. In fact, studies show they may be resulting in an overall
increase in emissions. Many projects are not ‘clean’ nor
are they leading to poverty alleviation or sustainable development,
as intended.
The World Bank has an equally
appalling track record in relation to carbon funding, not least because
it continues to fund oil, gas and mining projects, despite recommendations
from its own review which suggested most of these projects be rapidly
phased out; and as a broker it has a vested interest in promoting
carbon trading. Its planned Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF)
–intended to channel carbon finance from donors to recipient
countries - could also have serious negative social and environmental
impacts.
Carbon financing is proving intensely inequitable. Forests are the
home and source of livelihoods for over 1.6 billion people, including
Indigenous peoples, and forest-dependent communities. Wealthy companies
and countries are able to buy the right to continue to pollute, whilst
poor communities often find themselves locked into unfavourable, long-term
commercial contracts. Furthermore, forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples
and local communities have already found that it is they who may have
to bear the real cost of climate mitigation projects based on carbon
finance, while garnering none of the benefits. Some carbon finance
projects are subsidizing industrial tree plantations at the expense
of communities, ecosystems and food production.
The proposed RED policies could
trigger further displacement, conflict and violence, as forests themselves
increase in value they are declared ‘off limits’ to communities
that live in them or depend on them for their livelihoods. Women and
Indigenous Peoples are the least likely to profit from the destruction
of forests and therefore also the least likely to receive compensation.
Carbon finance mechanisms result in forests being transferred or sold
off to large companies who aim to acquire profitable ‘carbon
credits’ at some point in the future.
Carbon markets, like other commodities,
are also proving notoriously volatile. Far from creating a predictable
commercial environment and financial flows, the European Union’s
Emissions Trading Scheme Phase I, for example, has had “very
questionable effects” on “the extent to which emissions
are reduced, and the extent to which it provides a stable and effective
carbon price” (UK Environmental Audit Committee, 28 February
2007). The protection of forests and our climate is essential to all
our futures and should not be subject to the vagaries of the market.
Recommendations
We are calling for governments
to:
- address the direct and underlying
‘drivers’ of deforestation and the destruction of biodiversity
in other ecosystems which are also critical to climate stability by
reducing demand for agricultural and forest products and energy; removing
trade and investment liberalisation rules that fuel deforestation;
and stopping corruption.
- ensure that all forest protection
programs are based upon and uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples
(as laid down in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples),
women and local communities, by prohibiting any actions that seek
to exclude Indigenous peoples and forest dependent communities from
'conservation' areas. Outstanding land and tenure questions and the
free and prior informed consent of affected communities should be
addressed as a prerequisite, before the implementation of any such
programs.
- give the highest priority to
halting the development, production and trade of agrofuels, and suspend
all targets and other incentives, including subsidies, carbon trading
and public and private finance related to the development and production
of agrofuels.
- keep forests out of carbon finance
mechanisms, which are unpredictable, inequitable and discourage the
reduction of emissions at source. This includes keeping forests out
of the Clean Development Mechanism and all carbon trading initiatives;
and rejecting the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
(FCPF).
- ensure that developing countries
are assisted in their efforts to protect their forests with well targeted,
predictable and sufficient financial and other support, in the form
of an international fund that rewards the complete rather than partial
cessation of deforestation; supports policies that promote community-based
forest management and reforestation, natural regeneration and ecosystem
restoration; and finances a global forest fire fighting fund and expertise,
to assist countries unable to prevent or stop out-of-control forest
fires.
- redirect the very substantial
amounts of public funds, tax exemptions and other forms of subsidies
currently provided to the fossil fuel and agrofuels industries, into
avoided deforestation assistance funds, the effective promotion of
public transport and the development of solar, wind, geothermal, wave
and energy efficiency technologies, (Government spending on energy
subsidies currently totals US$250 billion per year.)
- ensure that funds are not used
to compensate logging and plantation companies and others involved
in large-scale deforestation.
- strengthen weak forest conservation
policies and institutions, encouraging bans or moratoria on industrial
logging and forest conversion, and addressing corruption and lack
of enforcement.
- implement a moratorium on all
public financing and subsidies of oil, coal and gas exploration, and
rapidly phase in subsidies for clean energy alternatives with just
transition programmes to phase out existing fossil fuel activities,
whilst protecting ecosystems, communities and food production from
agrofuels.
Signed by:
Amigos de la Tierra/Friends of
the Earth Spain
Asamblea Patagonica contra el Saquco y la Contaminacion, Patagonia,
Argentina
Biofuelwatch
Carbon Trade Watch
Centro de Defeso dos Direitos Humanos, Brazil
COECOCEIBA/Friends of the Earth Costa Rica
Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, Colombia
Down to Earth
Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
FERN
Focus on the Global South
Foundation for Ecological Security, India
Freunde der Naturvoelker e.V./ Friends of Peoples close to Nature,
Germany
Friends of the Earth Argentina
Friends of the Earth International
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project, US
Grupo Reflexion Rural, Argentina
Madre Tierra/ Friends of the Earth Honduras
MONLAR, Movement for Land and Agriculture Reform, Sri Lanka
National Farmers Assembly, Sri Lanka
Nature Alert
NOAH/ Friends of the Earth Denmark
O le Siosiomaga Society, Samoa
Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis "Christen & Ökologie",
Germany
Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition
Quaker Concern for Animals, UK
Red de Alternativas a la Impunidad y la Globalización
Regional Advisory Information and Network (RAINS), Ghana
Rettet den Regenwald , Germany
Salva la Selva, Ecuador
Sobrevivencia/ Friends of the Earth Paraguay
Sociedad Ecologica Regional (A Ho Valle y Comarca Andina, Argentina
Sustainable Energy and Economic Network
Swiss Working Group on Colombia (Grupo de Trabajo Suiza Colombia)
Tamil Nadu Environment Council (TNEC), India
Terre des hommes-Arbeitsgruppe Schwäbisch Gmünd / Germany
Timberwatch Coalition, South Africa
Transnational Institute
Via Campesina
WALHI/ Friends of the Earth Indonesia
Watch Indonesia! Germany
World Rainforest Movement
Xàrxa de l'Observatori del Deute en la Globalització,
Barcelona, Spanish State
