CANCÚN, Dec 11, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – If success is measured by delaying difficult decisions, then the Cancún climate meeting succeeded by deferring crucial issues over financing and new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the next Conference of the Parties meeting a year from now in Durban, South Africa.

Indigenous rights protestors bundled away from negotiations by police. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

International negotiations to address climate change proceeded at a glacial pace in the palatial, over-air-conditioned Moon Palace Resort in Cancún. After two long weeks, final talks dragged on into the early hours of Saturday morning, with Bolivia’s refusal to accept a weak agreement that puts the world on a path that “could allow global temperatures to increase by more than four degrees”, said Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s chief negotiator.

In the end, Bolivia’s continued objections were drowned out by applause and cheering by more than 190 national delegations as the chair of the meeting, Mexico’s foreign secretary Patricia Espinosa, gaveled the meeting to a close declaring “a consensus without Bolivia”.

“The Cancún text is a hollow and false victory that was imposed without consensus,” Bolivia said in a final statement.

Based on the science, Bolivia is not wrong. The World Meteorological Organisation declared last week that the decade will close as the hottest 10-year period on record. The 100+ pages that form the “Cancún Agreements” will do nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet, but did revive the U.N. climate negotiation process after its near death in Copenhagen last year.

And most here believe this agreement sets the stage for a substantive agreement at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban next December.

“I can’t disagree with Bolivia that based on the science, this agreement as it stands means four degrees C of warming,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace.

“The text of the agreement is not good enough, but it does save the process and maybe this gets us to a truly fair, ambitious and balanced treaty in Durban,” Naidoo told TerraViva.

“Governments have given a clear signal that they are headed towards a low-emissions future together,” declared UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres. The Cancún Agreements represent “the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition”, Figueres said in a statement.

“It’s pathetic the world community struggles so much just to climb over such a low bar,” commented Naidoo, whose hometown is Durban, South Africa. “Our only real hope is to mobilise a broad-based climate movement involving all sectors of the public and civil society before Durban.”

Late Friday night in the hallways, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. Not only had the talks not collapsed, there was formal agreement on a number of issues. These included acknowledgement that emissions cuts needed to be in line with the science ­ 25 to 40 percent cuts by 2020 – and the global temperature rise target should be kept below two degrees C instead of at two degrees C as the target in the Copenhagen Accord.

However, Japan, Canada, the United States and Russia successfully undermined any binding agreement on how to reach those targets by lobbying to abandon the Kyoto Protocol and replacing it with a weak pledge and review system as proposed in the Copenhagen Accord, according to Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). Current pledges under the accord translate into global temperature rises of three to five degrees C by most analyses.

“The agreement reached here is wholly inadequate and could lead to catastrophic climate change,” said Nnimmo Bassey, FOEI chair. Bassey is this year’s winner of the Right Livelihood Award – the ‘alternative Nobel Prize’ – for “revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production” in Nigeria, his home country.

Bassey said developed countries need to reduce their emissions by 40 percent under a new Kyoto Protocol commitment period with legally binding commitments.

The current Kyoto commitment to reduce emissions by five percent from 1990 levels ends in 2012. Most developed countries are meeting that target, with the notable exception of Canada, whose emissions have soared 30 percent.

Canada, Japan and Russia have declared they will not agree to a second Kyoto commitment. The U.S. refused to ratify the first Kyoto commitment and rejects the second as well. Those positions nearly derailed the talks since developing countries have long insisted rich countries agree to binding reductions under Kyoto. Agreeing to disagree, the final fight for Kyoto has been punted to Durban.

A Green Climate Fund was also agreed to with a $100-billion commitment by 2020, with a re-commitment of $30 billion by 2012 to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change. The fund will be managed by a board with equal representation from developed and developing countries with funding channeled through the World Bank for the first three years.

Tropical forest protection may be the big breakthrough coming out of Cancún. Delegates adopted a decision that establishes a three-phase process for tropical countries to reduce deforestation and receive compensation from developed countries, and it includes protections for forest peoples and biodiversity. Deforestation presently contributes 15 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is so much better than what we had in Copenhagen,” said Peg Putt of the Wilderness Society, a U.S.-based conservation group.

“There was official recognition of the multiple benefits of forests and ecosystem integrity,” Putt told TerraViva.

Loopholes have been closed and good progress made on tackling the drivers of deforestation, she said. Much work is left to do to strengthen safeguards and work out the details for a new financial tool called REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).

REDD remains very controversial. It is widely touted as a way to mobilise $10 to $30 billion annually to protect forests by selling carbon credits to industries in lieu of reductions in emissions.

“I’m feeling very good about the prospects for forests,” Putt said in an interview.

Many Indigenous and civil society groups reject REDD outright if it allows developed countries to avoid real emission reductions by offsetting their emissions.

“We reject false solutions like the carbon market mechanisms of REDD,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

REDD represents a new set of tradable property rights based on trees and other environmental services, Goldtooth said in an interview.

“If we are going to save the climate, we need to focus on real solutions that assure that forests will be left standing and people’s rights are respected,” he said.

Although Bolivia’s stance will be much commented on, the more than 500 organisations in the Climate Action Network (CAN) once again voted Canada’s radical right-wing government as the most obstructive nation in the world. For its four years in power, Canada’s Stephen Harper government has won the “Colossal Fossil for the year” during climate negotiations for consistent efforts on behalf of its huge tar sands oil sector to block an agreement.

“Canada’s tar sands sector is truly among the global elite, an all- star of greenhouse gas pollution,” a CAN spokesperson said in a statement. “Despite an overall record of climate futility, Canadians should rest assured there’s at least one thing here that Canada is really, really good at.”

CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 9, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) An entire body of leaders, spearheaded by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is now looking at REDD+ as a panacea to global warming with multiple benefits thrown in.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

“REDD+ is the ‘shortest shortcut’ to address climate change; we will do all we can to support it, ” Ban told a packed audience of dignitaries, heads of state, indigenous community leaders, NGOs, forestry organisations and citizens convened by influential US NGO, Avoided Deforestation Partners.Org, on the sidelines of high-level deliberations at Cancún.

REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It essentially supports developing countries financially and technically to either prevent deforestation or regenerate forests, and is currently not a part of either the Kyoto Protocol or the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It is, however, being both pushed and deliberated on at the meetings underway currently in Cancún.

“The overall message of REDD+ is that it is progressing well,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. “The personal leadership of heads of state of national governments like Guyana, Brazil and Indonesia has helped. So the main effort is by national governments.”

REDD+ has garnered around $4.5 billion in funds so far through bilateral agreements. Most of the funding currently is from Norway, which is funding both reforestation and avoided deforestation programmes in Guyana and Indonesia.

In May 2010, Norway signed a $1 billion deal with Indonesia, which Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of Indonesia’s government REDD+ Unit, said was a partnership that is the best way to approach the climate change problem and which he hoped would become a worldwide model.

Kuntoro, however, added that the process of REDD+ needed careful consideration in its implementation.

“From an economy that was based on cutting trees, we are now introducing a new way of managing things without cutting. It needs a whole new paradigm of government change,” said Kuntoro.

Kuntoro’s leadership in the reconstruction of Aceh after the devastating tsunami of December 2005, with 93 percent of funds actually seeing direct results on the ground, has been lauded by the international community.

Norway’s PM Stoltenberg also highlighted the political risk involved in staking money on REDD+.

“It’s hard to win elections by raising taxes,” quipped Stoltenberg, “which is why we too are dependent on the success of Indonesia’s efforts. The concept is simple: we pay per tonne of carbon reduced, measured after a year.”

“Besides,” he continued, “as a political investor, transformation is essential.”

Billionaire-philanthropist George Soros, founder of the Open Society Foundation which has given over $50 million so far to REDD+ efforts, says “REDD+ is a method that can be done, and can be done cheaper than any other method.”

International forestry organisations and prominent individuals like Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai and U.N .Messenger of Peace Dr. Jane Goodall are in strong favour of promoting REDD+.

In a video message to the group at Cancún, Maathai said she saw REDD+ as an excellent livelihood option, apart from its conservation and climate change benefits, while Goodall said conserving and re-generating forests would help save the world’s rich biodiversity.

But in spite of the high-profile support for REDD+, one of its first executors, Guyanan President Bharrat Jagdeo, highlighted in blunt terms the difficulties in getting the international financial institutions “up to speed” on the matter.

“What I have a problem with is I have x tonnes of carbon saved, Norway is paying, but I can’t get the money,” said Jagdeo. The World Bank, in this instance, has mired the Norwegian aid in bureaucracy so deep that Jagdeo feels political will be lost in using this new tool.

“Developing countries run the risk of the same situation as before: if there is no corresponding flow of finance, political capital will be lost,” he said.

Developing nations have been complaining throughout the talks at Cancún that climate financing, either promised or in general, is unforthcoming.

None of the $30 billion promised till 2012 by industrialised nations at Copenhagen last December for adaptation and mitigation in poorer countries has been remitted so far. A further $100 billion was promised for the same along with technology transfer by 2020.

With official funding through the U.N. framework remaining a serious problem anyway, REDD+’s propagation seems to hold out promise through the market, as in the case of the U.S. state of California.

Unlike its national government, California has a law to reduce emissions by 2020 to 1990 levels, with a slew of features like ‘cap and trade’, energy efficiency, clean cars and low-carbon operations. It now uses this to implement its REDD+ market strategy, while it waits to pass its draft REDD+ law.

The vice president of the Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation, Steve Kline, says the system works only because it is both climate-effective and cost-effective.

“So we have renewables, low-carbon operations and together we have offsets with local California companies. But we had to convince our customers first,” explained Kline.

Significant progress has been made so far at the Cancún talks to formulate a REDD+ strategy with components for local community rights, and gender considerations.

But while the drafts on REDD+ are almost ready at the Cancún deliberations, organisations like CARE International urge caution in finalising all REDD+ drafts.

“The critical issue in a REDD mechanism is to have strong safeguards to prevent it from harming the livelihoods and violating the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities,” says Raja Jarrah, CARE’s REDD Advisor.

“The real test will be how the words unfold into implementation on the ground,” says Jarrah.

Protestors insisted on protection of the interests of indigenous people and peasant farmers. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi

CANCÚN, Dec 6, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – As ministers arrived for the second week of climate change negotiations in the Mexican resort city of Cancún, an estimated two thousand marchers took to the streets to oppose what they called a capitalist outcome of deliberations.

“We’re seeing a green capitalism here in Cancún, where rich countries are calling for solutions aimed at violating the rights of not only the environment but also of grassroots groups,” said Mary Lon Malig, from peasant farmers’ organisation La Via Campesina.

The marchers – led by Via Campesina, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, environmental group Friends of the Earth, and others – rejected the emerging outlines of agreement on such things as expanding the Clean Development Mechanism, the finalising of a REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) programme, and the prominence given to bio-fuels.

Protestors demanded solutions to global warming that will not deprive indigenous people and smallholder farmers of their rights of access to natural resources such as water and land.

“We’re saying No! to the privatisation of water because this is a natural resource that should be available even to the poorest of the poor,” she said.

Malig told protestors at the march’s end point in the Plaza de la Reforma that countries pushing for fuels derived from biomass – ranging from maize and palm kernels, to sugar cane and jatropha – as part of the solution to climate change were supporting a strategy that would deprive indigenous people of land.

“We’re faced with a situation where land is going to be grabbed from peasant farmers by our governments to give way to huge hectares [for] plantations of bio-fuels owned by transnational corporations,” said Malig.

REDD programmes also came under strong criticism from marchers. Critics said the sale of carbon credits to polluting countries to raise funds to protect and restore forests in developing countries would only allow the developed world to continue polluting.

“This means the communities who live next to fossil refineries in the U.S. will continue getting diseases such as cancer from the fossil fuels,” said GGJI’s Sunyoung Young.

Young said the communities whose health is affected by these refineries in the United States are overwhelmingly poor people, blacks, Asians and migrants.

Elsewhere, REDD programmes have been criticised for blocking access of forest-dependent peoples to resources in the name of conservation, while any financial benefits from the sale of carbon credits go to governments rather than local communities.

The Clean Development Mechanism, which assigns carbon credits to development projects deemed less polluting than alternatives, also attracted criticism from marchers. They said the CDM leads to the adoption of false solutions to climate change, such as nuclear energy.

Drawing inspiration from previous struggles by civil society to against global negotiations led by governments and business, the march celebrated the example of Korean farmer Lee Kyung-hae, who plunged a knife into his own heart in protest against World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations in 2003.

He was hailed as a selfless hero who gave up his life to oppose the WTO, which civil society has widely criticised as favouring large corporate interests.

As the march began at the Via Campesina camp at the Unidad Deportiva Jacinto Canek in central Cancún, incense was burned in Lee’s memory. Others put down flowers, oranges and a variety of maize seeds – Mexico is the birthplace of corn – at the Via Campesina camp in downtown Cancún.

“We’re trying to connect with the spirit of Lee,” said one of the protesters after placing flowers.

Doudou Pierre Fetile, a peasant farmer from Haiti, said smallholders continue to struggle against unfair terms of trade. He feared the climate negotiations were being carried out in the same vein.

“REDD is one of the examples where poor farmers will lose land to give way to plantations of trees under the excuse that they are used as carbon sink,” said Fetile.

He said indigenous farmers have the solution to global warming, but are not included in the negotiations.

“Let’s go back to the indigenous ways of life,” said Fetile. “Let’s evaluate the way in which we’re producing because therein lies the climate change problem.”

As the politicians join negotiatiors in Cancún, and agreements are hammered out, civil society began asserting its voice. A massive march is planned for Dec. 7.

(END/2010)

Wildlifers worry the Forest Rights Act will threaten India's last critical habitats, which include Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Credit: Keya Acharya/IPS

Commentary by Keya Acharya

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 5, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) While the parlaying at the climate talks in Cancún broke for the weekend, a group of 155 legislators from 16 of the G20 major economies met in the Mexican Senate to discuss how to influence their countries’ ministers to agree to an international commitment that obligated them to pass national laws on climate action.

The group, called GLOBE, or Global Legislators’ Organisation for a Balanced Environment, has been lobbying the major economies to pass national emissions reductions laws, a major barrier to agreement at the Conference of Parties (COP).

So far, Brazil, Germany, South Korea and India have passed national legislation for climate change abatement, while China, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa are in the process of doing so.

GLOBE points to India’s political action on climate change as a significant outcome.

Indeed, India’s initiative to enact national policies on climate change has been commendable. It says it will reduce its emissions by 20 to 25 percent by 2020.

In 2008, India rolled out a National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), dealing with initiatives in eight key areas till 2017: solar and energy efficiency; sustainable habitat; sustainable agriculture; water; Himalayan ecosystem; Green India; and strategic knowledge on climate change.

The policy has been amplified in various fields. Talks are on between industry research institutions and governance for a low-carbon growth strategy, the recommendations of which are to become part of Inda’s 12th five-year plan of national policies in 2012.

There are proposals for a carbon tax on coal consumption, and a national mission on enhanced energy efficiency has mandated 700 of India’s most energy-intensive units to reduce their consumption, with incentives for those who reduce more than their mandated percentage. The refrigeration and lighting industries have had mandatory efficiency standards in place since January 2010.

The Jawaharlal Nehru solar mission will produce 20,000 MW of solar power, 20 million solar collectors and 20 million lighting systems by 2022, and its sustainable habitat strategy will buttonhole environmental and energy efficiency in housing and transportation.

The country also has an ambitious eco-restoration programme under its Green India Mission, to develop 20 million hectares of land in the next 10 years, calculated to sequester 43 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

The reforestation programme has a REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) component that India is pushing at the COP in Cancún.

Jairam Ramesh, by far one of the country’s most dynamic environment ministers, says he takes pride in the fact that its network of scientists (Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment) was the first in developing countries to bring out a Greenhouse Gas Inventory early in 2010.

So far, so good: India is good at passing legislation when it has the political will to do so. The country already has one of the most comprehensive environmental laws, some of them, such as on air and water pollution, enacted decades ago.

It is the implementation of these laws that is its ‘Achilles heel’, so to speak. Its new climate change policies fall into a sea of existing laws on prevention of air and water pollution, yet toxicity from both is already rampant in the country.

With nearly 70 percent of India’s energy requirements being met by coal, imposing a carbon tax is already encountering political obstacles.

Its Green India Mission has encountered thus far the most criticism for its bureaucratic vision and controversial use of land for reforestation. With tribal communities already protesting that they are being forcibly thrown off community lands in the name of state forests, the mission’s aim of bringing in massive areas of other lands, such as those used for shifting cultivation by tribal communities, will only exacerbate the current conflict between local communities and state forest officials.

India’s Forest Rights Act 2006 officially recognises pre-existing rights of tribal communities living for aeons on lands that later were classified as forests. It is already encountering hurdles by conservationists and the forest departments in some cases, and faces further problems with the Green India Mission’s ambiguity over its usage of lands such as those used for shifting cultivation by tribal communities.

The central Indian states of Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and the eastern state of Orissa are already in the throes of violent unrest by village communities protesting their government’s takeover of lands they live on and handing them to mining industries.

The ambiguity of the definition of which lands can be used to ‘green’ India, and what afforestation techniques will be used to do so, falls into the current scenario of unrest and resentment. Activists are already protesting that the Mission’s promise of community participation is farcical, since its community groups are controlled by the Forest Department.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the complex web of difficulties that India’s climate change policy faces, it is laudable that the country has had a minister rooting – unusually hard – for the environment.

In today’s climate, hope for positive action is essential.

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A cloud forest in Costa Rica. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By Keya Acharya

CANCÚN, Dec 4, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – Forest rights advocates and indigenous community organisations from India are adding their voices to what promises to become the newest division in the climate talks here: the inclusion of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation + in developing countries, or REDD+, as an agreement.

REDD+ essentially supports developing countries financially and technically, to either prevent deforestation or regenerate forests through afforestation.

The resulting carbon sequestration is aimed to reduce overall emissions, while the move itself will enable sustainable forestry and halt degradation.

But the clause is not going down well with forest rights and tribal groups in India over the draft REDD+’s use of agri-business plantations and ambiguity over the land categories to be used for the programme, the latter of which clashes with land rights given to tribal communities under India’s recent Forest Rights Act.

India’s government is staunchly supporting REDD+. In December 2008, it submitted a document to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called “REDD, Sustainable Management of Forest, and Afforestation and Reforestation”.

The government now proposes to use REDD+ as part of its ‘Green India Mission’ to restore 20 million hectares of land into forests in the next 10 years, costing approximately $10 billion, and calculated to sequester 43 million tonnes of carbon annually.

Under its climate change policies, a national REDD+ coordinating agency and a national forest carbon accounting programme are being institutionalised.

Well-known forest and tribal rights expert Madhu Sarin criticises the government’s grouping all categories of land, whether coconut plantations, or forest, private, community or industrial plantations, into its fold for the programme.

She questions whether existing livelihoods, biodiversity, and displacement of forest-dependent communities have been taken into account by the programme.

“Without clarifying who will own the carbon, who will have the right to decide whether to participate in carbon markets or not, and with barely any mention of community forest rights, the Green India Mission seems designed for garnering REDD+ funds for undertaking plantations on community lands in the name of increasing forest cover,” Sarin charged in her blog on the India Environmental Portal, a news website run by the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, with sponsorship from the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF).

“According to MoEF’s own data, till 1999, 31.21 million hectares of forest plantations had already been undertaken. If all the plantations had survived why would Rs 46,000 crores (US 10b) be required for another 10 mha today?” Sarin continued.

A joint statement of protest against India’s support of REDD+ has now been issued by an umbrella group of Indian organisations, including the National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers and tribal rights groups from 13 states.

The letter highlights the “dangers” under India’s strategy under REDD+ of denying people’s land rights and forest livelihoods under the Forest Rights Act, excluding community participation, and allowing land grabs by private commercial interests.

But India’s Environment Ministry believes it has addressed community issues under REDD+, saying “local communities will be at the heart of implementation, with the Gram Sabha [village government body] as the overarching institution overseeing Mission implementation at the village level”, according to its brochure brought out just days before COP 16 began at Cancún.

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) also sees REDD+ as one of the best options available to reduce carbon emissions.

While agreeing that the scientific community has so far focused mainly on forest carbon monitoring, reporting and verification without paying adequate attention to social impacts, CIFOR says many REDD+ programmes identify improving livelihoods as an important co-benefit.

CIFOR recently published “A Guide to Learning About Livelihood Impacts of REDD+ Projects” and is collaborating with the government of Mexico to stage Forest Day 4 on Dec. 5, alongside the UNFCCC talks at the Cancún centre.

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La hotelería de Cancún eliminó manglares costeros. Crédito: Diana Cariboni/IPS

Por Emilio Godoy*

CANCÚN, 2 dic (IPS/TerraViva) – Un posible convenio internacional sobre Reducción de Emisiones Provocadas por la Deforestación y la Degradación de los Bosques (REDD), que surgiría de la COP 16, provoca descontento en un nutrido grupo de organizaciones sociales.

“Nuestro temor es que un acuerdo no reconozca los derechos de los pueblos indígenas, y queremos que se incluya el derecho a la consulta”, dijo a IPS el aborigen panameño Marcial Arias, secretario general de la Fundación para la Promoción del Conocimiento Indígena.

Las tratativas en torno al programa REDD están en el centro de las sesiones de la COP 16 (Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático), que se celebra del 29 de noviembre al 10 de este mes en la sudoriental ciudad mexicana de Cancún.

Docenas de organizaciones no gubernamentales y académicas de distintas partes del mundo se oponen a la aprobación del nuevo esquema global, bautizado como REDD+, por considerar que potenciaría el despojo de las comunidades indígenas, el robo de material genético de los bosques y podría transformarse en un negocio suculento para las empresas que más contaminan.

Ese programa, inaugurado en 2008 por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la Alimentación y por las agencias del foro mundial para el Desarrollo y el Medio Ambiente, pretende la conservación y el aumento de los depósitos de carbono de los bosques existentes.

La deforestación causa la desaparición anual de 13 millones de hectáreas de bosques en el mundo y genera la emisión de unas 1,5 gigatoneladas de dióxido de carbono (CO2) o 20 por ciento de las emanaciones globales de dicho gas, uno de los principales responsables del incremento de la temperatura planetaria.

La iniciativa REDD, que se ejecuta en forma piloto en Panamá, Bolivia, Paraguay, República Democrática del Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Papúa Nueva Guinea y Vietnam, se dirige a combatir la deforestación, reducir las emisiones de CO2 y fomentar el acceso de los países participantes al apoyo técnico y financiero.

Este programa “busca apropiarse de las bosques tropicales, se ha convertido en la nueva versión de los derechos de carbono”, señaló a IPS Camila Moreno, quien participa de la cumbre como integrante de Amigos de la Tierra Brasil.

Convertido en un “jesuita del carbono”, el Banco Mundial reconoce la validez de las preocupaciones de las organizaciones no gubernamentales y la importancia de atenderlas.

“Esas preocupaciones han estado ahí desde que empezó el debate sobre el REDD, y son saludables porque pueden evitar errores y tenemos la oportunidad de abordarlas”, comentó a IPS, a su vez, el estadounidense Warren Evans, director del Departamento de Medio Ambiente del Banco Mundial, también presente en Cancún.

Esta entidad financiera multilateral creó el Fondo del Carbono para respaldar proyectos REDD+. En 2009 destinó más de 2.000 millones de dólares a actividades relacionadas con la problemática de las emisiones contaminantes.

En la COP 15, realizada un año atrás en Copenhague, seis naciones comprometieron recursos para un fondo de unos 3.500 millones de dólares para financiar programas REDD+.

En marzo se sumaron otros 1.000 millones de dólares y se instauró un comité de 10 naciones para encabezar un programa mundial en la materia.

“Es importante ponerse metas ambiciosas, pero realistas de lo que REDD+ puede hacer por nuestros bosques. Esto podría articularse y analizarse mejor a nivel nacional, en donde las herramientas y enfoques relevantes pueden aplicarse para enfrentar los riesgos y acentuar los beneficios”, según la guía “Perspectivas sobre REDD+”, presentada este jueves en Cancún por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU).

Ese documento, de 12 páginas, subraya la importancia de respetar el consentimiento libre, previo e informado de los pueblos indígenas sobre este tipo de proyectos.

Modalidades de este tipo pueden crear graves problemas en relación con la posesión de la tierra, los derechos de las comunidades originarias sobre esos territorios y el desarrollo de plantaciones forestales.

Por eso, los colectivos indígenas quieren que cualquier acuerdo se remita a la Declaración de la ONU sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas de 2009.

Al parecer, el programa REDD+ sería de aplicación voluntaria, apegada a programas nacionales de lucha contra la deforestación, pero suscritos a estándares generales.

Países como México, Brasil y Panamá diseñan iniciativas nacionales de REDD+. En el primer caso, hay unos 1.000 proyectos comunitarios en curso, la mayoría orientados hacia el aprovechamiento forestal.

“Hay pocas garantías. No sabemos cómo nos compensarán por no cortar árboles, cómo recibiremos los beneficios, sentimos que no nos están tomando en cuenta”, resaltó Arias, un indígena del pueblo kuna.

En Cancún no ha quedado claro si los países participantes lo visualizan como un mecanismo de compensación o de reducción de emisiones. En el primer caso, los países más contaminantes simplemente invertirían en los bosques de las naciones menos desarrolladas para compensar las emanaciones que no son capaces de acortar.

Mientras, algunas organizaciones ambientalistas propugnan porque este programa se extienda a otros ecosistemas, como los manglares y otros hábitat costeros, por los servicios ambientales que prestan y la importancia de conservarlos.

“Los ecosistemas costeros secuestran grandes cantidades de carbono en los sedimentos, mucho más que las plantas”, explicó a IPS la estadounidense Emily Pidgeon, directora del Programa de Cambio Climático Marino de la no gubernamental Conservation International (CI).

Las zonas boscosas costeras pierden anualmente cerca de seis por ciento de su superficie y generan más de 25.000 millones de dólares en servicios ambientales, según estimaciones de CI.

Un informe de esa organización independiente, publicado este jueves 2, indica que un mecanismo REDD+ podría prevenir hasta en 80 por ciento la extinción de unas 2.500 especies que habitan los bosques.

Con un financiamiento entre los 28.000 millones y los 31.000 millones de dólares, se evitarían entre 78 y 82 por ciento de las extinciones, mientras que con un desembolso de 5.000 a 6.000 millones se impedirían entre 43 y 49 por ciento de las desapariciones de especies boscosas, según el informe.

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SANTIAGO, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – The wide-ranging knowledge about climate variation possessed by native people and other small farmers, such as the people in one region of Colombia, is almost a perfect match to scientific measurements recorded on high-tech instruments.

So says Andrés González, coordinator of the Joint Programme on Integration of Ecosystems and Adaptation to Climate Change in the Colombian Massif, carried out for the last three years by United Nations agencies.

In the southwestern Colombian department (province) of Valle del Cauca, indigenous people and scientists are working together on ways to adapt to climate change. But this is an exceptional case in Latin America.

This year, a network of seed savers or “guardianes” has been set up to preserve the seeds of tubers, maize, fruit trees, fodder species, quinoa, amaranth and other food crops of high nutritional value, and to promote seed exchanges among the autonomous indigenous reserves of Puracé, Paletará, Coconuco, Quintana and Poblazón.

Plots of land to acclimatise the seeds have also been created, as well as six agricultural schools where scientists and small farmers study and discuss food security, sustainable production, risk management and healthy environments. About 1,000 families from the municipalities of Popayán and Puracé are taking an active part.

The programme’s direct impact area in Valle del Cauca has a population of 11,000, but it is estimated that its wider benefits extend to over 240,000 people. González hopes that funding for the project, which has another six months to run, will be renewed. Historically, land conflicts have been frequent between the indigenous reserves, small farmers and large landowners. However, all sides signed “Pactos de Convivencia” (peaceful coexistence agreements) and worked together to draw up calendars of production activities and lists of species resistant to various climate conditions.

But “much remains to be done. Establishing a dialogue in which we can understand the logic (of peasants and indigenous people) and they can understand ours, is a major challenge,” González told IPS.

The project, sponsored by the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F), is headed by a team that includes representatives of native communities, who act as “counterparts to our technicians and experts, and ensure that their concepts and worldview are a fully respected part of the programme,” he said.

The MDGs, adopted by U.N. member states in 2000, include specific targets to curb poverty, hunger, maternal and child mortality, gender inequality, and diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as to achieve universal primary education, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development, by 2015.

Indigenous people and small farmers could not have been left out of the leadership of the Colombian climate change adaptation project, because their acute observations and empirical knowledge are so precise, González said.

In Latin America, farming is responsible for about 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The main contributing factors are changes in land use, fertiliser application and decomposition of livestock manure.

And agriculture is already being affected by climate change, for instance the greater intensity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena — floods, frosts and droughts — the arrival of new pests, changes in water availability as glaciers melt, and geographical displacement of crops.

Added to this, over 50 percent of the rural population of Latin America and the Caribbean are living below the poverty line, and nearly one-third of these are indigent (extremely poor), according to the Santiago-based Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“Farmers know about climate change because that is what agriculture is: dealing with the climate,” said Laura Meza, coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Multidisciplinary Team for South America on climate change and the environment.

Encouraging dialogue between academia and small farmers is “a challenge our region still faces,” she told IPS.

“We have discovered that in Australia there is a very strong connection between farmers, scientists and decision-makers. All three groups are working hand in hand,” said the FAO expert.

“Here they are in separate watertight compartments. We need a great deal more communication between them,” Meza stressed.

Adrián Rodríguez, officer in charge of the agricultural development unit within ECLAC’s Division of Production, Productivity and Management, told IPS that communication between countries is also needed, “because we are facing a phenomenon that recognises no borders.”

“It’s high time the ancestral knowledge possessed by small farmers and indigenous people was appreciated at its true value,” Rosa Guamán, a Quechua indigenous woman, told IPS. She belongs to the Jambi Kiwa Association of Medicinal Plant Producers of Chimborazo, Ecuador, a thriving cooperative business run by indigenous women who export herbs to Canada and European countries.

As an indigenous leader, and as a leader of the Association, Guamán had to overcome a great deal of prejudice to get her knowledge recognised and accepted, because she has no formal academic credentials, she said.

“I don’t think there’s any surefire recipe” for effective dialogue, Holm Tiessen, head of the intergovernmental Inter- American Institute for Global Change Research, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told IPS.

“What often happens is that science discovers solutions for problems that nobody has. Therefore, at some point during planning and seeking research funding, it is important to talk to people in the field. But there are no established mechanisms for doing this,” he said.

“As a funding body, we have to insist that scientists open their eyes and their minds, and go out and talk, engage in dialogue with producers, in order to improve the efficiency of their research,” said Tiessen. The institute funds collaborative studies involving more than one country.

In Meza’s view, public policies should urgently be directed at increasing knowledge about climate, strengthening meteorological networks, and spreading the information among authorities and farmers.

This would allow farmers to make key decisions, such as “taking out insurance policies, using fast-growing crop varieties that need less water in case of drought, conserving organic material in the soil to preserve humidity, or building sheds for livestock,” among other practical measures, she said.

Brazil, for instance, is a leader in the process of “agro- ecological zoning,” which maps the areas and seasons that are most suitable for particular crops. Other countries are making progress on river basin management, irrigation systems and risk management.

“But there is so much to be done. Climate change is still seen as being a long way off, and that is a real problem, because decision-makers and farmers, as well as society in general, don’t realise the urgency of taking immediate action,” Meza concluded.

*This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network http://www.cdkn.org. (END)

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Reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is high on the agenda for civil society, says Rosebell Kagumire.

Follow @RosebellK via her twitter stream as she delves into the devilish details of reducing degradation of forests.

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Listen to TerraViva’s other COP16 Podcasts here.

Mabira Forest, Uganda. Credit: S A Perez/Wikicommons/

By Rosebell Kagumire*

KAMPALA, Nov 30, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – Uganda has lost more than two million hectares of forest since 1990, mostly converted to farmland by a growing population of smallholders. Carbon finance through the REDD programme is often presented as one way to arrest this destruction, but only if the benefits clearly translate to the grassroots.

Almost a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide comes from the destruction of forests – second only to the energy sector. The idea behind REDD – reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation -  is to give carbon stored in forests a financial value; financing the protection of forests in developing countries like Uganda with money raised from selling carbon stored in those trees to polluters in the developed world.

Finalising details is expected to be one of the major tasks of the U.N. Climate Conference taking place in Cancún, Mexico beginning on Nov. 29. One of the many challenges in actually implementing REDD – now REDD+, which extends the concept to conservation and sustainable management of forests – is the meaningful involvement of forest-dependent people.

Privately-held forest

More than two-thirds of Uganda’s forests are on private land, controlled by individual small-scale farmers or held under communal title. Xavier Mugumya, a team leader with the National Forestry Authority’s (NFA) Carbon Portfolio Development Programme told IPS the preservation of these privately-held forests must be a top priority.

“We have to face the reality that most forests are owned by individuals and communities and for REDD to succeed there must be well spelt-out mechanisms to bring in more incentives to these people to conserve the forests,” said Mugumya.

These wooded lands are supposed to be overseen by District Forest Services but the DFS’s powers are largely limited to issuing permits for commercial activities.

“The current land use policy leaves most decisions to individuals,” Mugumya explained. “The government can only manage [things] through the issue of permits in cases of conversion of trees into products like timber, but the conversion of forest into agricultural land is up to the individual and this has been responsible for the most loss of the forest cover.”

David Kureeba, a member of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE) agrees.

“The land use policy makes any intervention for private forests difficult,” he said, adding that existing parks and forest reserves have failed to make conservation attractive.

Policy reform proceeding slowly

Mugumya is also Uganda’s REDD negotiator, and he is involved with developing what’s called a Readiness Preparation Proposal. The R-PP is part of a process – supported by $200,000 from the World Bank – that sets out how the main drivers of deforestation will be countered in a REDD scheme; setting out budgets, regulations, monitoring systems, and guidelines for community involvement.

The first draft fell short of the mark.

“[Uganda] came up with a proposal that was found unsatisfactory by the World Bank and we have gone back to bring out the concerns and needs of forest-dependent people whom this mechanism will either benefit or not depending on the implementation,” said Kureeba.

Communities who will be directly affected by REDD were not adequately involved in drafting the proposal. Uganda has received a further $185,000 from the Norwegian government to complete the consultations.

“The first consultations were done by NFA, but now with the Norwegian funds, they have made it a must to include civil society organisations in the consultation process. In fact NAPE is one of the consultants brought on board to capture concerns of people living around forests in the central region,” said Kureeba.

Limited monetary benefits

As it reworks the country’s policy, Uganda has possible models for monitoring, governance and local benefit-sharing in the form of the International Small Group Tree Planting Program (TIST) and the Nile Basin Reforestation Project. In both of these cases, small groups of subsistence farmers engage in activities like tree planting and sustainable agriculture for sale of greenhouse gas credits.

David Mwayafu and Leo Peskett from the Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development  carried out an evaluation.

Under the first programme, farmers get paid 35 Uganda shillings – about 20 cents – per tree per year.

“Assuming a farmer plants 400 trees on one hectare under TIST and that the TIST farmer re-negotiates [extends] their contract,” said Mwayafu, “the farmer under TIST will earn 400 trees x 30 payments x 35 shillings = 420,000 shillings per hectare.”

Expectations – and needs – of participants are often high, but that works out to $6 per hectare per year – less than $200 over 30 years.

In the Nile Basin Reforestation Project, community organisations are paid for trees grown on National Forest Reserve land; in this scheme, the World Bank purchases the carbon credits, and the NFA will pass on 15 percent of the total income raised. Mwayafu and Peskett note that “there is little understanding about the scale of benefits among [members of] the community association, which could result in risks for them and the NFA as the project progresses.”

But Mugumya says interventions like REDD will revitalise the country’s forestry sector.

“We have policies that could save forests but the implementation costs money and when you draw up a budget no one wants to look at it,” he said. “The major hurdle is strengthening the policies and putting in place an incentives strategy that will make trees worth more when they are still standing than when they are down.”

Focus on conservation

Yet this may be a dangerously optimistic view. While considerable time and resources are invested in working out a deal on REDD, it may prove important to simultaneously promote the intrinsic benefits of protecting and restoring forests and tree cover, as TIST does with its projects in Tanzania, Kenya, India and Uganda.

Trees on and around farms can provide fruit and nuts that can be sold; they provide shade for crops, protect against erosion and in some cases maintain nutrients in soil. Rural communities also make extensive use of densely wooded areas where there is no farming, and reforming the management of such forests in the name of carbon sequestration must be carefully considered.

NAPE’s Kureeba: “We have to go on the ground and find out whether people are buying the idea of REDD. Much as we bring money, people need to know and propose what will happen to forest management, to look at issues of access to the forest for food, herbs, poles for building and other issues like culture.”

Kureeba is worried that these details – vital to the ultimate beneficiaries of REDD – are of little interest to policy makers. “The problem is that government is after getting money. There’s less interest in the processes that will make a REDD initiative work for the people that depend on forests,” he says.

“The issue of equity is important. Is the money going to go down to the intended beneficiaries given the corruption levels here?”

*This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network – http://www.cdkn.org.

Delegates at the Pre-COP Ministerial Meeting. Credit: COP16

By Stephen Leahy

CANCÚN, Nov 29, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) This year will likely be the warmest ever recorded, with soaring ocean temperatures resulting in a near record die-off of tropical corals, extreme heat and drought in Russia and massive flooding in Pakistan – all signs that climate change has taken hold.

But despite the ever more compelling science regarding the urgency and risks of climate change and growing public support for action, representatives from nearly 200 countries meeting here in Cancún for the next two weeks are unlikely to produce a new binding agreement.

At best, matters such as forestry, climate finance and mitigation commitments will be further developed in the faint hope that the next big meeting in South Africa might produce some kind of deal.

“Carbon emissions continue to climb despite the economic recession and yet I have never seen such low expectations for a COP (Conference of the Parties),” said Richard Somerville, an eminent climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

“The science is quite compelling regarding the need for urgent action. We don’t have another five years to reach an agreement,” Somerville told TerraViva.

In 2009, Somerville and others co-authored an update on the latest climate science called ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’ which concluded that global carbon emissions had to peak and begin to decline before 2020 to have any hope of keeping global warming to less than 2.0 degrees C.

However, the negotiators in Cancún will mostly not be acting on the science but on their national interests as directed by their political leadership, who largely do not understand climate change, he said.

“Developed countries think they can adapt to warmer temperatures. I don’t see how we can keep warming below 2.0 degrees C.,” Somerville said.

Cancún is the 16th meeting of the Conference of Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international body formed after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to deal with the pressing global problem of climate change.

At that time, virtually all countries agreed that emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, had to decline. In Kyoto, Japan, industrialised countries promised to reduce their emissions by five percent from the 1990 base year.

However, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40 percent higher than those in 1990 primarily because northern countries like the United States failed to make reductions while emissions by some developing countries like China increased dramatically.

At the last COP in Copenhagen, industrialised countries agreed to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2.0 C. However, even if countries live up to their vague emission reduction pledges in the Copenhagen Accord, humanity is headed for 2.6-5C of warming by 2100 by most analyses.

This range is what most scientists call dangerous or catastrophic climate change, including the loss of coral reefs and other important ecosystems. Moreover, the northern latitudes will heat up much more than the global average – perhaps seven to 14 degrees C in the polar regions – almost certainly guaranteeing the release of vast quantities of methane from the Arctic permafrost.

“Potential methane release from northern permafrost and wetlands under future climate change is of great concern,” warned the World Meteorological Organisation in a bulletin last week. Methane is a greenhouse gas with 25 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide, and now has atmospheric levels 158 percent higher than pre-industrial times.

The Copenhagen Accord has so many loopholes countries can claim they’ve kept their promises while increasing their emissions, said Sivan Kartha, a climate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, an independent international policy research institute.

“It should be exposed for the embarrassment that it is, the loopholes closed off and national reduction commitments increased,” Kartha told TerraViva.

The strong sense of common purpose at the Rio Earth Summit to meet the dangers of climate change has been lost and negotiations reduced to what seems to be just another trade negotiation, he said.

“In Copenhagen the open, transparent and democratic process that had been key to earlier negotiations vanished. It may be the same in Cancún where small groups of countries do deals behind closed doors,” he said.

Such deals nearly always tilt negotiations to just one perspective. What works for China and the U.S., for example, may be very bad for those countries most impacted by climate change, Kartha says. “The urgency we face should not justify a bad deal for some.”

The exclusion of the interests of small countries and civil society in Copenhagen prompted 35,000 members of the public and global civil society to meet in Bolivia for a parallel ‘people’s summit’ last April. They signed the Cochabamba People’s Accord calling for recognition of a ‘Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth’ and the creation of an International Climate and Environmental Justice Tribunal.

However, those proposals from Cochabamba have been excluded from the formal negotiations here in Cancún, according to La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement with millions of members.

“During the last moments of discussion, the proposals of the People’s Agreement signed in Cochabamba have been left aside,” said Alberto Gomez from La Via Campesina international coordination.

The organisation is mobilising thousands of supporters to march on Cancún to pressure governments to adopt the measures in the Cochabamba People’s Accord. A mass demonstration will be held Dec. 7 in Cancún and many other locations around the world. In Cancún, an estimated 6,000 heavily armed Mexican military and police are already on hand to meet them.

“We do not agree with false solutions such as the carbon market because, far from reducing greenhouse gases, it will sooner or later create a speculative system leading the world into another global financial crisis,” Gomez said in a statement.

“La Via Campesina mobilises to denounce the irresponsibility of most of the governments who choose to support capital rather than the interest of their nation and of humanity as a whole,” he said.

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