Proposed climate change solutions become human rights nightmares

COPENHAGEN -- Roughly 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions occur due to the destruction of forests, according to a document released six months ago by the IPCC.

Now, UN negotiators are considering a plan that claims to reverse that trend. Under the REDD agreement (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), developed nations would buy into renewable energy or forestation schemes in developing countries in order to ‘offset’ their carbon emissions.

Yesterday, InvestigateWest had the opportunity to attend a panel hosted by South and Central American activists representing various campaigns against REDD measures. Ana Filippini of the World Rainforest Movement and Dr Camila Moreno of Friends of the Earth Brazil explained that the current version of the program fails to distinguish between natural and manufactured forests.

If REDD is included in a Copenhagen deal, this omission would allow foreign investors to clear-cut intact forests and replace them with monoculture plantations – vast areas of industrial farmland containing only one type of tree.

In Filippini’s home country of Uruguay, eucalyptus and pine plantations have appeared on nearly 500,000 hectares of land within the last thirty years. Most of the land was not previously forested. “The main ecosystems here are not forests, but grasslands,” Filippini said. “REDD lets developed countries balance their CO2 emissions by exploiting grasslands,” she added.

Where grasslands are converted into forests, indigenous people lose the means to support themselves. The land no longer supports wildlife, and in many places, intensive cultivation results in infertile soil, forcing people to abandon their homes and move to cities, where they become dependent on market economies, Filippini explained.

Marcial Arias, an indigenous Panamanian, professed via an interpreter that he himself was forced into urban regions because the plantations installed by European corporations destroyed the land he called home. “Plantations are not forests. They do not give life, they take it away from you,” he remarked.

The UN itself enshrined indigenous people’s rights. An article adopted during a 2007 conference in Bali states:

“The needs of local and indigenous communities should be addressed when action is taken to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.”

Marcial told the audience that two of his friends were assassinated for defending their territory against foreign seizure. “How can we be in favor of this?” he added, “This is not done with the approval of indigenous people.”

Moreno, a lawyer who specializes in indigenous land rights and is a member of Friends of the Earth Brazil, made it clear that not all South Americans are opposed to REDD measures.

As if the acquisitiveness of foreign powers weren’t problematic enough, Brazilian opponents to monoculture plantations also have their own governmental leaders with which to contend. Moreno said that Blairo Maggi, the Brazilian Governor of Mato Grosso and the largest soybean producer in the world, is one of REDD’s most visible proponents.

The panel offered an overwhelming consensus regarding who benefits and who suffers from REDD measures. Speakers and attendant alike shook their heads calmly as Moreno described the program as “a cheap way for polluting countries to avoid making carbon reductions on their own territory.”

REDD is a means for northern countries to obtain markets for new energy and material sources as global oil stocks decline in the coming century, she added. “This is a new form of colonialism.”