Category Archives: Latin America-Caribbean

by | 2011-07-21 · 12:23

Turning the Lacandon Jungle Over to the Carbon Market

Cross-Posted from Z Magazine

By Jeff Conant

All Photos by Orin Langelle/ GJEP-GFC

In A Land to Plant Dreams, historian Yan de Vos describes the history of the Lacandon jungle of Chiapasas a series of dreams that have obsessed and overtaken those who come upon this remote mountain rainforest in the southeastern corner of Mexico. A jungle so dense and mysterious only a century ago that it was named “the Desert of Solitude,” de Vos declares that “the Lacandon is not a single reality, but a mosaic of multiple Lacandonas conceived and made concrete by many and varied interests.”

The Lacandon’s dreamers include the commercial interests that, for centuries, have extracted mahogany, rubber, minerals, petroleum, and genetic material, leaving about 30 percent of the original forest, of which only 12 percent is said to retain its ecological integrity. Then there are the diverse communities who live there—Mestizo settlers along with Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Ch’ol, and Mam indigenous farmers, some who originated there and many others who arrived over the course of centuries, escaping forced labor on the fincas or war in neighboring Guatemala, seeking a plot of land to cultivate.

Then there is the group that has been given title to the largest swath of jungle—a small tribe called the Caribes whose ancestors migrated from nearby Campeche two centuries ago and who, through a complex history involving European anthropologists, American missionaries, and Mexican government officials, became known as the Lacandones. In direct conflict with the Lacandones, and with transnational capital, are the jungle’s best-known dreamers, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who, beginning in the 1990s, occupied vast portions of the jungle and declared it autonomous territory.

Now, after centuries defined by its potential for producing goods, the Lacandon has entered the 21st century where it is being dreamed anew as “the lungs of the earth.” This jungle’s new dreamers include the state of California, market-oriented “environmental” groups like Conservation International, and the United Nations. Their dream is to harness the power of the burgeoning carbon market to preserve the Lacandon—the container for one-fifth of the biodiversity of all of Mexico—by turning it into a virtual carbon sink.

Enter the Governor of California

In 2006, the state of California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), which mandates that the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The law was hailed as landmark environmental legislation for its aggressive action to reduce global warming emissions while “generating jobs, and promoting a growing, clean-energy economy and a healthy environment for California at the same time.”

Under the implementation plan for AB32, which was approved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in December 2010, but held up in court three months later, up to 20 percent of the state’s total mandated emissions reductions would be achieved through carbon trading, rather than through actual cuts in industrial pollution at the source. This means that industries would be permitted to delay efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions—along with the associated toxic co-pollutants—by purchasing carbon allowances from outside California. As one of his last acts in office, just a week before the UN Framework Convention on Climate in Cancún, Mexico last November, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a carbon-trading agreement with the state of Chiapas as part of AB32. The agreement is predicated on an emerging global policy mechanism known as “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” or REDD.

Mary Nichols, the chairperson of CARB, announced California’s initiative at a high-level event in Cancún where pilot REDD projects were hailed by a gamut of global figures, including primatologist Jane Goodall, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and Sam Walton, the CEO of Walmart. Nichols called the plan “a way for California to help the developing world by investing in forests. Saving our forests is good not only for the atmosphere,” she said, “It’s also good for indigenous peoples.” But many in Chiapas disagree. Gustavo Castro, Coordinator of Otros Mundos, a small NGO based in Chiapas, sees this as the leading edge of a new onslaught of forest carbon offsets and part of a broader trend of privatization of territories and natural resources. “Enter the governor of California, saying, ‘We’re going to approve a law in which California, the fifth largest economy in the world, is obliged to reduce its CO2, so we need to buy the fresh air from the forests of the South.’ When a natural function like forest respiration becomes a product with a price, it’s easy to see who’s going to end up with control of the forests.”

The law has also stirred up controversy in California where environmental justice advocates charge that such carbon trading schemes—reducing emissions on paper only—leaves lower-income communities of color to continue bearing the brunt of industrial pollution. Alegria de la Cruz, one of the lead attorneys for San Francisco’s Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE), whose lawsuit has successfully challenged the cap and trade component of the bill, says that, “The overarching goal of a pollution trading system has serious implications for fence-line communities.” Her co-counsel, Brent Newell, is more explicit: “Poor people are getting screwed on both sides of the transaction,” he said. “Only the polluters are benefiting.”

In late May, a ruling by the San Francisco superior court forced the California Air Resources Board to bring its cap and trade plan back to the drawing board in order to review alternatives. But as the spearhead of efforts to forge a pathway for carbon markets, the dream of converting the Lacandon into international carbon currency will not be disrupted so easily. “Our goal,” says Chiapas Governor Juan Sabines “is that the entirety of the surface of Chiapas will enter into the market for carbon credits and methane credits, beginning through agreements with polluting sub-national states, like California.”

 Selling the Forest for the Trees

REDD projects are being piloted in many countries under the auspices of the United Nations REDD Program, the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other global bodies. The California project is one of a small handful of REDD agreements between sub-national entities. The armature of REDD is still very much in development, but in broad strokes it works like this: because trees capture and store CO2, maintaining intact forests is essential to mitigating the impacts of climate change. Under REDD, those who protect forests can earn carbon credits—financial rewards based on an assessment of the amount of CO2 a forest can store and a market-derived price per ton of carbon. They can then trade these credits to industrial polluters in order to generate revenue that, in theory, gives developing world countries and the forest-dwelling communities in those countries an incentive not to cut down trees.

Policymakers at the global level see REDD as offering a viable chance—“perhaps the last chance,” says World Bank President Robert Zoellick—to save the world’s forests, while simultaneously addressing the climate crisis, without jeopardizing economic growth. The major multilateral institutions support REDD and its growing list of spin-offs with dizzying acronyms, such as REDD+ and REDD++, which allow the policy to include aspects such as reforestation with exotic species, and offset credits for biodiversity. But many forest-dependent communities, environmental justice advocates, indigenous peoples’ organizations, and global South social movements oppose it. “It comes to seem very amiable for the governments and corporations of the North to say, ‘We’re going to pay you not to deforest,’ Gustavo Castro argues. “But in reality they’re saying. ‘We’re going to pay you so we can continue polluting’.” Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network has called REDD “a violation of the sacred, and potentially the biggest landgrab of all time.”

 To read the rest of the article, please go to Z Magazine

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Carbon Trading, Chiapas, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Pollution, REDD

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by | 2011-07-06 · 10:30

Wrap Up Blog Post from IUFRO Tree Biotechnology 2011 Conference

Arraial d’Ajuda, Bahia, Brazil (Part I of II)

by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

In this blog post and it’s follow up part two, I discuss the main presentations of IUFRO’s Tree Biotechnology Conference which occurred in the final stretch of the conference.  Steve Strauss, tree geneticist and industry proponent, gave two presentations during this time, which I describe below.  They provide an excellent substrate for developing the analysis as to why genetically engineered trees (GE trees) are a bad idea.

Steve Strauss Defends GE Trees at the UN CBD in Rome. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

Steve Strauss Presentation #1: “Field Trials of GM trees in the US and a Peek at Global Regulatory Burdens (“in the eyes of scientists”)

Strauss started this presentation on regulation of GM trees by stating that regulation in the US is problematic because there are no laws specifically governing GM trees.

He then provided a little background on GE tree field trials in the US:

Over 1995-1999 there were 100 field trials in the US

Over 2000-2004, there were 200

Over 2005-2009, there were 300

From 2010-now, there are 50 (so far—on track with previous rates)

In 2007 there were 60 GE poplar field trials, 40 GE eucalyptus and 60 pine

In 2011, poplar and eucalyptus are the leaders

The average size of the the field trials in the US:

GE poplar: 15 acres

GE eucalyptus: 30 acres

He explained why the GE eucalyptus test plots are so much larger by pointing out that “the GE eucalyptus are pre-commercial, which is why ArborGen is taking a careful look at them in large plots.”

He further explained, “In the US, once it [a GE tree] is deregulated [commercially released], its not tracked any further, unlike Europe.”

Which is one of the reasons that Global Justice Ecology Project and the STOP GE Trees Campaign are working so hard to stop the deregulation of GE trees in the US—because any social or ecological impacts of the large-scale release of these non-native genetically engineered tree clones would be tracked only by industry—if at all.  The impacts of opening Pandora’s Box would be unmonitored.

Strauss’s next presentation happened during the section of the conference dealing with biosafety, oddly enough.  It was called, Transgenic Biotechnology in Forestry: What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been (I think Jerry Garcia would be rolling over in his grave…)

Here are a few select tidbits from Steve’s opening remarks:

1) The problem of gene flow is a huge problem. 

Yes, right.  Got that.

2)  Scientists are giving out too much information for the public to understand/digest it.

Really?  The whole notion of “Confidential Business Information” when it comes to companies manufacturing GMOs, is that they don’t have to publicly disclose much information for fear someone might steal it or use it in some way that is detrimental to the interests of the corporation.  Too LITTLE information is the problem.

3) There is no real difference between GMO and non-GMO.  Its about the technique, not the transgenic aspect of the process.

Ummm…  Huh?  As renowned geneticist David Suzuki points out in the film A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees,  “If we take a gene out of one species and put it into an entirely unrelated species—we’ve never done that before and it’s absolutely bad science to say that we can use [traditional breeding] to predict what will happen with [genetic engineering], it’s just lousy science.”

Strauss went on to describe why genetic engineering makes him happy:

• The history of GE crops has been very positive–except for maybe a little too much RoundUp.

A little too much RoundUp?  Try herbicide resistant weeds taking over and forcing farmers to rely on increasingly toxic weed killers.  Oh, and the productivity levels touted by corporations like Monsanto about their GE crops haven’t panned out either…

• Virus resistant papaya in Hawaii has been a huge success.  “GM papaya has made it easy to be an organic papaya farmer in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any thanks from them yet.” 

Whoa…  Maybe this is because organic papaya farmers in Hawaii were virtually wiped out by GMO papaya, which contaminated over 50% of non-GMO papaya on the big island of Hawaii.  In addition, while the transgenic trait was successful at knocking down the ringspot virus (at least for now), it also had the unanticipated consequence of making the GMO papayas susceptible to black spot fungus requiring applications of fungicide.

• We have seen unexpected mutants, but the occurrence has been low.

Oh, good.  Only a few unexpected mutants.  I feel SO much better…

• RoundUp ready trees grow 20% faster

Didn’t we just discuss the whole thing about too much RoundUp not being a good idea?

He next described the anti-GMO movement starting in the 1990s, and explained that it was disruptive to society.  (He lost me on that one…)

In this vein, he suggested reading the paper by Ron Herring called “Persistent Global Cognitive Rift on Biotechnology.”  (Sounds like someone has large word envy…)

He went on to call the anti-biotech movement “crazy” with “no credibility”.

Following that, he recited the history of eco-vandalism against GE tree research which started 1999 with the destruction of low-lignin GE poplars in England, which was the same year that IUFRO had a forest biotechnology conference in Oxford.  There was a newspaper article published at the time called “Frankenstein’s Forest.”  He then discussed the vandalism against the field trials and labs in the pacific northwest in 2001, and the public protest we did against GE trees at a conference on the topic at Skamania Lodge in Washington state.  He claims anti-GMO activists were invited to participate but declined.  I don’t remember getting an invitation…

He next complained that the regulatory system is a jungle, and is keeping a lot of research down.  He accompanied this point with a slide of his “Forest Biotechnology: Strangled at Birth” article that he wrote following the 2008 UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Bonn in which he complains about the success of Global Justice Ecology Project winning a decision by the UN body cautioning countries about use of GE trees.  He said these international regulations [which are strictly voluntary, by the way] are making national regulations harder.

Then he mentioned an action alert that had been sent out on Tuesday July 1st which caused him to get, “hundreds of spam emails jamming up his in box” and put a quote from it up on the screen:

“There is the real possibility that new genes spliced into GE trees will irreversibly contaminate forests, or that the trees themselves will invade wild forests. Forests on private land, national forests or national parks, will be changed forever.”

“Gene flow,” he reiterated, “is a big problem.  Genes will get out.  There is no question, pollen moves far.”

Alright then, if that’s the case, shouldn’t GE trees NOT be released into the environment, because they will irreversibly contaminate forests with unpredictable impacts?

Wrong.  Strauss continued, “we need to engineer genetic containment to deal with it.”  Then he asked, “is imperfect sterility useful?”  And answered his question by saying, “we can reasonably safely deploy imperfectly sterile trees, even if the trees have been engineered with traits that make them more competitive than native trees.” He conceded, however that, “Ultimately, we will need  a failsafe containment system, but this will take time.”

Right.  But in the meantime, let’s barrel ahead with commercial large-scale release of these impossible to contain GMO trees, pretending we know what the [bleep] we’re doing.

Then he made a brief reference to the GMO rice legal outcome (see our blog post on the topic), and said that the threat of contamination will lead to lawsuits that will stop development.

One would hope so…

He then gave his interpretation of the way the GMO issue plays out in the mind of the public:

Anti-GMO vs. GMO corporations =

• Left/ socialist vs. Right/ Capitalist

• Transparency & Openness vs. Secrecy & Competition

• Open Source/ Sharing vs. Patents and Private Property

• Non-profit vs. Corporate/ profit-making

• Natural vs. Techno.

“The common message is: ‘I don’t like Monsanto,’” he said, to big audience laughter.

But, he said, this perception is wrong.  Science is not a capitalist, closed model, it is a social and democratic model.

Yeah, right.  Unfortunately, what he failed to mention is that science is often bought and paid for by corporations that plan to use it to make lots of profits, and that this science tends to say whatever that corporation wants it to.  As one graduate student from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul explained, “[Our] working hypothesis is that GMO and non-GMO eucalyptus trees are exactly the same except for the GMO traits.”

And guess what?  All of his slides had the name and logo for “Futuragene” on them…

Finally Strauss concluded with “In a nutshell, it’s a religious/ideological issue,”  showing an issue of the publication ECO that Global Justice Ecology Project had co-produced with the CBD Alliance at the 2008 UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn calling for the total ban on genetically engineered trees globally.

He then segued into the Forest Stewardship Council’s refusal to certify GE trees because there is not enough science.

He used these two points to illustrate his disdain for the ‘precautionary principle’ [that is, the principle that a product or a technology should not be deployed until proved safe]. He said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Stay tuned for IUFRO Tree Biotechnology 2011 Wrap Up II Coming Soon to a blog near you.

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by | 2011-06-30 · 13:25

Photo Essay from the Tree Biotechnology 2011 Conference Field Trip Hosted by Veracel

On Wednesday, July 29th, around 200 participants divided into 4 groups toured various facilities owned by pulp company Veracel.  This photo essay explains what we learned on the field trip.

Photos and commentary by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project (Exception: the last two photos are by GJEP Co-Director/Strategist Orin Langelle)

First Stop: Veracel Forest Preserve where children and visitors are “educated” about the importance of eucalyptus pulp and the “greenness” of Veracel.  Note that the human figure in the poster is exhibiting total dominance over the trees.

On the way into the forest preserve, children and visitors are presented with a native forest monster and representations of some of the scary wildlife that live in forests.

Veracel forest monster

Scary forest raptor

On the way through the 6,000 hectare forest preserve (80% of which is forested), a mixture of formerly logged lands and primary forest, participants were treated to a canopy rope bridge and photo shoots with 4 large trees we encountered on the path.  Most of the forest contained very young trees.

canopy rope bridge

one of the four big trees

The primary Mata Atlantica forest once stretched over much of the eastern edge of Brazil.  Large swaths of it have been eliminated and replaced with eucalyptus plantations.  Veracel took us next to the tree nursery where they propogate the 17 million eucalyptus clones they produce annually.  Henry Ford would have been proud.  The nursery was a very efficient assembly line operation.

Taking Cuttings to propagate new clones

"Clonal Garden"

Assembly line for clones 1

Assembly line for clones 2

Assembly line for clones 3

All the happy clones together

The next step for these clones, of course, is to be transformed into large-scale monoculture eucalyptus plantations.  Veracel harvests 11,000 of these 7 year old eucalyptus trees every day for their pulp mill.  Virtually the entire timbering operation is heavily mechanized to employ the fewest people possible, and uses an assortment of chemicals, from a petroleum-based hydrophilic polymer that is planted with the seedlings, to glyphosate-based herbicides that are applied to keep out competition plants, to the insecticides used to control “pests.”  In this way, Veracel can maximize its potential for profits.

The eucalyptus plantation

The mechanical harvester rapidly gobbles up the trees

The jaws of the harvester up close and personal

This employee, clearly bored, awaits his cue to show the visitors how the mechanized planter works

After a couple of tries, they were finally successful in showing how the mechanized planter works

The result. Note the petroleum-based polymer gel at the base of the seedling

Despite several quotes from Rachel Carson, John Muir, Emerson and other naturalists posted at the nature preserve, the plantations rely heavily on chemical applications.  The guide informed me that the trees get three applications of toxic herbicide over their 7 year life span.  As a result, the plantations of non-native trees are devoid of understory plants or biodiversity.  Social movements in Brazil call them “green deserts” for this reason.

the ground beneath the plantation is barren of other life forms

Rachel Carson quote in the Veracel forest preserve. Too bad they don't listen to her.

The ultimate purpose for the clones:

massive pile of eucalyptus chips at the Veracel pulp mill

From standing trees to boiled, bleached pulp in one day

The reason Veracel needs to greenwash their image: their giant stinking, polluting pulp mill

The stench of the pulp mill. "It smells like money".

Veracel's vision for the future: Make more money!

One of the obstacles, according to Veracel, of their achieving maximum productivity, is people breaking into their plantations.  On the way to the plantation, we passed what appeared to be an MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) encampment–black plastic shelters with a red MST flag flying high over them.  Indeed, elsewhere in Brazil, the MST as well as indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani populations, have taken over eucalyptus plantations and found better uses for the land.  In the case of the MST, as encampments for landless peasants.  In the case of the Indigenous Peoples, as a retaking of their ancestral lands from which they were forcibly removed when the timber company was given the land for plantations.  The cases we had previously documented were on Aracruz Cellulose land in Espirito Santo, but it seems to be occuring here in Bahia as well.  Below are photos from the encampments in Esprito Santo:

MST encampment in former eucalyptus plantation. The sign says "Eucalyptus plantations are not forests". Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

Indigenous community re-takes traditional lands, removes eucalyptus plantation. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

Eucalyptus plantations have been such a smashing success in other parts of the world, that now GE tree company ArborGen is trying to engineer them to be cold-tolerant so that the joy of eucalyptus plantations can be spread to new and untrammeled lands.  In the United States they hope to sell half a billion GE cold tolerant eucalyptus trees annually for plantations from Texas to Florida.  They’re invasive? Flammable?  Dry up ground water and worsen droughts?  So?  What’s your point.  They will make a lot of money for a few powerful people.

To learn more or to sign our petition to the US Department of Agriculture opposing GE eucalyptus in the US, click here

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by | 2011-06-27 · 14:30

Brazil Tree Biotechnology Conference Post #1

by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

After seemingly endless hours in airports and on airplanes, I finally arrived at the Porto Seguro airport in Bahia Brazil, and from there, ferried across to Arraial D’ Ajuda in the state of Bahia, Brazil, where  the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO—pronounced Yew-Fro) is hosting a conference called “Tree Biotechnology 2011” along with co-hosts Embrapa and Veracel.  Veracel is one of the largest timber companies in Brazil—created from a merger of StoraEnso, a very controversial Swedish-Finnish timber company and Fibria, a Brazilian timber firm.

Last night (Sunday) was the official opening of the conference and the keynote speech by Ron Sederoff, a veteran forest geneticist from North Carolina State University.  But before Ron’s speech, the CEO of Veracel presented some background for why the conference was being held in Brazil—the first time the conference had been held in South America.

He started off by impressing the audience with the economic importance of the timber industry in Brazil. He explained it generates US$7.5 billion in exports while still being a “low-carbon activity that generates green jobs.”

Brazil is currently the fourth largest producer of pulp in the world, producing 8% of the global total. China is second at 12% and Canada third at 10%. But the global runaway leader is the United States, at 27% of the global total.

This notorious accomplishment has come at a high price in the US.  One in five acres of the forests of the Southeast have been converted to pine plantations—over 40 million acres.  Nearly 6 million acres in the region are clearcut every year just for paper.  New demands for wood-based bioenergy are expected to result in another 40 million acres of biodiverse forest lost to plantations. Timber plantations also mean toxic chemicals.  Between 1990 and 2000, more chemicals were used on the plantations of the US South than the rest of the world combined, contaminating water and causing illness.

Not to be outdone by the U.S., the Veracel executive explained that he expects production of pulp in Brazil to triple in the next 10 years.

In 2000, he explained, Brazil’s output was 7,200,000 tons, and by 2010 it was almost 9,800,000 tons.  Bahia, the state where Veracel is based and where this conference is being held, produces 2,247,000 of those tons.

Our conference agenda includes a day long field trip to see the wonders of Veracel’s glowingly “green” operations on Wednesday.  That should be interesting indeed.  Their pulp mill is located, according to the CEO “in the middle of the forest,” which, he said, was exactly the idea—to be near the resource base, a “mosaic” of “planted” and “natural” forests.  Of their over 200,000 hectares of forest holdings, he said, 100,000 is “preserved” forest.  I am a bit unclear on how one “preserves” forests in the midst of plantations.  Perhaps in mason jars…

However it is done, Veracel will undoubtedly apply for REDD credits for it (that is credits [i.e. money] for storing carbon under the auspices of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation scheme of the World Bank and UN).  A win-win!  Money for cutting down forests and money for not cutting down forests.  In the words of Tina Vahanen, of the UN REDD Secretariat “REDD will be extremely beneficial for forestry.”

But back to the topic at hand.  What all of these dizzying statistics ultimately mean, is that the area of land covered by tree plantations in Brazil is rapidly expanding.  Where will this expansion take place?  That is a good question.  It will require vast acreages of land. Land will need to be converted from its current form (as forests, agricultural lands, ranch lands) into industrial-scale timber plantations.  In the cases where land that is not forested is used, it will likely result in what is called “indirect land use change,” where the former uses of the land move into and hence destroy biodiverse forests.

But let me make one thing crystal clear.  There is no such thing as a “planted” forest.  There are forests, and there are timber plantations and one bears no resemblance to the other; not ecologically; not in terms of carbon storage capacity (forests are rich in carbon, plantations are not), not for biodiversity, and not for the ability to provide for the needs of forest dependent communities.  Saying a plantation is a forest is like saying a corn field is a prairie.

This intentional confusion causes many problems.  It allows expansion of industrial timber plantations to be called “reforestation” “afforestation” or even “sustainable forest management,” and clouds the ability to determine exactly how much forest is being lost every year.  With the global focus on reducing deforestation as a means to curb climate change, one would think that accurate calculations of forest loss would be important.  Maybe so, but not to the UN or the World Bank—the biggest promoters of REDD.  To add insult to injury, there have even been proposals to “reforest” the Amazon with non-native eucalyptus plantations.

And looming on the horizon, somewhere off in the distance, is the spectre of plantations of genetically engineered trees; trees genetically transformed to make them more easily (and cheaply) manufactured into the product of choice: paper, electricity, liquid fuel, chemicals, plastics, textiles, lumber.  You name it, they’ve got somebody working on GE trees for that exact purpose.

And all of this is sold as “green.”  After all, trees are a “renewable” alternative to fossil fuels!  In fact, in his presentation on what’s coming up in the next few years, our Veracel Executive listed “climate change, the Green Economy” and Rio+20” in the same bullet point.

This is what many environmental, human rights and climate justice organizations have been warning about—that the upcoming conference in Rio de Janiero (in June 2012)—the 20 year follow up to the original “Rio Earth Summit”—will use the ever-worsening climate crisis as the excuse through which to push the so-called “green economy.”  The green economy is merely the same old failed economic system in a pretty new green wrapping and essentially means the commodification of all life on earth in the service of maintaining business as usual for as long as possible beyond all natural limits.

And it was on this note that the conference “Tree Biotechnology 2011” kicked off, here in the state of Bahia, Brazil.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more fun and games.

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by | 2011-06-22 · 18:30

Outsourcing Global Warming Solutions

Since traveling to Chiapas to investigate the California-Chiapas REDD initiative this March, I’ve written and published several pieces on the multi-faceted problems associated with offsetting California’s Co2 emissions by ‘investing’ in forests in the global South, and specifically in a region such as Chiapas where the fundamental political dynamic is a long-running effort to dispossess indigenous communities of their territories and resources. An issue as complex and multi-faceted as this is requires a number of avenues for exploring its implications; Alternet and Upside Down World have run pieces, and more are forthcoming in Z Magazine and Earth Island Journal. The article below is reposted from the Oakland, California-based journal, Race, Poverty and the Environment.                  — Jeff Conant, for GJEP

By Jeff Conant, cross-posted from Race, Poverty and the Environment

When the implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, came to a grinding halt due to San Francisco Superior Court’s March 17, 2011 ruling that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), it came as a shock to industry and environmentalists alike. It would not be surprising if leading-edge environmental legislation like AB32 were to draw fire from climate-change deniers and oil interests. Indeed, the most recent attempt to derail the law, last year’s Proposition 23, was pushed by two out-of-state oil companies. Voters, mobilized in large part by grassroots climate justice groups, roundly defeated that attempt.

But the lawsuit against California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) regulatory framework for AB32 was undertaken by the Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)—two groups that advocate on behalf of “frontline and fence-line environmental justice communities.” They represent low-income people and people of color who live, work and play in the shadow of refineries in Wilmington and Richmond, in the agribusiness fields of the Central Valley, near the waste dumps of Kettleman City, and in other California communities plagued by industrial pollution.

More surprising still, CARB’s regulations are raising hackles among another unlikely constituency: indigenous peasant farmers in the remote jungle of southeastern Mexico.

Why should a law intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions come under attack from precisely those groups most impacted by toxic pollution? And why is it of concern to subsistence farmers in remote Mexico? The answer is complicated, but it hinges on the fact that, from the perspective of those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and to the fossil fuel industry, cap-and-trade programs move the decision-making authority on environmental health beyond community control and into the so-called market.

Behind the Lawsuit
Rafael Aguilera is an environmental justice advocate, principal of his own consulting firm, the Verde Group, and a strong critic of AB32’s implementation plan. Aguilera was not always so critical, however. Before AB32 was passed by the legislature and signed into law in 2006, he worked with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund to help shape the bill. But sharp concerns about the recently approved cap-and-trade regulations approved by the CARB led him to jump back into the AB32 fray, this time to halt its implementation. In a recent talk at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School for Public Policy, Aguilera and Alegria De La Cruz, legal director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, made it clear that while they support aggressive action on climate change, their concerns about AB32 are focused largely on who benefits from the law and who does not.

Aguilera began by showing a graph of the rising numbers of heat-related deaths among California’s farm workers.  “Current predictions for the Central Valley are three-month long heat waves—temperatures above 105 degrees in the summer months,” he said. Then he put up a slide of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a pregnant 17-year-old farm worker who died of heat stroke near Stockton in the summer of 2008.

“Look at this face,” he told the audience. “Maria Isabel is the face of climate change.”

“Clean Air Act laws are supposed to protect public health,” Aguilera said. “In the context of new carbon regulations, such as the cap-and-trade provisions proposed in AB32, many of us assume those laws are being implemented. But they’re not.”

Impact of CARB’s Regulations
De La Cruz, one of two lead attorneys on the case, then told the story of how communities from across California had traveled to Sacramento to testify before the CARB, only to leave without having had the opportunity to speak. One of their chief concerns was that the cap-and-trade provision in AB32 would do nothing to reduce pollution in the most impacted communities.
“The impacts of these policies are happening to very specific populations because of their race and because of their class,” De La Cruz said. “For our communities, a pollution trading system violates not only the intent of AB32, because cap-and-trade has   such serious implications for fence-line communities, it also violates the letter of AB32.”

A young but seasoned advocate, De La Cruz is a Yale Graduate and a child of California farm workers. Under the implementation plan for AB32, which was approved by the CARB in December 2010 but held up in court three months later, up to 20 percent of the state’s total mandated emissions reductions would be achieved through carbon trading, rather than through actual cuts in industrial pollution at the source. This means that industries would be allowed to delay efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions—along with the associated toxic co-pollutants—by purchasing carbon permits.

Environmental justice advocates charge that such carbon trading schemes leave lower-income communities of color to continue bearing the brunt of industrial pollution. “The harm that our communities will suffer from a poorly made plan will be greater than the harm of not reducing emissions in a way that’s responsible, that’s legal, and that really reflects the intent and the spirit of AB32 in the first place,” De La Cruz said.
According to a March 2009 UC Berkeley study by David Roland Host, based on the draft regulations proposed by CARB, using out-of-state offsets would actually increase California’s air pollution in five out of six pollution categories.

California forest defenders also charge that the plan gives too good a deal to the state’s timber industry by giving carbon credits to wood products and condoning clear-cutting. (See story on page 83.) The San Francisco Superior Court’s March ruling against AB32 requires that, to comply with CEQA, the Air Resources Board must consider alternatives to cap-and-trade.

“AB32 requires that the plan include maximum feasible and cost-effective measures,” De La Cruz said. “The scoping plan didn’t show the range of possibilities of what makes the most economic sense for California. When they chose to include pollution trading as a huge portion of the plan, CARB clearly failed to show that cap-and-trade met those standards.”

Response from CARB
Two weeks after Aguilera and De La Cruz spoke about the lawsuit at UC Berkeley, Virgil Welch, special assistant to the Chairperson of CARB, gave a talk at the same venue, defending cap-and-trade.

“You have to understand what we’re doing here in California, in the national context,” Welch said. “It’s really not just about emissions reductions. What we’re talking about is a permanent shift toward a less carbon-intensive economy, and more sustainable transportation and land-use policies. What we’re talking about is a long-term transition, and not just the immediate emissions reduction goals.”

“This is really one of those policies that provides a price signal that will help us move to the next level of investment in energy efficiency. It’s no mistake that states like Massachusetts and California that have very strong environmental policies also have the vast majority of investment flowing into them from the clean tech sector. While there’s an environmental imperative, there’s also an economic imperative,” Welch explained.

The question, from the perspective of the low-income communities who live with the greatest impacts of environmental contamination is, an economic imperative for whom? Indeed, while AB32 attempts to reduce emissions without restricting the state’s economic interests, what does it do to meet the environmental imperatives of those for whom clean air is a matter of life or death?

Outsourcing Global Warming Solutions
While the pollution-trading piece of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act has roused the ire of environmental justice advocates in the state, the question of carbon offsets has also raised concerns south of the border, where another set of “low-income communities” are already being impacted by the legislation.

One of former Governor Schwarzenegger’s last acts in office, just a week before the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancún, Mexico, was to sign agreements with the states of Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil for a state-to-state cap-and-trade agreement to be part of AB32.

As Welch explained, “Offsets are a mechanism used in a cap-and-trade program to try to achieve reductions in the sectors outside of the capped entities—that is, outside the polluting industries. CARB has adopted several offset protocols, one being forestry. From our perspective, it’s a protocol that incentivizes practices that will increase the capacity of forests to store carbon.”

The agreements with the two foreign states, as set out in Memoranda of Understanding signed in Davis on November 16, 2010, are based on a policy mechanism known as “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation,” or REDD. In theory, it works like this: Because trees capture and store CO2, when they are burned or felled, the CO2 they contain is released, and their potential for capturing CO2 from industrial emissions is lost. Thus, maintaining intact forests is essential to mitigating the impacts of the climate change.

But until now, there has been little economic incentive for protecting forests. With the creation of a vast market for trading pollution permits, such an incentive now exists. Those who protect forests can earn carbon credits—financial rewards based on an assessment of the amount of CO2 a forest can store and a market-derived price per ton of carbon. They can then trade these credits to industrial polluters for cash, thus generating revenue that, in theory, gives governments and forest-dwelling communities around the world an incentive not to cut down trees.

Policy-makers at the global level see REDD as an exciting new strategy to address the climate crisis without jeopardizing economic growth. Efforts to develop implementation protocols for REDD have been central to U.N. climate negotiations since it was first announced in Bali, Indonesia in 2007. It enjoys broad support from the World Bank and large environmental organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Conservation International. But, since it was first unleashed, the policy has met with protest from indigenous groups whose lands are being targeted by the scheme, but who have had no part in designing it.

By forging an agreement to implement the “trade” part of AB32’s “cap-and-trade” protocol through REDD, former Governor Schwarzenegger set in motion a process that climate justice advocates charge will not only fail to reduce industrial contamination in California, but could lead to land grabs and forced displacement of poor communities in Chiapas and Acre.

In Chiapas: Payment for Environmental Services
Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, is Mexico’s poorest and most indigenous state, with a long history of conflicts over land. In the Lacandon jungle, an area of the state where indigenous peoples have for centuries faced forced removal from their territories, REDD is already touching on old conflicts.

The Lacandon is best known around the world as home to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the rebel group that emerged in Chiapas in the 1990s in response to NAFTA. Less well known is that one of the factors that led to the emergence of the EZLN was a historic land grab that came under the pretext of forest protection. In the 1970s, a series of presidential decrees gave vast portions of the Lacandon jungle to the 66 families of the Lacandon tribe, as well as an arbitrary grouping of members of the Tzeltal and Ch’ol ethnic groups. The bureaucratic entity that was given ownership of much of the jungle became known as the Lacandon Community.

Now, as REDD program implementation begins, the government of Chiapas is paying landholders in the Lacandon Community 2000 pesos (around USD 200) a month to protect the forest. These payments are part of a renewed government effort to delimit “natural protected areas” in order to generate carbon credits.

On March 20, 2011, the Mexican newspaper La Jornada reported that “The State government authorized a monthly payment; however, this is merely to allow the completion of the forest inventory so that [members of the Lacandon Community] can access federal and international funds, as well as complement these funds with projects, such as agricultural conversion… with species, such as oil palm and rubber.”

What this means in practice is a mandate for those receiving the money to cease planting their traditional crops (which are seen as harmful to the jungle), and to increase patrolling of their territory against outsiders, designated as “invaders.” Those invaders, generally speaking, are indigenous communities who have never had formal title to the land, but who have been settled in the region for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

The village of Amador Hernández lies precisely on the border of the Lacandon Community. In a note that the villagers composed on March 25, 2011 they wrote, “This past month, the governor of Chiapas traveled to the neighboring Lacandóna Community to make the first payments of the state-run REDD program. As he doled out the money, he told the beneficiaries that it should not be considered as a gift, but as a payment to guard the border against their neighbors—that is, us.”

Villagers from Amador Hernández charge that the state government has withdrawn all medical services to the village (leading to several deaths) as a way to force them to negotiate or move.

Santiago Martinez, a health worker in Amador Hernández, voiced a popular sentiment among his community: “They’ve always tried to find ways to prove that we, as indigenous peoples, are the cause of the problem. But global warming is the fault of the factories, of cars, of industrial production. We get around by walking, we move our products on horseback, on mules, and we produce what we need to eat ourselves. In contrast, they use gasoline, their industries burn petroleum everyday. This is the main source of pollution and of climate change.”

Martinez’s complaint echoes that of communities in California. CARB’s decision to outsource global warming “solutions” is forcing his community, one of the poorest and most marginalized in the entire hemisphere, to bear the burden for problems they had no part in causing.

Communities Demand Real Solutions
Signs of conflict in Chiapas may dim the prospects of success for the California-Chiapas REDD program. But, with California’s regulators set on outsourcing pollution rather than attacking emissions at the source, it appears that those promoting cap-and-trade will try to override the protests of frontline communities like Amador Hernández, or for that matter, Richmond, California.

“They think because they’re rich and they have a lot of resources, they can do whatever they feel like,” said Santiago Martinez. “They are promoting the idea of giving carbon credits to these industries, so they can continue contaminating.”

Bill Gallegos, executive director of CBE, had a similar message in a statement he released when filing the latest round of papers before the court: “We want to strengthen AB32 and ensure that it is effective; a hard and honest look at cap-and-trade is critical to getting there. Our communities demand real solutions for reducing pollution emissions, not another scheme that makes market traders rich at the expense of our health.” Not surprisingly, this sentiment seems to ring true for impacted communities on both sides of the border.

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Filed under Chiapas, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD

by | 2011-06-21 · 15:31

REDD Rag to Indigenous Forest Dwellers

The story of REDD unfolding in Chiapas is one that we at GJEP have been following closely, and documenting through articles, photos, videos, and analysis. This report from IPS aligns with our own findings. We’ve added a few photos of our own to the original IPS article.
– the GJEP team

The Lacandon jungle canopy. Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP

REDD Rag to Indigenous Forest Dwellers
by Emilio Godoy

Cross-posted from IPS

MEXICO CITY, May 10 (IPS) – The implementation of a forestry programme against climate change in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas poses a threat to indigenous people in the state, non-governmental organisations warn.

The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme “will alter indigenous culture, will commodify it, giving commercial value to common assets like oxygen, water and biodiversity,” Miguel García, general coordinator of Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste, an NGO founded in 1991 that supports indigenous people and rural communities and defends the environment, told IPS.

“Under an ecological pretext, the social fabric is being broken down and resentment of and confrontation with the Zapatista grassroots supporters are being accentuated,” he added, referring to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), a Chiapas-based left-wing guerrilla group that defends indigenous rights.

The programme, initially launched in 2008 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the U.N. Development and Environment Programmes (UNDP and UNEP, respectively), is aimed at conservation of biodiversity and boosting carbon storage in forests by supporting developing countries financially and technically, to either prevent deforestation or regenerate forests through afforestation.

The government of Chiapas is keen on REDD as a means of mitigating the consequences of climate change in the state, one of Mexico’s poorest.

At the end of the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in early December in the southeastern Mexican resort of Cancún, the international community reached an agreement on the new version of the programme, REDD+.

Gustavo Sánchez, head of the Mexican Campesino Forest Producers’ Network (Red MOCAF) told IPS, “There are regions of Chiapas where land ownership is a problem, which makes implementation of REDD+ difficult. What is needed first and foremost is an effort to spread information,” so that local people can give or withhold free, prior and informed consent.


REDD+ is one component of the Climate Change Action Programme for the state of Chiapas (CCAPCH), launched in 2009, which is at the public consultation stage in a territory that is among those most exposed to the effects of climate change, such as torrential rain and flooding.

Mexico emits 709 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Chiapas’ CO2 emissions are 32 million tonnes a year, arising mostly from soil use, deforestation and farming.

One million of the state’s population of nearly 4.8 million are indigenous people, belonging to seven ethnic groups, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

REDD+ would affect areas inhabited by the Lacandon, a people originally from the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche and from Guatemala, who settled in Chiapas around the end of the 18th century and are mainly supporters of the EZLN.

The EZLN took up arms in Chiapas Jan. 1, 1994 to fight the discrimination and abject poverty suffered by Amerindians in Mexico. After a few skirmishes with the armed forces and an inconclusive dialogue with the government, from 2006 on the guerrilla group withdrew into the Chiapas jungle.


In 2003, the 40 pro-Zapatista municipalities adopted an autonomous form of organising themselves in five “caracoles” (seashells).

“Practical ways of making sustainable use of the forests are essential,” Tatiana Ramos, head of the Mexican office of Conservation International (CI), a U.S.-based NGO that runs three environmental projects in Chiapas, including acting as consultants to CCAPCH, told IPS.

“What has been lacking is the sharing of information and building the process so that participants may take a leading role,” she said.

The Mexican Congress approved a Law for Mitigation of and Adaptation to Climate Change in December, 2010.

One month earlier, the governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabines, together with the then-governors of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and of the Brazilian Amazon state of Acre, Arnobio Marques de Almeida Junior, signed an agreement to trade carbon credits, to be earned by reforestation of degraded lands.

In 1971, the Mexican government ceded 614,321 hectares to a group of Lacandon people in what is now known as the Lacandon jungle, who engaged in talks with successive administrations, especially at the state level.

Seven years later, the federal government decided to create the Montes Azules (Blue Mountains) Biosphere Reserve, with an area of 331,200 hectares, which overlaps with the Lacandon territory.

Mexico has 65 million forested hectares, of which only 6.5 million hectares are covered by timber exploitation permits issued by the Secretariat (Ministry) of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT).

According to the authorities, 150,000 hectares of forest a year are lost in Mexico, but environmental organisations estimate that the rate of deforestation is above 500,000 hectares a year.

“They are ignoring the rights of other peoples that have been harassed and displaced. They will have neither land nor occupations, because under the REDD mechanism, they cannot sow maize, otherwise they will forfeit the economic benefits,” García complained.

The villagers of Amador Hernandez are under threat of eviction due to REDD, because they lack formal title to their land. Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP


The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón is designing the national REDD+ strategy, planned to begin in 2012. The programme is presently under way in 10 countries.

The issue “is broader than running a huge programme, or meeting particular carbon dioxide levels or emission cut targets, because it involves the institutional architecture and opportunities for citizen participation,” Sánchez said.

Mexico’s is one of the eight pilot projects under the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), an alliance of 28 nations, NGOs and international organisations that funds the reduction of emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation.

Under this scheme, Mexico will receive 3.6 million dollars on completing the project, according to the latest FCPF report in February. Five pilot projects will be set up to test the REDD+ programme.

“The government is assessing whether or not it is feasible. An important point is that no project can be launched unless the safeguards within the programme are respected. If there are organisations that feel the safeguards are not being applied, it is essential that they make their views known,” Ramos said.

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Chiapas, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD

by | 2011-06-17 · 01:52

Bolivia’s Indigenous social movements call for urgent action at UNFCCC talks in Bonn, Germany

Instead of trying to agree on a global deal that will actually stop climate change, governments are more worried about privatising Mother Earth.

Press Conference Webcast:

http://unfccc2.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/110606_SB34/templ/play.php?id_kongresssession=3622&theme=unfccc

 

“Our Mother Earth is ill. The development model of unlimited economic growth and overconsumption has broken the balance between human beings and the environment” said indigenous leader Rafael Quispe.

“The countries negotiating in Bonn for the last two weeks are out of touch with reality. Climate change is affecting us now with more floods and draughts. As indigenous peoples we are one of the groups most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change”.

“Unless the peoples of the world unite the consequences of climate change will be much worse”, said indigenous leader Lauriano Pari.

“We call on Annex 1 parties to sign a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in Durban that is legally binding, coercive and with the capacity to penalise Parties. We reject the attempt by developed countries to prolong the life of the Protocol to then replace it in 2020 by a treaty that merges the Kyoto Protocol with the Long-Term Group on Cooperative Action.”, underlined Lauriano Pari.

The Developed countries and their allies are not serious about reducing their emissions. They want to use existing markets and create new ones to pay others so that they take no action to confront the climate crisis. And now they want to put a price on “blue carbon” in the oceans.

All outcomes of the Kyoto Protocol must recognize and respect the rights of native indigenous peoples, consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and with the right to consultation and free, prior and informed consent.

“In order to achieve a net reduction of carbon emissions REDD plus cannot be financed by market-based mechanisms or used in carbon offsetting. Instead funds should come from developed countries and innovative funding sources should be explored. For example, by establishing a new mechanism for a tax on financial transactions that would generate funds without any conditionality”, added Lauriano Pari.

Forests are not providers of environmental services as some United Nations agencies and NGOs see them. Forests have multiple values, uses and functions and shall not be considered only as carbon sinks. There needs to be a study on the potential impact of issuing emission-reduction certificates on the rights of indigenous peoples, in particular the impact on land rights, collective rights, and traditional livelihoods.

“It is clear the current proposals on the table in the climate change negotiations are not enough to stop climate change. We propose the model of living well in harmony with Mother Earth as the way forward to re-establish the balance between humans and nature. We believe Mother Earth has rights. She owns us. We do not own her. This is why we have developed a proposal for a Law of Mother Earth that will be approved soon in Bolivia”, said  Rafael Quispe.

Notes to editors: A webcast of the full press conference at Bonn UN climate change talks is available here

 

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, UNFCCC

by | 2011-06-13 · 14:30

Bolivian indigenous social movements worried about future of Kyoto Protocol and reject commodification of forests.

Press Conference: http://unfccc2.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/110606_SB34/templ/play.php?id_kongresssession=3597&theme=unfccc

After one week of UN climate change negotiations in Bonn it is still unclear whether countries will adopt a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol – the only legally binding treaty which obliges developed countries to reduce their emissions of green house gases.

“These reduction targets must be binding for all Annex 1 countries. They must be ambitious to guarantee a level of reduction in line with what is demanded by science. Current emissions targets will lead to an increase of four degrees centigrade in temperature by the end of this century”, said social movement leader Lauriano Pari.

With 2010 one of the hottest years on record, Bolivia’s indigenous peoples demand urgency on a comprehensive global deal to prevent irreversible climate change. Time is running out as the first commitment period of Kyoto Protocol finishes at the end of 2012.

Indigenous leader Rafael Quispe said: “Our glaciers are melting, causing desertification of our lands. Now our communities are forced to migrate to the cities. It is not possible that forests, that are our home and that we have been the guardians of for many centuries, are converted into simple carbon sinks and providers of environmental services. They should have a broader vision viewing them as areas of biodiversity and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples”.

“There must be a holistic vision of forests. Forests will not be protected through a mechanism that issues certificates for the reduction of emissions to be sold on a carbon market.  With these certificates for the reduction of emissions in our forests developed countries and companies will not fulfill their emissions reductions obligations”, added Lauriano Pari.

“There must be financial reward for countries and indigenous peoples who preserve their forests. This financial reward cannot be based on market mechanisms. Instead funds should come from developed countries and innovative funding sources should be explored. For example, by establishing a new mechanism for a tax on financial transactions that would generate funds without any conditionality”

Lauriano Pari finished by saying, “We believe that in the build up to the Conference of the Parties COP17 instead of promoting the commodification of nature through the REDD mechanism we should follow a path where we recognize the rights of Mother Earth”.

Notes to editors

A webcast of the full press conference at Bonn UN climate change talks is available here

The indigenous leaders who spoke in the press conference were Tata Rafael Quispe, Mallku of CONAMAQ and Lauriano Pari, Secretary of Natural Resources of the CSUTCB.

The Pacto de Unidad is a coalition of Bolivia’s five main social movements representing millions of people – the Committee of the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), the National Confederation of Native Indigenous Peasant Women (CNMCIOB-BS), the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), the Confederation of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia (CSCIB) and the Confederation of Bolivian Indigenous Peoples (CIDOB).

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD, UNFCCC

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