Category Archives: REDD

by | 2010-11-29 · 18:37

Cancún Opens For GREEN Business But REDD Will Destroy Indigenous Forest Cultures

Cross-posted from ClimateStoryTellers.org

By Subhankar Banerjee

29 November, 2010

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) COP16 opens this week in Cancún, Mexico to discuss green business (November 29 – December 10, 2010). No one is expecting any global climate treaty to be signed at this conference. However there is hope that some progress could be made.

Two articles in particular caught my attention over the weekend. The first article was published in Grist is by Jennifer Morgan, Climate Director at the World Resources Institute, a think tank based in Washington, DC. The title of her article is “What can climate negotiations achieve in Cancun?” She writes “Establish a REDD+ mechanism” in a section titled “What decisions can be made in Cancun?” What was striking for me was the title of the following section, “What other issues remain contentious?” Clearly REDD+ is not a contentious issue for Morgan. The second article was by Kate Sheppard titled “Cancun or Bust” published in Mother Jones. Her penultimate paragraph reads, “Despite the very low expectations for a major agreement, there are major areas where the observers expect to see progress this year: … the creation of programs to prevent deforestation (known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD). Progress in those areas would go a long way toward building trust and partnership between nations, observers say.”

I bet you’re wondering—what the heck is REDD?

Almost a year ago I went to Copenhagen for the last round of the UN Climate Conference COP15 with Sarah James, Gwich’in activist and current board chair of the Gwich’in Steering Committee in Fairbanks, Alaska. During the opening day of the conference Amy Goodman interviewed Sarah and I for a segment on Democracy Now. There, I participated in a contemporary art exhibition ‘(Re–) Cycles of Paradise’ organized by ARTPORT in partnership with Global Gender and Climate Alliance, where I presented a photo–video installation to highlight Sarah James’ work. That exhibition is currently being shown at the Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City through January 16 (will overlap with COP16 in Cancún).

While in Copenhagen, we stayed at a small hotel where each day we would gather at the lobby with other fellow indigenous activists including musician Robby Romero and his daughter, singer Dakota René of the Eagle Thunder Entertainment. Robby asked me have you heard about REDD? He told me a whole bunch of things about it but with all the commotion of the conference I came back with little understanding of what REDD actually is, except that the indigenous communities around the world regard it as the “largest land grab of all time.” While the conference resulted in failure, it gave birth to what has come to be known as the Climate Justice Movement.

So here is REDD from two different perspectives.

REDD According to the United Nations
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation

REDD is a program that was conceived by the United Nations and launched in September 2008 with expertise of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

According to UN–REDD website: “Deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging, fires etc., account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.” The webpage continues, “(REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. REDD+ goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”

Map Courtesy UN-REDD Programme

UN website also states, “The Programme currently has 29 partner countries spanning Africa, Asia–Pacific and Latin America, of which 12 are receiving support to National Programme activities.”

Let me explain in simple terms what it means. You may have noticed in the UN description, the line, “to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests.” Whenever there is value there is money that can be exchanged. Say a company in Global North, take BP for example want to continue their carbon emissions, but they want to offset it to reduce their net carbon footprint, then they can buy carbon credit through REDD, in the process some forest in Global South say, Indonesia would be saved while BP continues business–as–usual.

What could be wrong with such a well meaning and benign scenario to save the planet from climate change disasters?

On November 25 UN–REDD Program released a Newsletter with success stories and plans for the Cancún conference that you can check out here.

REDD According to the Indigenous Forest Communities
Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity

Illustration Courtesy Indigenous Environmental Network

On November 26 Global Forest Coalition and Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) issued a joint press release. It states, “Indigenous and environmental rights groups warn that an agreement on REDD at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Cancún, Mexico will spell disaster for forest peoples worldwide, limiting the rights of indigenous and peasant people over their territories. The real solution, the groups argue, is for developed countries to reduce fossil fuel emissions at the source.”

Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of IEN said, “Yes we need to stop rampant deforestation—but REDD will neither protect forests nor reduce dangerous pollution. REDD will allow polluting industries to avoid reducing emissions through offsets from trees and other so–called ‘environmental services.’ From an indigenous and human rights perspective, REDD could criminalize the very peoples who protect and rely on forests for their livelihood, with no guarantees for enforceable safeguards. REDD is promoting what could be the biggest land grab of all time.”

IEN with endorsements from numerous human rights and environmental justice organizations published a detailed 40–page report [pdf] explaining every aspects of the REDD and REDD+ initiatives. The report is filled with references as well as illustrations and photos. I’ll quote a few key points from that report, but I’ll not be able to do justice to such a detailed report with just a few hundred words here. My hope is that perhaps you’ll be curious to read the full report when you have time.

REDD and Permits to Pollute
“Carbon Markets buy and sell permits to pollute called allowances and carbon credits. Carbon markets have two parts: emissions trading (also called cap and trade) and offsets. They are false solutions to climate change because they do not bring about the changes needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They claim to solve the climate crisis but really allow polluters to buy their way out of reducing their emissions.”

REDD is CO2lonialism of Forests
“It allows Northern polluters to buy permits to pollute or carbon credits by promising not to cut down forests and plantations in the South. There are hundreds of REDD–type pilot projects in the world and, many of them violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights and have resulted in militarization, evictions, fraud, disputes, conflicts, corruption, coercion, conmen, crime, plantations, and 30–100 year contracts and deals with oil companies and other climate criminals.”

REDD Means Loss of Land and Evictions
“REDD could drive land speculation and result in massive land grabs in the name of saving the climate. It could result in violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In fact UN admits that REDD could: criminalize indigenous agriculture and lifestyles, violate indigenous peoples’ rights, lock–up forests and marginalize the landless.”

Scientific American reported last year, “Interpol has warned that unscrupulous entities plan to profit from REDD: their methods could include expelling an indigenous people from their forest to acquire legal title over it.”

“UNEP funded Mau Carbon Forest Project in Kenya is a humanitarian crisis in the making. Due to this project more than 20,000 Ogiek people face eviction from their ancestral land. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced that every single Ogiek would be facing arrest if they did not voluntarily abandon their ancestral lands in the Mau Forest region of Kenya—where the Ogiek have lived for centuries. Ogiek could become REDD refugees but they have vowed to resist any move to evict them.”

REDD and Militarization
“REDD could foster a ‘armed protection’ mentality that could lead to the displacement of millions of forest–dependent people, including by force: armed guards for pilot projects, remote sensors in forests and satellite surveillance of forests.”

Interpol has stated, “If there are indigenous people involved, there’s threats and violence against those people.” This is already happening. Abelie Wape, an Indigenous leader from Kamula Doso in Papua New Guinea, was forced at gunpoint to sign away the carbon rights to the forest. Kamula Doso is one of the most controversial of the REDD projects currently being set up anywhere in the world.

REDD and Oil Companies
An IEN press release ‘Shell bankrolls REDD’ states, “Oil giant Shell, infamous for the genocide of the Ogoni People and environmental destruction in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is now bankrolling REDD.” Renowned Nigerian environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey, Director of Environmental Rights Action and Chair of Friends of the Earth International, wrote, “We have suffered Shell’s destruction of communities and biodiversity as well as oil spills and illegal gas flaring for decades. Now we can add financing REDD for greenwash and profits to the long list of Shell’s atrocities.”

“Shell, Gazprom (Russian oil–and–gas giant) and the Clinton Foundation are funding the landmark REDD Rimba Raya project on 100,000 ha (250,000 acres) in the province of Central Kalimantan in Indonesia. REDD allows polluters like Shell, Rio Tinto and Chevron–Texaco to buy their way out of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at source by supposedly conserving forests.”

In case you missed, Shell is also right now pressuring the Obama administration to give them the permit to go drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska that the Inupiat indigenous communities oppose as they fear it’ll destroy their homeland and culture.

REDD and GMO Trees
“The UNFCCC allows GMO trees to be used to generate carbon credits. Genetically Modified Trees are trees whose genetic material has been modified in a laboratory for rapid growth or to make it easier to produce agrofuels from wood. Trees are also genetically modified to increase pollution absorption and consequently to sell more permits to pollute. GMO Trees are very dangerous because they can contaminate natural forests just like GMO corn has contaminated natural corn.”

REDD and Conservation NGOs
REDD has controversial support from many powerful U.S. conservation NGOs including, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Conservational International, Environmental Defense, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Wildlife Conservation Society and others.

Not the First Time—Conservation, Forced Eviction and Militarization

Historian Karl Jacoby of Brown University wrote an influential book a few years ago titled, “Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation.” In the book Jacoby writes about the dark history of American conservation and that during the mid and late 19th century how conservation of lands criminalized inhabitants. In a short order, ‘land dwellers’ were labeled ‘squatters’; ‘hunters’ to ‘poachers’; and ‘gatherers’ to ‘thieves.’

In one chapter Jacoby writes about the formation of the first National Park—the Yellowstone National Park. Euro–American conservationists told the American public that areas of the Yellowstone plateau had never been trodden by human footsteps. Quite the contrary—in reality five tribes, Crow, Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfeet, and Nez Perce actively hunted in the Yellowstone plateau. Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872. U.S. Military was brought in to run the park. In fact few Americans may know that the U.S. military ran the Yellowstone National Park for 32 years. Prominent conservationists of the time including the influential John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club supported the militarization of the U.S. public lands. Their job was to protect vulnerable tourists from the threat of dangerous Native Americans. In the process they protected the land by taking it away from the ‘people of the land.’

Trust–and–Partnership: A Seat at the Table?

During UNFCC Convention in Bali indigenous people protested the fact that they were shut out from the negotiations even though it is their land that UN was considering for carbon offsets | Courtesy Global Justice Ecology Project

I’ll now return to Kate Sheppard’s statement about “building trust and partnership between nations.” To build trust we must first talk—maybe we sit around in a circle and tell stories, or we sit around at a table and tell stories. Did UN give the indigenous peoples a sit at the table about REDD?

In an article published earlier this year in the Indian Country Today, Tom Goldtooth writes about his experience of Copenhagen where he went with a delegation of 12 Native people from U.S. and Canada, “Maintaining indigenous peoples’ participation inside the Bella Center was very important during the waning hours of the conference to ensure the rights of indigenous peoples would be recognized in the Accord (Copenhagen Accord). This did not happen. Neither human rights language nor the rights of indigenous peoples were recognized in the Accord.”

Earlier this year UN released a 222–page report tilted, “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” The report states, “Millions of people around the world who belong to indigenous communities continue to face discrimination and abuse at the hands of authorities and private business concerns.” Inter Press Service reporting on the release stated, “The report’s chapter dealing with environmental issues suggests that most of the deforestation is taking place on indigenous territories due to massive operations by mining corporations. It says many of the business ventures on native lands are illegal.”

Euro–American conservationists protected vulnerable tourists by evicting the Native Americans nearly a century and half ago from the Yellowstone plateau. The question now arises—will the UN and influential conservation NGOs repeat the same episode but at a much larger global scale—by evicting the ‘people of the land’ to protect vulnerable kingdoms—BPdom, Shelldom, Exxondom, Americadom? Is Global North attempting to impose an order on the Global South, but for whose benefit?

We’ve just come to know for whose benefit. On Sunday Guardian reported “Some of the world’s largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme (REDD), according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.”

I’ve worked on Arctic Alaska issues for nearly a decade. I see conservation and human rights organizations have been working hand–in–hand and shoulder–to–shoulder to achieve a common vision of conservation that honors both ecological and indigenous human cultures against destructive oil and gas development projects. So why is there such an unfathomable gap between the conservation and the indigenous communities about REDD? Is it because industrialized and industrializing nations will not significantly reduce their carbon emissions, fossil fuel companies will continue with business–as–usual with drilling and mining in more dangerous territories, and we will not reduce our carbon footprint to anything meaningful—so taking away the last remaining forests from the indigenous dwellers and giving the credits back to the polluters is the most expedient and the easiest road we can take to tackle climate change? Or by supporting REDD the conservation organizations will gain valuable dollars from the polluters for important conservation work or the worst of all they could care less about the indigenous communities of the Global South? How would anyone who is supporting REDD feel if they’re evicted from their home—actually it’s been happening a lot in U.S. with the real–estate collapse and no one likes it. So why would we support REDD?

Forests are dying all over the world at an unprecedented rate due to climate change—hundreds of millions of trees are dead—I wrote about it this summer. This is causing a lot of stress to the indigenous communities. Is this the time to tinker with trading carbons by taking away the forests from the indigenous inhabitants and then selling the credits to the polluters—or is it possible to develop a common global vision of moving away from fossil fuel altogether and working with forest dwellers on sustainable solutions? It is a moral question that we must answer. And that I’d call trust–and–partnership.

Here are some last words from Tom Goldtooth: “Everyone who cares about our future, forests, Indigenous Peoples and human rights should reject REDD because it is irremediably flawed, cannot be fixed and because, despite efforts to develop safeguards for its implementation, REDD will always be potentially genocidal.”

Copyright 2010 Subhankar Banerjee

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Filed under Independent Media, Indigenous Peoples, REDD, UNFCCC

by | 2010-09-29 · 11:44

An Evening with Evo

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

On Thursday, September 23rd, Global Justice Ecology Project co-Director/ Strategist Orin Langelle and I traveled to Manhattan for a meeting with Evo Morales Ayma, the Indigenous President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Pablo Salón, Bolivia’s Ambassador to the UN to discuss the preparations for the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Cancún. Invited to the event were a small number of people representing NGOs, Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and social movements including Indigenous Environmental Network, La Via Campesina, Grassroots International, the National Family Farm Coalition, and Institute for Policy Studies, among others.

After gathering at the Bolivian Mission on 2nd Avenue, our group of 30 or so negotiated the maze of police barricades and uniformed officers to arrive at the Church Center for the United Nations, directly across the street from the massive UN building.

We waited for an hour or so in the “Boss Room” of the Church Center until news came that President Morales was speaking to the UN General Assembly at that very moment, and would arrive at our meeting as soon as he was finished.  The techies in the room did their best to transmit the live broadcast of Evo’s speech through the LCD projector but managed to finally get it working just in time to hear the applause as Morales exited the stage.

President Morales and his entourage finally arrived, greeting and shaking hands with new friends and old, along the walk to the front of the room.  Pablo Salón opened the meeting with an update on the status of the negotiations going on at the UN General Assembly across the street.  He was not optimistic in where they were headed, and instead emphasized the importance of the upcoming UN Climate meetings in Cancún for advancing the “Cochabamba Accord” and the “Rights of Mother Earth.”  Both of these emerged in April of this year as outcomes from the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  Morales organized the summit to bring together climate justice and Indigenous leaders from around the world to discuss a peoples’ alternative to Obama’s heavy handed and highly undemocratic “Copenhagen Accord” that had been “acknowledged” but not adopted at the Copenhagen Climate Summit last December.  Obama, Salón pointed out, had just that morning at the UN General Assembly pushed his Copenhagen Accord.

Ambassador Salón emphasized that, although language from the Cochabamba agreement had so far been included in the text of the negotiations at the interim climate meetings, it was going to take a major social mobilization before and during Cancún to ensure that the Cochabamba language makes its way into the final text.  This call to mobilize had been raised at the recent Social Forum of the Americas in Paraguay and was being taken up by social movements around Latin America.

Next on the agenda, Representatives from Mexican social movements discussed the plans already being organized for Cancún.  The crux of this long and detailed series of presentations was that, although there have been some differences between the Mexican social movements and organizations in terms of tactics and objectives, (differences which were being exploited by the government and the media), they were trying to put aside those differences to create one unified alternative space in Cancún–a space where social movements of all types could come together and share strategies and information with the aim to advance the struggle for climate justice.

Caravans of social movements to Cancún are being planned from points throughout the Americas.  On the 20th of November, a huge march will take place in Mexico City on the 100th Anniversary of the Mexican revolution.  And on the 7th of December, Via Campesina has called for “Thousands of Cancuns” to take place all over the world.

When President Morales finally spoke, he too emphasized the need to show a united front.  He insisted, “It’s up to us.  If we want the Cochabamba Accord, it will be up to the power of the people.”  He continued, explaining, “I don’t believe very much in governments, but we need an alliance of social movements and progressive governments to find solutions, otherwise the planet is going to cook.  We need a party in Cancun.  We must cool the earth down and heal the earth of her fever.”

When the topic moved on to discussing the advancement of REDD–the UN’s hotly contested scheme to supposedly reduce deforestation by including forests in the carbon market–Pablo Salón explained that REDD will be a major focus of the negotiations in Cancún.  He emphasized that the pro-REDD forces there are stacking the deck, hand picking who will be allowed to participate.  Meanwhile the Mexican government is doing its best to legitimize REDD.  “They are trying to manipulate the process to make it seem like Indigenous Peoples support REDD. REDD will be a crucial battle.  It must be clear that there is no agreement among Indigenous Peoples about REDD.”  He concluded by saying, “Using Indigenous Peoples to legitimize the buying and selling of nature is a big problem and we will do what we can to stop it.”

The consensus of the meeting was that the movements supporting the Cochabamba Accord and the Rights of Mother Earth need a unified message–one that is strongly opposed to carbon markets and against REDD.  But it was also agreed that it is not so much the Cochabamba Accord itself that must be supported, but its ideas and positions.

The final take away message of the meeting was that social movements must continue to organize and coordinate in preparation for Cancún, and that this must include a concerted effort to raise the issues in the media.  As Pablo Salón explained, “We need as much media coverage as possible.”

Those of us who attended are now tasked with taking these mandates to our allies and our constituencies in the countdown toward Cancún.  Global Justice Ecology Project is taking this up and will be focused on connecting mainstream and alternative media with the voices of people resisting the impacts of climate change and fossil fuels, and with the messages of social movements fighting for climate justice.  We will be doing our part to advance the principles of the Cochabamba Accord and the Rights of Mother Earth.

See you in the streets!

Photo: Evo Morales speaks at the Church Center of the United Nations while Cassandra Smithies translates.  Photo: Petermann/GJEP

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by | 2010-06-07 · 21:44

There is No One Magic Bullet Solution… So Get Over It!

By Anne Petermann

Blog Post June 7th, 2010

Back home to our little cottage on the lake—back to the sanity of being surrounded by native forest instead of megalomaniacal bureaucrats intent on capitalizing off the rape and plunder of the earth under the auspices of climate mitigation.

First, of course, we had one last stop prior to boarding our respective planes and trains back to sanity—a presentation at the European Parliament in Brussels.

This time it was one of the Ministers of Parliament (MEP) responsible for implementing the European Union’s “renewable energy” target of 20% by 2020 that took issue with our analysis.

Once again it was Deepak’s presentation that was most hotly debated—perhaps because it best showed, through graphic photographs, the wholesale devastation of primeval rainforests for woodchips for export—the direct and indirect result of the EU’s desire to fulfill its renewable energy commitment by burning trees for electricity.

The MEP explained that we had limited choices—wood-based fuels (liquid and electric) or even worse options like nuclear power or large-scale hydroelectricity.  To me this is a false dichotomy.  It is not either burn trees or build nukes or flood rivers.  The solution is to transform the way we live on this earth.  The solution is to find the small-scale truly sustainable alternatives that make sense for each bioregion.  The solutions for Vermont are not going to be the same as the solutions for Belgium.  And the big magic bullet solutions do not exist.  Forget about it.  Technology and the markets are not going to save us from this mess—especially since they have contributed so significantly to it.

The faster we get over the idea of the imaginary single magic solution, the sooner we can dig in to the work at hand.

Here in the United States, the crisis of burning trees for electricity is a little closer to home—especially in those regions that still have some intact forest left—whether primary forest or second growth native forest, these forests are now under the gun.  With plans for new biomass electricity plants popping up all over the place, and with the EU demand for trees leading to increased woodchip exports from the U.S., our forests are under threat like they haven’t been since the continent was first invaded by those white folks who’d already trashed their own forests.

And don’t forget the threat from genetically engineered trees!  Eucalyptus and poplar trees are being avidly engineered to provide better agrofuels (liquid transport fuels) and faster growing biomass.  And it’s the Gulf Coast states where these Franken-eucalyptus plantations are planned to be developed.

So, while it was good to spend time with allies in Europe, and we had many important meetings about international forest policy and GE trees, it was really good to finally get back home to our office in Vermont where we are developing strategies to take on ArborGen and defeat their plans for vast industrial plantations of non-native, invasive, water depleting and flammable eucalyptus trees.

GJEP Co-Director Orin Langelle and I have collectively been working to protect forests and the rights of forest-dependent peoples for close to 50 years.  This is one forest fight that we cannot, we will not, lose.

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by | 2009-10-23 · 21:17

World Forestry Congress: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Plantations

Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project & North American Focal Point of Global Forest Coalition, posted on this blog everyday last week from the World Forestry Congress.

Buenos Aires, Argentina Oct. 23, 2009- Adjacent to the lounge area at the World Forestry Congress are two shallow pools with sporadically placed globs of water plants growing in them.  Floating in and among these water plants, posing as water lilies, are big pink Gerber Daisies.  Hanging from the ceiling are plastic birds suspended by fishing line.  Over the loudspeaker, very tinny sounding recorded bird songs.  This bizarre setting, I believe, serves as a perfect metaphor for what I have seen at this, my first, World Forestry Congress.

In seminar after seminar I have witnessed plantation-crazed maniacs posing as people deeply concerned with the well-being of our forests.  Even at the Forest Restoration session the topic was not threats to the world’s forests and techniques to restore forests and their biodiversity.  No, the workshop on “restoring forests” was all about growing monoculture tree plantations. (sigh.)

Nearly every session here has been first and foremost a public relations campaign aimed at drilling into the heads of all, but especially the young impressionable forestry students, that the industrial plantation forestry is our best bet for saving the forests.  These forestry hucksters congratulate themselves and each other for being such good con artists.  And their jargon is flawless.  They have coopted the terminology developed by social movements and environmental organizations brilliantly.  Capacity building and Consultations with Indigenous Peoples, Sustainable Forestry Management, Net Zero Deforestation, Forest Restoration, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation, Ending Illegal Logging, Certification, Advancing Social and Ecological Values, Environmental Stewardship, Sustainability Criteria… and on and on…  So beautiful, so moving. (Pay NO attention to the man behind the curtain!)

But if you actually listen to the presentations you can find the subtext and hear what they are actually saying.  It is like something from George Orwell’s 1984.  For example, yesterday at a session on REDD, a woman overseeing a REDD project in Brazil pointed out that her project in the Juma forest is raising money by partnering with corporations including Marriott and Coke.  For every night someone stays in a Marriott hotel, they donate $1 to the REDD project in order to offset the emissions of their guests (no, not the emissions released BY their guests).  The lesson: the more we consume, the more we conserve.  Brilliant!

This logic then also spills over into the effort to promote trees for bioenergy as a means to fight climate change.  We can reduce emissions from deforestation while we reduce more emissions by logging more trees!  2+2=5!  War is Peace! (Hmmm, the guy sending more troops to kill people in Afghanistan DID just got the Nobel Peace Prize…)

Then there was the World Wildlife Fund session on Thursday night on “Stimulating  Forest Investments—how to finance forest destruction, oops, I mean, conservation.  (Funded, you might like to know, by CitiBank and USAID, among others.)

Mark Constantine, of the International Finance Corporation talked about their work in Indonesia.  He had a very neat and tidy little chart that talked about “Challenges” (there’s that word again!) in one column and “Opportunities” in another.

Challenge: Peat Swamp Forest Conversion.  Opportunity: Reforestation of Degraded Lands.  Now, remember boys and girls what we just learned about “forest restoration.”  That’s right, the “challenge” of peat swamp forest destruction in Indonesia provides us with the “opportunity” to plant tree monocultures!

In another chart, he listed the “Risks” of certain activities, next to a column called “mitigation.”  The first item under “risks” was “unsustainable logging & biodiversity loss”  The mitigation: certification and NGO partnerships.  In other words, when you do unsustainable logging and destroy biodiversity, you will need to mitigate your image by getting sustainable forestry certification and partnering with an NGO like WWF.

Another presenter was Roberto Waack, from the Forest Stewardship Council, your friendly neighborhood forest certifiers.  (Didn’t realize forests needed to be certified, did you? You thought they just grew.)  His presentation was quite illuminating.  First he pointed out what FSC does: “Advancing Sustainable Forest Management [you will remember from our lesson yesterday that SFM includes conversion of forests to monoculture timber plantations] through Standards, Certification and Labeling.”

They now have 115 million hectares of certified forests (both “natural” and “planted”) in 82 countries, with over 15,000 FSC certificate holders in 99 countries.  They have certified productive forests worth over $20 billion. In 2007, they experienced 40% growth in their FSC “supply chain.”  You should have seen their graph!  Nothing but up, up, up! FSC, he explained, is a “multi-billion dollar brand.”

They are also working with operators to help them transition to “clean energy” from biomass, and are supporting new markets and multiple use of forests—including bioenergy.

This is all well and good, you say, but what has it got to do with protecting forests?  Honestly, I have no idea…

The final session of the day is going on as I write this.  It is the session on “recommendations” for the congress.  As my recommendations would be in the realm of removing themselves from the planet, I thought it best to abstain from attending.  If I had to hear one more talking head blather about sustainably destroying the planet, I would have lost my mind completely.

So there you have it.  The World Forestry Congress in a nutshell.  6,000 participants (including approximately 6 Indigenous People) and millions of tons of emissions devoted to exactly what purpose?  Toward the noble goal of building the capacity to manage forests sustainably toward zero net deforestation in order to restore the forest, thereby reducing emissions from deforestation and ending illegal logging through certified sustainability criteria and environmental stewardship that advances social and ecological values.

Who could argue with that?

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by | · 14:35

Forest Protection and Indigenous Rights Organizations Globally Denounce the World Forestry Congress

Blog post by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project & North American Focal Point of Global Forest Coalition. Every day this week she will be posting an update from the World Forestry Congress on this blog

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Rather than writing another lengthy blog post on the absurdities witnessed at the XIII World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires, today I offer you some of the views of our allies regarding the Congress.

First you will find comments on REDD made by Camila Moreno, who is Global Justice Ecology Project’s Brazilian representative and a New Voices on Climate Change participant. She made the comments during a panel presentation on REDD organized by the Climate Media Partnership at the congress on Thursday, October 22.

My second post is the presentation by Marcial Arias, who is a Kuna from Panama, on the impacts of REDD on Indigenous Peoples. Marcial gave this presentation during the same panel presentation as Camila for the Climate Media Partnership.

Next I have posted an excerpt from a statement by World Rainforest Movement criticizing the claim of the congress to be “carbon neutral.”  WRM boycotted the congress, instead writing a detailed and sharp critique of it.

Finally, you will find Global Forest Coalition’s formal letter of resignation to the World Forestry Congress Advisory Board. GFC resigned from the WFC Advisory Board after every recommendation they made was ignored.

Camila Moreno on Brazilian Social Movements Denouncing REDD

Camila Moreno, speaking on behalf of New Voices on Climate Change for the panel organized by the Climate Media Partnership, pointed out the widespread opposition to UN’s REDD scheme by communities, Indigenous Peoples, social movements and organizations in Brazil and throughout Latin America.  She began her presentation by reading the Belém Letter: the statement denouncing REDD adopted by Brazilian NGOs and social movements.

You can read the letter at http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/connections.php?ID=323.

She went on to further elaborate the criticism by Latin American groups to including forests in the carbon market, and called for an opening of space for discussion on the true causes of climate change including its underlying drivers, in contrast to the lack of space for any dissent or in-depth conversations found at the World Forestry Congress.

Marcial Arias (of the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest, and Global Forest Coalition) on the Views of Indigenous Peoples on REDD

I have some serious concerns about REDD, which I will explain.

For Indigenous Peoples the trees are more than wood.  The trees mean food, medicine, shelter, and that is not being recognized by REDD.

Next, REDD is being promoted for poverty alleviation.  I will explore if this is true.  First, these types of market mechanisms are not new, we saw something similar through the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol) which has had great impacts on Indigenous communities.  For example, the CDM has led to the development of monoculture timber plantations and also large dams on Indigenous lands, and these have had very grave impacts on Indigenous peoples.  Examples of this exist throughout Latin America and Africa.

The mechanisms of REDD+ include developing monoculture timber plantations.  With these plantations comes the use of agro-toxics and herbicides.  This is reducing the life expectancy in Indigenous communities, and you can already see the damage to peoples’ health due to tree plantations and associated agro-toxins.

Another important issue is the question of benefits for avoided deforestation.  The tradition of the Kuna People is to do small-scale sustainable logging in the summer. It is part of the culture.  How much will we be paid to change our culture?

Then there is the problem of informing communities about the problems of REDD.   I am reasonably informed, but it is very difficult to explain to the people in indigenous communities just what REDD will mean to them.

Finally, the governments must to take into account the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with REDD.  It is essential that this UN declaration is taken into account, and it is critical that the people have the ability to say no to these projects.  And finally, the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples must be taken into account in the development of REDD.

 Excerpt from World Rainforest Movement on the carbon neutral fraud at the World Forestry Congress

For the entire critique, please visit WRM’s website at http://www.wrm.org.uy/

According to its organizers, the XIII World Forestry Congress (WFC), to be held from 18 – 23 October, in Argentina, “will be the first World Forestry Congress which shall achieve ‘Carbon Neutral’ ranking”. The organizers plan to reach such status through the purchase of “carbon credits” from Nobrecel’s “Forestry-industrial Sector Biomass Energy Project” in Brazil.

The monoculture tree plantation “forests”

Before analysing the validity of the “carbon neutrality” claim, it is important to understand where the “carbon credits” are coming from, because this relates directly to the misleading slogan of the WFC: “Forests in Development: a vital balance”.

In line with a definition that equates plantations with forests, the WFC organizers did not find any problem in making a deal with Nobrecel, a company holding an extensive area of eucalyptus “forest” in Brazil, which feeds its pulp mill in the State of São Paulo.

The “carbon neutral” myth

The idea of “neutralising” fossil fuel emissions is based on the premise that the carbon released from burning fossil fuels can in some way be “neutralised” by other activities such as the Nobrecel project. This is simply not possible.

What needs to be understood is that the carbon released through the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) has not been part of the functioning of the biosphere for millions of years. Once fossil fuels are extracted and burnt, that carbon –which until then had been safely stored underground- is released, thereby increasing the above ground carbon stock. Once released, that carbon cannot be returned to its original storage place and the more it is extracted, the more the total amount of carbon in the biosphere is increased, thus further enhancing the greenhouse effect.

In the case of the WFC, the organizers themselves explain that most of the emissions related to its meeting will come from overseas flights. Carbon neutral flights are perhaps the best way to show that this is a cheating game. Planes do not fly on renewables; they run on oil. Once burnt to enable the planes to fly, the carbon contained in the fuel is released. Nothing can make that carbon return back underground.

Instead of channeling money to a company such as Nobrecel –thus subsidizing its destructive activities- the international forestry sector could show its commitment with our Planet by ceasing to promote monoculture tree plantations. Instead of trying to achieve an impossible “carbon neutrality” it could tackle the much more achievable objective of excluding tree monocrops from the definition of forests.

Global Forest Coalition Letter of Resignation to the World Forestry Congress

Dear Mr. Heino,

When Dr. Miguel Lovera as Chairman of the Global Forest Coalition agreed to join the Advisory Committee of the XIII World Forestry Congress, he did so because he hoped he would have been able, as the only representative of Southern NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations on this committee, to contribute some of the views of our IPO and NGO members to the preparatory process of the Congress. He and his colleague Simone Lovera, who participated on his behalf in the Advisory Committee meeting in March 2009, submitted various proposals to enhance the participation of Indigenous Peoples’ representatives, Southern NGOs and women in the congress. He also proposed to have a greater emphasis on forest restoration in the congress and to ensure the program of the congress reflected a clear distinction between forest restoration and the expansion of monoculture tree plantations, considering the massive opposition of social movements against the latter.

Regretfully, he did not get any response on these suggestions.

As Miguel Lovera started working as advisor to the Paraguayan Minister of the Environment in June 2009 he asked me to substitute him in the Advisory Committee. When I was accepted as his substitute, I asked you and other members of the Advisory Committee about your response to the proposals GFC had submitted, and about ways I could participate effectively in the work of the Advisory Committee in general. On August 12 I received a response from Ines Matyszczyk that my “message of 9 August has been referred to Mr Olman Serrano, Associate Secretary-General of the XIII WFC, who will get in touch with you directly to follow-up on GFC’s proposal”. But we did not get any response from him or anybody else so far.

We have not been consulted at all about speakers, or other elements of the Congress’ programme. Having now reviewed the final program as it is posted on the WFC website, we feel there is a severe lack of participation of Indigenous Peoples and Southern NGOs amongst the main speakers. Except for two keynote speakers from COICA, the coordinating body of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, we recognize hardly any Indigenous peoples’ representatives amongst the speakers.

We feel the program of the congress is very much biased towards industry and government representation and that it lacks representation of Indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. We also feel there is a lack of balance between proponents of carbon offsets and wood-based bioenergy and more critical voices amongst the WFC speakers.

Meanwhile, we have understood that specific requests by our Argentine NGO colleagues to allow more local NGOs and social movements to participate in the congress have been denied as well.

In summary, we feel the WFC Organizers have not taken us seriously as part of the advisory committee. Based on our concerns, I regret to inform you that I decided to resign as a member of the Advisory Committee of this congress.

 

Signed, Andrei Laletin, Global Forest Coalition

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by | 2009-10-22 · 16:02

World Forestry Congress: Forum on Forests and Climate Change (or why REDD is the greatest thing since sliced bread…)

Blog post by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project & North American Focal Point of Global Forest Coalition. Everyday this week she will be posting an update from the World Forestry Congress on this blog

REDD—Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries—is the timber industry’s wet dream.

MST signs 1The MST and Via Campesina rally outside of the World Forestry Congress on Wednesday October 21, to protest against monoculture timber plantations and the destructive impacts they have on communities and forests in Latin America.  They demanded an end to monoculture timber plantations in the region and decried future plans for GE tree plantations.    Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC



Buenos Aires, Argentina- What?  How could something designed ostensibly to reduce emissions from deforestation benefit the timber industry?

The answers to these and other questions were made clear during the 5 hour forum devoted to discussing the role of forests in climate change mitigation on Wednesday, October 21st during the 13th World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires.

It all started at the Rio Earth Summit—those of you out there who are old enough to remember something that occurred in 1992— where the kernels of what was to become REDD first gained traction.  Governments at the Rio Earth Summit agreed that reducing emissions from deforestation would be a very good idea.  Well, heck, who could argue with that?

It wasn’t until the Bali UN Climate Convention in 2007, however, where the concept of reducing emissions from deforestation actually took shape in the form of REDD.

Thanks largely to Al Gore, the instrument for funding REDD is the carbon market. Back when the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement was being negotiated, Al Gore was the person who was singularly responsible for inserting the concept of marketing carbon (i.e. privatizing the atmosphere) into the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement way back in 1997 (which he did by insisting that the U.S. would never sign on without it—so it was added but the U.S. didn’t sign on anyway…) This money-maker has really taken off and in 2005 the carbon market was worth $11 billion.  Oh, but that’s peanuts.  By 2008 the carbon market was worth $125 billion.  Yes, 125 BILLION dollars.  That’s one hell of a bubble!  Of that, just the portion devoted to REDD is projected to be worth some $45 billion in the next few years (according to Tiina Vahenen, of the UN REDD Secretariat).  Though, god bless her, she did worry about whether or not these profits would “trickle down” (yes, she used those words) to the people in the forests.  Hmmm, How did it work with Reaganomics again…

Ms Vahenen perhaps let down her guard a little at the end when she said REDD would be “beneficial for forestry.”  Not beneficial for forests, no.  Beneficial for forestry—i.e. the companies that like to cut down forests to make money.  She concluded by stating unequivocally, “the forestry sector cannot afford to lose this opportunity.”  I guess not!  $45 billion in REDD funds to advance the goals of the forest industry is not something to sneeze at.  Most of these funds will come from Northern country governments–in other words, another publicly funded subsidy for the timber industry.

As with the IUFRO seminar yesterday, the takeaway message from this 5 hour excercize in self-flagellation (for those of in attendance who think that forests are more than just wood) was that the best way to protect forests and stop climate change is to increase the demand for wood.  Naturally.  The way this happens is through a magical little term called “sustainable forest management.”  The wonderful thing about “sustainable forest management” is that you get to count plantations as “forests.”  That means under REDD you can cut down all of the native forest that you want to—as long as you plant a monoculture timber plantation after you’re done.  Then it will not count as “deforestation.”  Like I said, magic!

Because as Gerhard Dieterle, a Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Expert for the World Bank [I know, I know, stop laughing…] explained, it is not the timber industry that is driving deforestation, it is local communities.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself, wait, isn’t deforestation caused by industrial-scale logging, or the expansion of agrofuel crops, or the excessive consumption of paper and wood products in the North?  Nope.  Because of that magical little 3 word term, “sustainable forest management,” the timber industry can deforest all day long and still be only officially responsible for 14% of annual deforestation.  And expansion of soy monocultures and other commercial-scale agriculture is only responsible for 20%.  No, it is actually those nefarious local communities and the poor who are causing deforestation. According to Gerhard, local communities and the poor are responsible for a whopping 48% of annual deforestation.  “Poverty,” he insisted, “is a main global driver of deforestation.”  Wow.

So, how, then does the World Bank propose to address deforestation?  On this point, his answers became rather vague.  Something about using the World Bank’s Forest Investment Program to get Northern governments to invest in the carbon market (which the World Bank manages) so they can throw a lot of money at the problem.

But if we accept the World Bank’s conclusions on the drivers of deforestation, then we would have to also accept that addressing the underlying causes of poverty is the number one way to reduce emissions from deforestation.  But Gerhard didn’t talk much about that.

Perhaps that is because it is the World Bank’s own programs that have driven millions, if not billions, of people into poverty worldwide.  To really address poverty-driven deforestation we would have to eliminate the World Bank and their loan shark programs.  We would also have to abolish unjust free trade agreements that further exploit countries in the South, and we would have to stop the massive land grab that is occurring.  Local peasant and indigenous communities are being violently evicted from their lands for expanding agrofuel plantations (like soy and oil palm) and monoculture timber plantations.   And under REDD, people are even being evicted for “conservation” of forests.  The imperialist model of “conservation” practiced by the likes of Conservation International involves drawing imaginary lines around forests to be “protected,” and then expelling all human inhabitants within those boundaries.

But Gerhard didn’t talk about any of that.  He also didn’t talk about the problem of so-called “indirect impacts,” or what the UN Climate Secretariat calls “leakage,” with regard to saving forest carbon.  When the protection of one area (to store its carbon) merely pushes the destructive practices into another area, there is not net conservation or saving of carbon.  This is called leakage.  And obviously, the refusal to address the underlying causes of deforestation means that the demand for the wood products is not decreasing, which means that “leakage” is inevitable.

But not if you listen to the “experts” at the World Forestry Congress!  They really do have it figured out.   For them the way to address deforestation (by those problematic impoverished people) is to increase the demand for wood while providing support to the timber industry, so that it can employ poor people to work on “sustainable forestry management.”  So simple!  Give the timber industry and land investors lots and lots of money so that some will trickle down to the local communities and get them to stop destroying the forests!  Why didn’t we think of that!

In the “Message From the XIII World Forestry Congress to the COP 15 of the UNFCCC” they lay this out quite clearly in the following points:

• Sustainable management of forests provides an effective framework for forest-based climate change mitigation and adaptation;

• Sustainably harvested forest products and wood fuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by substituting high emission materials for neutral or low emissions, renewable ones.

Yes, Dorothy its true: increasing the demand for wood products by 50% or more is a win-win-win.  The timber industry wins because they get lots more money and access to land; local and indigenous communities win because they get to have jobs working for the timber industry; and the climate wins because cutting down trees and converting forests to plantations helps stop climate change.

Whew!  I guess we can all go home now and relax.  The experts have it all figured out.

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by | 2009-10-21 · 15:03

Missive From Nutlandia

Blog post by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project & North American Focal Point of Global Forest Coalition. Everyday this week she will be posting an update from the World Forestry Congress on this blog.

Buenos Aires, Argentina-I knew, before I came to the World Forestry Congress, that it was largely going to be a trade show for the timber industry and its allies, but knowing that and being in the midst of it have proven to be quite different things.

Tuesday’s exercise in absurdity was a symposium organized by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO-acronym pronounced You-Frew), focused on Emerging Issues in Forest Science.  Unfortunately, the speaker who was to address emerging genetic engineering technologies cancelled at the last minute.  I was very much hoping to hear the future direction of transgenic tree technology from the perspective of You-Frew.

Never-the-less, the other speakers did not disappoint.  The over-arching theme was the conflation of forests and plantations.   Each started his/her presentation (there were six white men and one white woman) by talking about the need to protect forests and the services they provide: clean water, food, energy, shelter, fodder, biodiversity and livelihoods.  They would then shift gears to discuss tree plantations and the emerging challenges they are confronting with regard to various aspects of plantation forestry. What they neglected to mentioned was that tree plantations and forests are, in fact, completely and totally different.  Not only do tree plantations NOT provide clean water, food, shelter or biodiversity, tree plantations actually destroy biodiversity, deplete water and displace communities because the once diverse forest was eliminated to make room for the plantation.

The most schizophrenic presentation, however, was by David Crown, head of IUFRO’s Division 5, which specializes in Forest Products.

He launched into his presentation by pointing out that the IUFRO estimates that the world is losing forests at the rate of 13 million hectares per year, and that population increase and climate change are further increasing pressures on the world’s forests and providing a huge challenge. (They LOVED to talk about challenges!)  He pointed out that soil, water and carbon need to be protected through conservation measures while maintaining traditional uses of the forests and new uses such as bio-energy.

He then moved on to assert that a major goal for the forest products industry is insuring that wood is THE preferred material for construction and manufacture.

So, in other words, we need to conserve forests while simultaneously increasing the demand for wood…

Of course, this is indicative of the fundamental psychosis of industrial forestry proponents: that we must continually expand fast growing timber plantations in order to get more wood from less land and thereby protect native forests. On its surface, there may appear to be a logic behind the notion that we can protect forests by concentrating the harvesting of wood products on high-productivity plantations. However, the reality does not match the rhetoric.  The massively growing demand for wood–predicted by the IUFRO to be an increase of 50% within the century–cannot be met sustainably.  The rising rate of illegal and legal logging in forests, the loss of agricultural lands to expanding tree plantations, and the conversion of biodiverse native grasslands and forests to timber plantations, are just a few of the impacts in which this rising demand for wood will result.

There was not one–Not ONE–mention in any of the presentations about demand reduction for forest protection.

Michael Wingfield, who Coordinates the Forest Health Division at IUFRO (Division 7) was the only one of the IUFRO speakers who made any distinction between tree plantations and forests. He pointed out that plantations were having a negative impact on forests due to the fact that plantations were highly susceptible to disease and insect infestations, though this seemed to mystify him when he stated, “we don’t really know what’s going on.”  It was this tendency of plantations to succumb to ever worsening disease and insect infestations that led him to conclude that all plantations in the future would be comprised of GM trees.

Of course, first year ecology students know that monocultures–that is, large expanses of a single species of plant–are, by their very nature, ideal targets for insects, disease, fungal infestations, etc.  Ironically, the industrial forestry response to this reality, and the spreading epidemics in monoculture timber plantations, is not to restore biodiverse native forests that are naturally resilient, nor to suggest that maybe shipping forest products and their exotic pests around the planet should be discouraged, but rather to further the reductionist approach and create vast monocultures of many thousands of clones derived from a single individual tree that has been engineered for a particular profitable trait.

Toward the end of the session, I was called on to ask a question.   I asked Mr. Wingfield what he was doing to respond to the threats that GE tree plantations pose to native forests.  I gave the example of the Bt insect resistant poplar plantations in China that have been documented as contaminating native poplars with the Bt trait. I further suggested this would have a very negative impact on the forest ecosystem, especially species of songbirds that depend on the insect targeted by the Bt as a critical source of food.

Unfortunately, the moderator intervened saying the session had run out of time and it suddenly ended before my question was answered.

Undeterred, I approached Mr. Wingfield following the end of the session.  He answered me by saying, “well.  I’m pro-GMO.”  He made some vague reference to the “successes” of GMO food as the reason for his Franken-tree ferver. (He apparently missed the studies that have come out recently debunking the industry hype about the increased yield of GE crops.)  He did agree, however, that native species of GE trees that could pollinate should not be used.  His opinion was that only non-native GE trees should be used or trees that could not pollinate.  I chose not to argue ecology with him, or to point out that even tree engineers overwhelmingly have concerns about “contamination of non-target organisms” by GE trees, and will not give 100% guarantees that their trees will maintain their sterility permanently.  Or to point out that non-native plantations of eucalyptus, for example, have been a total ecological disaster because they cannot support biodiversity or social needs.

No, I could not bring myself to argue with someone so entrenched in his delusion that GMO tree plantations were the way of the future in the face of all evidence to the contrary.  And that has been the take-away lesson of the World Forestry Congress so far: that timber industry proponents have an amazing ability to rationalize and justify their socially and ecologically destructive paradigm that promotes incessantly growing demand for wood products met through the industrialization of trees–and all under the auspices of protecting forests.

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by | 2009-10-20 · 14:52

The Festival of the People Who Live With the Forest (Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques)

Blog post by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project & North American Focal Point of Global Forest Coalition. Everyday this week she will be posting an update from the World Forestry Congress on this blog.

Mapuche elders perform a ceremony at the opening of the Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC

Mapuche elders perform a ceremony at the opening of the Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC

Buenos Aires-Campesinos, Indigenous and rural peoples, small farmers and organizational representatives from throughout Latin America came together in Buenos Aires, Argentina from the 16th to the 18th of October for the “Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques.” The festival was organized by Friends of the Earth Argentina, Via Campesina and others to discuss advancing the Latin America movement against monoculture expansion, one of the greatest threats to people who depend on the forest.

The three days of the festival coincided with the day for food sovereignty on October 16th and the World Forestry Congress (called by critics the World Plantations Congress), which started on October 18th.

The coincidental timing of the day for food sovereignty and the WFC allowed for the development of collaborative work between the food sovereignty movement, which is fighting soy monocultures, the forest protection movement, which is fighting the expansion of timber monocultures, with Indigenous and other communities that rely on intact forest ecosystems.

The expansion of both soy and timber monocultures in Latin America, especially Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile, has resulted in the displacement of Indigenous and forest-dependent communities and the wholesale destruction of forests and their biodiversity.  Monoculture expansion has also resulted in the takeover of agricultural lands, with results including escalating poverty and food insecurity.  In Chile, the loss of Mapuche agricultural lands to timber plantations has led to poverty rates over 60% in Mapuche communities.

The linking of the food sovereignty movement, the anti-plantations movement and indigenous peoples, therefore, is a natural alliance.

The participants in the Festival concluded the three days of events and workshops with a rally and march against the Thirteenth World Forestry Congress, which takes place every six years.

The World Forestry Congress is a gathering of some of the largest actors in the forestry sector (including organizations like the World Bank and World Wildlife Fund) the overall theme of which is the justification of the industrial forestry model and the exploration of new avenues for profit-making from forests–including such topics as bioenergy from wood, and putting forests into the carbon market–both of which are major themes at this year’s World Forestry Congress.

Stay tuned for more updates from this forest trade show on this blog throughout the week.

Participants in the 'Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques' march against the World Forestry [Plantations] Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to denounce the ecological and social destruction occurring throughout Latin America due to the expansion of monoculture timber plantations, which the timber industry wrongly refers to as "planted forests." Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC

Participants in the ‘Festival de las Pueblas Que Viven Con los Bosques’ march against the World Forestry [Plantations] Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to denounce the ecological and social destruction occurring throughout Latin America due to the expansion of monoculture timber plantations, which the timber industry wrongly refers to as “planted forests.” Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC

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