Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a gathering of the Avoided Deforestation Partners. It was a most diverse and unlikely group of supporters of the bill including Sir Richard Branson, Robert Zoellick president of the World Bank, Hon. Jens Stoltenberg Prime Minister of Norway, Jane Goodall, several heads of state and representatives from Duke Energy, American Electric Power, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and NRD. Strange bedfellows all in support of REDD.
As I said in my last blog post I have major concerns with this bill, but after yesterday I saw that it may be the only thing that comes out of COP 15. After all 17% of the CO2 could be eliminated from the atmosphere by keeping the roughly 47 trillion acres a year that is currently being destroyed. The idea is making the value of the carbon capture of the trees in the ground worth more than cutting the trees down for farming and timber harvest. Many poor farmers in tropical rainforest zones could benefit from an agreement due to the low income they currently receive from ‘slash and burn’ agricultural practices. REDD payments to keep the forests standing would therefore represent an improvement in their income.
But, many of the safeguards intended to protect indigenous people and the world from greed and mischief have been removed for the current bill in an effort to get it through. I know in the states it is being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, but I still have concerns. When you tie in something like this to the carbon trade market you open the door to the kind of phantom wealth creation that led to the downfall of Wall Street. One of the key issues is the loss of diversity in these areas and the bill is open to supporting the planting of moncultures and biofuel production that could be used for carbon credits. The monitoring system by Google earth could be used to monitor people (of course Big Brother can already do this), and it deepens the possibility of invasion of privacy or halting public dissention. It also makes no consideration about the planting of GMO crops, which continue to have many unresolved and potentially catastrophic consequences. These are just a few of my concerns and yet, it may well be the only outcome that makes a real difference at this conference. Hopefully the people’s movement will be able to put the safeguards back into the process.