“The REDD+ readiness phase leading up to implementation has been slow and has fallen short of expectations.”
Recent academic review describes REDD readiness in Indonesia as a “failure”
REDD in the news: 4-10 February 2019
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Is carbon credit scammer Sami Raja in prison in the UK, or still scamming in Dubai? Or both?
Two weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote about a con artist called Sami Raja. On 18 January 2019, Sami Raja was sentenced to eight years in prison at Southwark Crown Court.
REDD funded by the oil industry cannot be “sustainable development”. Norwegian oil company Equinor continues its climate masquerade
As climate breakdown gets worse, the corporations most responsible are looking for ways to continue profiting from ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Norway’s oil company Equinor is a classic example of this. The company plans to continue drilling oil – including in the Arctic – while investing in “natural climate solutions” to offset its emissions.
REDD in the news: 28 January – 3 February 2019
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Climate breakdown: Forests and soils are reaching the limit of CO2 absorption
Every year, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. The CO2 concentration currently stands at 411.36 parts per million. In 2019, the UK Met Office predicts that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere will be larger than in 2018. The increase in 2019 is likely to be one of the largest in 62 years of measurements.
Companies won’t meet the New York Declaration or the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 deforestation targets. The Nature Conservancy tells us “that’s okay” and TFA says “let’s not dwell on it”
In September 2014, more than 50 companies signed on to the New York Declaration on Forests. The declaration has a target to “At least halve the rate of loss of natural forests globally by 2020 and strive to end natural forest loss by 2030.”
REDD in the news: 21-27 January 2019
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Can REDD save the rainforests of Papua and West Papua? (Part 2)
Earlier this week, REDD-Monitor wrote about a 2,800 square kilometre oil palm plantation that threatens a huge area of forest in the district of Boven Digoel in the east of Papua Province. REDD proponents are silent on how REDD could stop this destruction and to prevent the setting off of a deforestation carbon bomb.
Carbon credit scammer Sami Raja sentenced to eight years in prison
On 18 January 2019, Sami Raja was sentenced to eight years in prison at Southwark Crown Court. He was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering. Four other men were sentenced in September 2018. Between January 2012 and August 2013, they miss-sold carbon credits to retail investors through two companies, Harman Royce Ltd and Kendrick Zale Ltd.
Can REDD save the rainforests of Papua and West Papua? (Part 1)
In April 2007, the governors of Aceh, Papua and West Papua held a summit in Bali, backed by the World Bank. They offered to stop deforestation in return for international carbon financing. Dorjee Sun’s company Carbon Conservation was going to trade the carbon credits.
REDD in the news: 14-20 January 2019
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
The lost REDD decade. Highlighted by counterfactual baseline nonsense in the Democratic Republic of Congo
“The technology is well known and has been available for thousands of years. Everybody knows how not to cut down a tree.” That spectacularly naive comment came from Norway’s then-prime minister Jens Stoltenberg in December 2007 at the launch of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI).
REDD in the news: 7-13 January 2019
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Oil, climate change, and Patricia Espinosa’s short memory
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, was in Weimar, Germany this week. In her first speech since COP 24, she said that the UN climate meeting in Katowice reached an “extremely successful outcome”. Of course Espinosa doesn’t mean that the meeting was successful in addressing climate change. She just means that it was successful in continuing the never-ending farce of the UN climate negotiations.