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A response from Terra Global Capital about the Oddar Meanchey REDD project in Cambodia

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the Oddar Meanchey REDD project in Cambodia, based in part on a report in the Cambodia Daily about the Cambodian army bulldozing villagers’ community forests to make way for army outposts on the Thai-Cambodian border.

The post ended with a series of questions, for Pact Cambodia (the NGO that was running the project until its funding ran out in July 2013), Terra Global Capital (the US-based company that is trying to sell carbon credits from the project), and Microsoft (the US-based software multinational that announced in April 2013 it was “investing in” the Oddar Meanchey project, but so far appears not to have handed over any money).

This morning I received a response from Leslie Durschinger, Founder and Managing Director of Terra Global Capital. I asked Durschinger two questions:

  1. How can you sell carbon credits from a project where the Cambodian army is destroying the forest?

  2. How do you address leakage – the fact that deforestation in the province of Oddar Meanchey is continuing, outside the REDD project in community forest areas?

Here’s Durschinger’s response in full. So much for the transparency of the carbon market.

From: Leslie Durschinger
Date: 28 January 2014 02:41
Subject: RE: Oddar Meanchey REDD project
To: Chris Lang
 
Chris
 
Thank you for your inquiry about Oddar Meanchey. We are familiar with your website and your writing. However, I find your request for information to be more your preformulated answers than questions. And we do not believe your formulation of the answers is correct.
 
We choose to engage with writers to ask questions to seek information, rather than to setup inquiries to confirm or refute predetermined conclusions.
 
Thank you.
 
Leslie
 
Leslie L. Durschinger
Founder, Managing Director
Terra Global
One Ferry Building, Suite 255
San Francisco, CA 94111
 

 

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  1. It is obvious that Terra Global is an irresponsible company who doesn’t care about the social impact of its business conducts as long as it makes money. If I were their investors I will stop buying credits or even being associated with them until they answered the totally legit questions.