Skip to content
Menu
REDD-Monitor
  • Start here
  • About REDD-Monitor
  • REDD: An introduction
  • Contact
REDD-Monitor

Kevin Conrad, Federica Bietta, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, and an application to register “REDD+” as a trademark

Posted on 9 November 201720 August 2019
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

Kevin Conrad is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. He’s currently in Bonn at COP23, the United Nations climate conference, as part of the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In May 2017, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations Secretariat put in an application to register “REDD+” as a trademark in the USA.

In February 2017, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations Secretariat applied to register “RRU” and “REDDPLUSX”.

This is a strange story. We’ll take it in stages, starting with Kevin Conrad.

Kevin Conrad

If you’ve never heard of Kevin Conrad, REDD-Monitor posted a profile of him here (part of the REDDheads series).

Conrad grew up in Papua New Guinea, the son of US missionaries. He managed to convince Papua New Guinea’s prime minister Michael Somare that the country could get more money from selling carbon credits if it kept its forests standing, than if it continued logging them.

In 2004, Conrad set up the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. It was more of a twosome than a coalition: Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica. In 2005, at COP11, in Montreal, the two countries presented an 11-page proposal to the UNFCCC: “Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries: approaches to stimulate action”.

From 2005 to 2014, Kevin Conrad was part of the Papua New Guinea delegation to UN climate change meetings, as the country’s climate change ambassador.

Then Conrad became Panama’s special envoy for climate change and development. And now he’s joined the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Coalition for Rainforest Nations

The Coalition for Rainforest Nations has grown from two countries in 2004, to having 52 member countries today.

On its website, CfRN explains that,

The Rainforest Coalition is an Intergovernmental Organization with a Secretariat in New York City. It operates as a forum to facilitate consensus among participating countries on issues related to domestic and international frameworks for rainforest management, biodiversity conservation and climate stability.

The address given on the CfRN website is 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, 14th Floor, New York, NY 10017. But the Secretariat is actually registered as a non-profit corporation in Washington DC, with a branch on the 43rd floor of the New York Times building in New York.

The director of the Washington DC CfRN Secretariat is Federica Bietta. She was part of the Papua New Guinea delegation with Kevin Conrad. She’s now part of the DRC delegation. Both Conrad and Bietta have an MBA from Columbia University.

Here they are in action as part of the PNG delegation:

Conrad and Bietta are the only people who receive a salary from the Coalition for Rainforest Nations Secretariat.

According to the company’s 2015 tax exemption filing, Conrad received US$213,444 from CfRN, plus US$63,388 from related organisations. Bietta received US$154,327 from CfRN, and US$38,247 from related organisations.

The other (unpaid) directors are Cristobal Sequeira, Geoffrey Heal, Ruben Kraiem, Andrew Bishop, Mark Grundy, Thomas Negints.

Conrad is director of five other companies, that give as their address 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, suite 1401: Triple C Estates, LLC; Catalytic Fund, LLC; Conrad Estates, LLC; Italia Foodie, LLC; and Excantia Wines, Inc.

Another company (now inactive) registered at this address, Brookcliffe Farms Inc, was incorporated by Cheyenne Moseley in Washington DC, with a branch in New York. Susan Teisl was the director.

Another company (now inactive), Franciacorta US Corp is registered New York at a different address. The directors of Florida branch are Conrad and Bietta.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Conrad is a managing partner of a company called Verde Health.

The trademarks

According to Mark Trademan of the the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Information Network,

A trademark is generally a word, phrase, slogan, symbol, or design, or combination thereof, that identifies the source of your goods and services and distinguishes them from the goods and services of another party. That is, a trademark lets consumers know that the goods or services come only from you and not from someone else.

It’s a brand, in other words. So, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations Secretariat is trying to register “REDD+” as its brand.

The USPTO rejected the application, for two reasons:

  • “Registration is refused because the applied-for mark merely describes the subject matter of applicant’s services.”
  • “Registration is refused because the applied-for mark, as used on the specimen of record, does not function as a service mark to identify and distinguish applicant’s services from those of others and to indicate the source of applicant’s services.”

(The other two applications, “RRU” and “REDDPLUSX”, were approved subject to the CfRN Secretariat submitting a “Statement of Use” within six months – a statement about how the mark has been used commercially.)

This attempt to register “REDD+” as a trademark raises a few obvious questions:

  1. What on earth was Kevin Conrad thinking?
  2. Who knew about this trademark application, before it took place?
  3. Did the 52 member countries of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations know that the organisation’s Secretariat was planning to register “REDD+” as a trademark?
  4. Did all the directors of the CfRN Secretariat know about the trademark applications?
  5. Did the chair of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, know about the application for trademarks? Mpanu-Mpanu is the director of the Sustainable Development Department in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development. He’s also lead negotiator of the DRC delegation to COP23.
  6. If the members of the Coalition did not know that the Secretariat had applied to register “REDD+”, “RRU”, and “REDDPLUSX”, where exactly did the Secretariat get its mandate from?

REDD-Monitor has asked Kevin Conrad for his response to this article, and I look forward to posting his reply when it arrives.
 


UPDATE – 9 November 2017: Kevin Conrad’s response is available here.


 

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE!

Enter your email address to receive notification of new posts.

Recent themes
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

REDDisms

“In the quarter of a century since the first IPCC report we have achieved nothing of any significant merit relative to the scale of the climate challenge. All we have to show for our ongoing oratory is a burgeoning industry of bureaucrats, well meaning NGOs, academics and naysayers who collectively have overseen a 60+% rise in global emissions.”

— Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, October 2014

Recent Posts

  • Graeme Biggar, Director-General of the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre: “There is not a sufficient deterrent for fraudsters and there is insufficient recourse for victims”
  • Coronavirus notes #7: How the Colombian government is rolling back social and environment safeguards during the pandemic
  • Peru cancels its World Bank FCPF Carbon Fund programme
  • The World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility’s latest hot air scam: Retroactive credits
  • Some questions for Frithjof Finkbeiner, founder of Plant-for-the-Planet

Recent Comments

  • Arthur Charles Claxton on Graeme Biggar, Director-General of the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre: “There is not a sufficient deterrent for fraudsters and there is insufficient recourse for victims”
  • Chris Lang on Blackmore Bond collapse: Financial Conduct Authority is “responsible for every penny lost”
  • Sam on Blackmore Bond collapse: Financial Conduct Authority is “responsible for every penny lost”
  • barrywarden on Coronavirus notes #7: How the Colombian government is rolling back social and environment safeguards during the pandemic
  • Chris Lang on Why has the Financial Conduct Authority not taken down the website of the clone scam “Good Investment Advisors”?

Issues and Organisations

AB 32 Boiler rooms Bonn California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Deforestation FCPF FERN Financing REDD Forest definition Fossil fuels FPP Friends of the Earth FSC Greenpeace Guest post ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations Poznan R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer Sustainable Forest Management The Nature Conservancy Ulu Masen UN-REDD UNFCCC World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Germany Guatemala Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Laos Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Republic of Congo Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam West Papua
©2021 REDD-Monitor | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!