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

Arundhati Roy on what’s wrong with REDD: “Once again, the Global North, the creators of the problem, will see to it that they profit from the solution that they propose”

Posted on 28 December 202028 December 2020

By Chris Lang

Arundhati Roy is one of my favourite writers. Over Christmas, I’ve been reading her book Azadi. The book is a series of essays about Hindu nationalism, India’s occupation of Kashmir, and the coronavirus pandemic. As far as I’m aware, she hasn’t (yet) written specifically about carbon markets or REDD. But in a chapter in Azadi titled “The Language of Literature” she explains perfectly what’s wrong with REDD.

The chapter is a lecture she gave at the PEN America World Voices Festival in 2019. You can listen to the full talk here:

And here’s the part where she explains what’s wrong with REDD and why it is a dangerous distraction from addressing both the climate crisis and the crisis of deforestation. REDD is not a mechanism to stop the corporations that are developing mining and infrastructure projects that are displacing tens of thousands from their lands and homes. Yet in country after country after country REDD projects have impacted the livelihoods of some of the poorest people in the world.

The Language of Literature

By Arundhati Roy, a lecture at the PEN America World Voices Festival, 12 May 2019.

[ . . . ]

A few years ago, I was in a railway station, reading the papers while I waited for my train. On an inside page, I spotted a small news report about two men who had been arrested and charged with being couriers for the banned, underground Communist Party of India (Maoist). Among the “items” recovered from the men, the report said, were “some books by Arundhati Roy.” Not long after that, I met a college lecturer who spent much of her time organizing legal defence for jailed activists, many of them young students and villagers in prison for “anti-national activities”. For the most part this meant protesting corporate mining and infrastructure projects that were displacing tens of thousands from their lands and homes. She told me that in several of the prisoners’ “confessions” – usually extracted under coercion – my writing often merited a reference as a factor that led them down what the police call “the wrong path.”

“They’re laying a trail – building a case against you,” she said.

The books in question were not my novels (at that point I had written only one – The God of Small Things). These were books of nonfiction – although in a sense they were stories, too, different kinds of stories, but stories nevertheless. Stories about the massive corporate attack on forests, rivers, crops, seeds, on land, on farmers, labour laws, on policy making itself. And yes, on the post 9/11 US and Nato attacks on country after country. Most were stories about people who have fought against these attacks – specific stories, about specific rivers, specific mountains, specific corporations, specific peoples’ movements, all of them being specifically crushed in specific ways. These were the real climate warriors, local people with a global message, who had understood the crisis before it was recognized as one. And yet, they were consistently portrayed as villains — the anti-national impediments to progress and development. The former Prime Minister of India, a free-market evangelist, called the guerrillas, mostly indigenous people, adivasis, fighting corporate mining projects in the forests of central India the “Single Largest Internal Security Challenge”. A war called “Operation Green Hunt” was declared on them. The forests were flooded with soldiers whose enemies were the poorest people in the world. It’s been no different elsewhere – in Africa, Australia, Latin America.

And now, irony of ironies, a consensus is building that climate change is the world’s single largest security challenge. Increasingly the vocabulary around it is being militarized. And no doubt very soon its victims will become the “enemies” in the new war without end. Calls for a climate “emergency”, although well meaning, could hasten the process that has already begun. The pressure is already on to move the debate from the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to the United Nations Security Council, in other words, to exclude most of the world and place decision making straight back into the den of the same old suspects. Once again, the Global North, the creators of the problem, will see to it that they profit from the solution that they propose. A solution whose genius will, no doubt, lie deep in the heart of the “market” and involve more selling and buying, more consuming, and more profiteering by fewer and fewer people. In other words, more capitalism.

[ . . . ]

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

SUBSCRIBE!

Recent themes
30x30
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

Recent Comments

  • Ben on Response from Kurt Kaiser, Director of Compass Carbon: “Your article was of great concern to us”. And some questions for Kaiser from REDD-Monitor
  • James Mewa Kamaya on Papua New Guinea’s Forest Authority cancels Mayur Resources’ Kamula Doso REDD project
  • Benedikt von Butler on Switzerland’s offsetting deal with Peru excludes REDD. It will still not reduce emissions
  • Chris Ibe on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow
  • Xindia on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow

Recent Posts

  • REDD-Monitor is moving to Substack
  • REDD Project in Brazil Nut concessions in Madre de Dios, Peru finally started paying communities a decade after the project started. “I’m still lacking money,” says one community member
  • REDD-Monitor’s top ten posts in 2022
  • The harsh reality of 30×30: The EU is keen to allow extractivism in the 30×30 target – but not Indigenous Peoples’ territories
  • Human rights abuses against Indigenous Peoples and the proposed “30×30” target

Recent Comments

  • Ben on Response from Kurt Kaiser, Director of Compass Carbon: “Your article was of great concern to us”. And some questions for Kaiser from REDD-Monitor
  • James Mewa Kamaya on Papua New Guinea’s Forest Authority cancels Mayur Resources’ Kamula Doso REDD project
  • Benedikt von Butler on Switzerland’s offsetting deal with Peru excludes REDD. It will still not reduce emissions
  • Chris Ibe on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow
  • Xindia on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow

Issues and Organisations

30x30 AB 32 Andes Amazon Boiler rooms California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Cryptocurrency Deforestation EcoPlanet Bamboo Evictions FCPF Financing REDD Fossil fuels FSC Green Climate Fund Greenpeace Guest post Human rights ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer The Nature Conservancy UN-REDD UNFCCC Verra World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region Costa Rica DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Gabon Germany Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Netherlands Nicaragua Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Republic of Congo Sierra Leone Spain Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA West Papua
©2025 REDD-Monitor | Powered by SuperbThemes!