By Chris Lang
Back in 2018, REDD-Monitor wrote about the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD project in Peru. The focus of the article was the fact that people buying Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in London could opt to offset the emissions from the ice cream buy paying for carbon offsets from Cordillera Azul. Thanks to the Poseidon Foundation, which was set up by a German investment banker called László Giricz, blockchain technology would ensure that the transaction took place in just 3 seconds.
Predictably enough though, ice cream sales generated a fairly trivial amount of carbon offset sales from the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD project. Way, way more important were sales to Big Polluters. Like oil and mining companies.
A recent statement from organisations of the Kichwa people in the San Martin region of Peru reveals that the Poseidon Foundation was the sixth largest buyer of offsets from Cordillera Azul, having bought 200,000 carbon offsets between December 2013 and January 2021.
The two largest buyers were the oil companies Shell and Total with purchases of more than 27 million carbon offsets between them. That’s about 87% of all the carbon offsets sold from the project.
In July 2022, Peru’s Minister of Environment Gabriel Quijandría announced the largest ever sale of carbon offsets from Peru. The Kichwa organisations state that between 2021 and 2028 Total NBS will buy 16,880,000 carbon offsets from Cordillera Azul, for a total of US$84.74 million.
It could not be clearer. Oil companies love REDD, natural climate solutions, and carbon offsetting schemes in general, because offsetting scheme allow Big Polluters to give the impression of doing something to address the climate crisis, while continuing business as usual. That means drilling more oil and exacerbating the climate crisis.
The statement, from the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA), the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of Chazuta (FEPIKECHA) and the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of the Lower Huallaga of the San Martin Region (FEPIKBHSAM), organisations of the Kichwa people in the San Martin region of Peru, is in response to the following two items:
- an evaluation report issued by the IUCN’s Peru expert group (EAGL), after the Kichwa presented an alert to the IUCN in June 2021 concerning violations of their territorial rights by the Cordillera Azul National Park, demanding that the Park be removed from the IUCN’s Green List of Protected Areas.
- information concerning carbon trades relating to the PNCAZ and the REDD+ Project of the same name obtained from the Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales (CIMA) through access to information requests and a subsequent court order issued to CIMA by the Court of Transparency and Access to Public Information on 29 April 2022.
In June 2021, the Kichwa communities wrote to the IUCN pointing out that the Cordillera Azul National Park “had clear violations of our collective rights . . . such as ownership over our ancestral territory, the management of the territory that includes access to natural resources that are part of our traditional practices necessary for subsistence, and the benefits of its conservation activities.”
On 8 May 2022, the president of IUCN’s Peru expert group, Cristina Lopez Wong, replied to the Kichwa communities acknowledging that the the National Park must implement an action plan to improve transparency and accountability, the development of intercultural stategies for the dissemination of rules of use of the protected areas, and the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples throughout the process of updating the Cordillera Azul National Park master plan. But the National Park remained on IUCN’s Green List.
Here is the full statement from the Kichwa communities (also available in Spanish):
The Kichwa people reject the Cordillera Azul National Park’s exclusionary conservation and opaque carbon trading
Long live the Kichwa people and their territories in the San Martin region!
As the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA), the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of Chazuta (FEPIKECHA) and the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of the Lower Huallaga of the San Martin Region (FEPIKBHSAM), the bases of the Coordinating Committee for the Defence and Development of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM) of Peru, we reject the exclusionary conservation model and carbon trading on our ancestral territories, affecting our fundamental rights:
To the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
- We reject the inclusion of the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) in its Green List Programme in 2018, as an example of conservation for the world. Its creation and management do not respect our rights and affect the IUCN’s objectives of rewarding good governance.
- In June 2021 we alerted the IUCN. It took 11 months for them to respond with half-truths, ignoring our specific request: to remove the PNCAZ from their Green List. Do they recognise our collective rights to territory and prior consultation with consent? Do we participate fully and effectively in the management of the PNCAZ?
- We reject the fact that the group of experts (EAGL-Peru) that evaluated our alert never communicated with our organisations, but did communicate with those who violate our rights such as the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (SERNANP) and the Centre for Conservation, Research and Management of Natural Areas (CIMA), repeating the same mistake when evaluating the incorporation of the PNCAZ to the Green List in the first place.
- There was never any accountability for the 30,778,542 carbon credits traded between 2008 – 2022, or benefit sharing for the US$30,470,012.70 cancelled to date, of the total US$80,546,251.01 traded. Does IUCN believe in its lukewarm recommendation to improve transparency, participation, and accountability with an intercultural approach? 11 months only to “recommend” incorporating communities in the governance mechanism of the REDD+ project?
- Does the IUCN know that CIMA was coming to the communities with crumbs of the carbon sold without our knowledge? They never consulted us on the REDD+ project, nor on how to distribute the benefits.
- We regret that neither the General Directorate of Climate Change and Desertification of the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), nor SERNANP, nor CIMA, provided full public information on the PNCAZ carbon deal that we requested at the beginning of this year. Regarding the sale to the French company Total Nature Based Solutions (Total NBS), we were told “the information requested is not available“, “it is not on file” or “it is a private institution“, in order to block our access to this information. The biggest sale of carbon in the history of Peru and nobody wanted to give us the receipt. We had to go to the Court of Transparency and Access to Information so that they could order CIMA to provide the information.
- We reject that the IUCN seeks to “impartially” recommend a Park that violates our rights when they themselves bought 10,172 carbon credits in 2014.
To the Peruvian State
- It is unacceptable that millions of dollars are coming in for the PNCAZ REDD+ Project and there is no official carbon counting system or “official” list of buyers. Who is supervising this? Is the General Directorate of Climate Change and Desertification of MINAM involved? What do the Regional Government of San Martin (GORESAM) and local governments know?
- No to the exclusion of the Kichwa people from the PNCAZ Management Committee: 20 years of the Park and only in 2021 was a Kichwa community (Puerto Franco) invited to participate.
- We reject that MINAM and SERNANP continue to deny our right to prior consultation and participation in the distribution of the benefits of the REDD+ Project, saying that there are no communities within the PNCAZ. There are at least 29 Kichwa communities with territories which coincide with the area under management. Where are our purmas (forest fallows), collpas (watering holes), purinas (hunting trails), ancient paths and water springs? The Park’s forests DID NOT appear out of nowhere; their conservation is the product of our relationship with them, the care, protection, management, control and vigilance that we have been carrying out for centuries based on our traditional knowledge.
- It is unacceptable that SERNANP and CIMA respond that only US $80,546,251.01 dollars have been commercialised to date. Where are the US $84.7 million dollars from the contract with Total NBS? In 2021, the former Minister of Environment Quijandría said “We have completed the largest sale of carbon credits in the history of Peru for 87 million dollars in the PNCAZ”. Is that the transparency and accountability of the Park?
To national and international buyers of carbon credits from the PNCAZ
- As we make public your participation in this carbon trading, we ask what safeguards do you demand from CIMA and SERNANP in order not to violate our territorial rights and full and effective participation in the decisions around our forests?
- No to the false climate solutions offered as “Nature Based Solutions” and “carbon neutrality” by oil and mining companies that pollute in other regions of the world, such as Shell, Total, BHP, and others, who buy carbon from the PNCAZ.
- No to the obscure role of carbon trading intermediaries such as Stand for Trees, which hide and camouflage the final buyers with little transparency.
- We reject that Total NBS and CIMA have traded 16,880,000 carbon credits between 2021 and 2028 for a total of US $84.74 million dollars. Total NBS seeks to clean up its image and CIMA and SERNANP the financial stability of a Park that violates our rights. Where does this leave the Kichwa communities? Does Total NBS know that CIMA is in breach of its contractual obligation 7.1 to respect Indigenous rights?
- We reject that of the total carbon sale to Total NBS, $72.74 million dollars will be used for a “financial mechanism” designed by a working group led by CIMA to finance the PNCAZ in perpetuity. In Peru, the solution to climate change should not be to go easy on polluting activities, but to recognise our fundamental rights as it is we the Kichwa who have been taking care of these forests for centuries.
Stop this carbon dealing with our territories and start by recognising our territorial rights and valuing our conservation actions and ancestral forest-friendly practices!
Buyer during the period Dec 2013 – Jan 2021 Credits Sold Shell 14,228,945 Total Nature Based Solutions 12,800,000 BHP 1,000,000 Procter & Gamble 1,000,000 Delta 325,000 Poseidon 200,000 Chilote Shoes 150,211 Bank of America 100,000 Arbor Day 60,000 TEM 45,098 Offsetting Pan American Games Lima 2019 40,000 Tasman Environmental Markets 40,000 Zero Mission AB 39,500 TBC 30,482 Eneco 20,000 E+ small sales 15,309 CBL Exchange 12,739 Donation Ministry of the Environment of Peru 11,500 Scotia Bank 11,000 IUCN 10,172 CBL Client (Delta) 10,000 Open Plaza (C.C. Pucallpa) 8,000 Peru small sales 7,895 Vertis clients 3,671 Offsets for CBL client 4 2,863 Nisolo 2,058 Stand for Trees 2,015 A2G 1,648 CBL Client (OTC) 1,500 Asociación de Bananeros Orgánicos Solidarios (BOS) E 1,260 Cuesta clients 1,037 Others with less than 1,000 credits bought 9,717.8 30,191,621 NOTE: SERNANP in LETTER Nº 014 – 2022-SERNANP-AIP, dated 14/02/2022 replied that since the beginning of the project in 2008 until 2022, 30,778,542 carbon credits have been traded (national and international markets). SERNANP and CIMA (with Letter Nº 018-2022-CIMA/DE/GVC of 09/05/2022) confirm that carbon credits have been traded for a value of US$ 80,546,251.01, of which US$ 30,470,012.70 have been cancelled. The outstanding funds will be cancelled during the years 2022 and 2023.
UPDATE – 26 June 2022: László Giricz is German, not Swiss. Thanks to the blog Heidis Mist for pointing this out.
I added the two sentences about the US$84.7 million offset deal between Total and Cordillera Azul from 2021 to 2028 in the introduction (fifth paragraph) to the Kichwa statement.