There are 168 posts filed in Norway (this is page 1 of 12).
In 2009, Norway launched Guyana’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme. Back then, it was an amibitious US$250 million scheme. Ten years later Guyana’s REDD has been almost completely abandoned.
Continue reading
At a meeting on 22 September 2019 in New York, Lee White, who was recently appointed Forestry Minister in Gabon, announced a new US$150 million REDD deal with the Central African Forest Initiative. The meeting marked the fifth anniversary of the New York Declaration on Forests. The money will come, surprise, surprise, from Norway.
Last week, the President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, flew to Paris in a hired Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the most luxurious planes in the world. Le Figaro estimates that a one-way flight from Brazzaville to Paris would cost about US$500,000. Needless to say, Sassou Nguesso’s wife, Antoinette, travelled with him.
Two weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote about a new report by the Oakland Institute. The report is the third by the Oakland Institute about a Norwegian company called Green Resources, and the destructive impacts of its monoculture tree plantations on local communities in Uganda.
The Oakland Institute has released a new report about the impact of Green Resources’ plantations in Uganda on local communities: “Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden and Finland displace Ugandan farmers for carbon traders”. The report is the Oakland Institute’s third about Green Resources, exposing the destructive impact the company’s plantations have had on local communities.
So far this year, more than 72,000 forest fires have started (or been set by cattle ranchers) in Brazil’s rain forest. That’s an 80% increase over the same period last year. But the amount of CO2 emitted from the fires is lower than in 2010 and significantly lower than in the early 2000s.
Continue reading
Norway and Brazil are currently negotiating the future of the Climate and Forest Agreement between the two countries. In a press statement, the Norwegian government claims that, “From Norway’s point of view, the Amazon Fund has worked well until now.”
In 2009, the Jane Goodall Institute received US$2.76 million from the Norwegian Embassy in Tanzania. The money was to run a REDD project in the Masito Ugalla Ecosystem. Under the REDD project, farmers were violently evicted. The farmers received no compensation, and have had no help since the evictions.
On 16 February 2019 in Jakarta, Norway’s Minister of Climate and Environment, Ola Elvestuen, and Indonesia’s Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, announced that Norway is planning to make a payment for reduced emissions from deforestation to Indonesia.
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.
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.
Norway is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter. As a result, Norway is a very rich country. At the same time, Norway cares about addressing climate change. Or, to be more honest, it wants to appear on the world stage as caring about climate change.
Eleven years ago, almost to the day, the government of Norway put out a press release: “Norway is prepared to increase its support for efforts to prevent deforestation in developing countries to about three billion kroner a year.” That’s about US$550 million per year.
REDD-Monitor’s occasional series, Carbonballs features the climate howlers made by so-called environmental leaders. Today’s post features Erik Solheim, who resigned this week as head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
On 20 November 2018, Equinor, one of the largest oil and gas firms in the world, wrote to Patricia Espinosa, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first sentence spells trouble. “The way you lead the important work to deliver solutions to the global climate challenge is of great inspiration to us,” Equinor’s CEO Eldar Sætre writes.
