There are 52 posts filed in Papua New Guinea (this is page 1 of 4).
“Airlines are taking action on climate change, but we need to do a better job of telling people that.” That’s Alan Joyce, the Chief Executive Officer of Qantas Airways, in a statement he put out last week. “I’m proud of what Qantas, and our customers, are doing,” he adds.
In 2011, a Swiss company called World Markets AG bought five million “carbon benefit units”. They came from the April Salumei REDD project in Papua New Guinea. World Markets sold the “carbon benefit units” at a profit of over US$5 million.
In July 2017, a group of over 150 people who had been scammed into buying “carbon benefit units” got in touch with REDD-Monitor. Several London-based boiler room operations, including Industry RE, had sold them the “carbon benefit units”, supposedly as investments. Unfortunately they were worthless.
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.
April Salumei is a REDD project in Papua New Guinea. Various companies, including Qantas, Eneco Energy Trade, and Norwegian supermarket chain Rema 1000, have bought carbon credits from the April Salumei REDD project. Should you so wish, you can buy carbon credits from the project on the USAID-funded website Stand for Trees.
Kevin Conrad was born in the USA. His parents were missionaries living in Papua New Guinea. Conrad grew up in Wewak in East Sepik province on the north coast of the country. “I grew up deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea”, he says. “I didn’t consistently wear shoes until I was 16. Forests are a very real part of who I am.”
Between 2009 and 2013, a UK-based company called Industry RE fleeced members of the public out of at least £13.3 million. Last week, the Insolvency Service announced that Ian James Hamilton, the sole director of Industry RE, had been disqualified as a director for 15 years.
In recent years, Papua New Guinea has handed out 5.5 million hectares of land as Special Agriculture and Business Leases. In addition, the government has issued 10 million hectares in logging concessions. The totally predictable result has been an increase in deforestation, and serious human rights abuses.
In 2014, Papua New Guinea became the world’s largest exporter of tropical timber. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Eleven years ago, PNG formed the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and presented the idea of REDD to the UN climate meeting in Montreal.
Last night at 21:00 a new version of the Draft Paris Outcome was released at COP21 in Paris. It’s down to 27 pages and has only 50 pairs of square brackets. That’s the good news. The rest is practically all bad news.
A company called London Carbon Neutral Ltd and eight linked companies have been shut down in the High Court in London. The companies were shut down after “high pressure and intimidating sales people had targeted the elderly and vulnerable” to sell them carbon credits as investments.
“Find out how to Save Forests and make money.” That’s the offer on the website of an Australian company called Conservation Central Network. “Using the power of the internet,” CCN says, “we are rewarding people for saving the forests one hectare at a time.”
It’s the end of the decade. Nearly 30 years of United Nations negotiations have left us with nothing more than REDD and piecemeal carbon markets to address climate change. The UN has set up a Global Carbon Markets Organisation (GCMO) to try to make the carbon markets work.
Three weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote about an Australian company called Sovereign Green Global Australia and its REDD project in Papua New Guinea. This morning, a response arrived from Tony Adams, the Chairman of Sovereign Green Global Australia.
Sovereign Green Global is, according to its website, running a REDD+ conservation project, “located primarily in the Milne bay province of Papua New Guinea”. The project covers “approximately 125,000 hectares of rainforest”. But details of the project are scant and the information that is available rings plenty alarm bells.
