There are 44 posts filed in Peru (this is page 1 of 3).
Since May 2018, if you buy ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in Wardour Street, London, you will also buy a small part of a carbon credit. For every scoop of ice cream, a penny goes to buying carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD project in Peru.
Sustainable Forestry Management Ltd was the name of a company incorporated in the Bahamas in October 1999. The company set up forestry projects and traded carbon credits. Its directors included Eric Bettelheim (Executive Chairman and General Counsel), Alan Bernstein (Chief Executive Officer), and Hugh van Cutsem (Director).
In 2007, the Forest Peoples Programme put out a briefing paper about reduced emissions from deforestation, or RED, as REDD was called back then. The briefing warned of the risks of the rapid expansion of avoided deforestation schemes without due regard to rights, and social and livelihood issues.
“The aim of reducing the emissions from forest destruction and degradation caused by industrial agriculture, logging, mining for fossil resources, etc. is today decisive to the survival of humankind and our planet. However, when the tool to achieve this aim is the trading of emission credits (offsets), we arrive at the wrong solutions.”
According to NASA, the Amazon is drier at the start of this year’s dry season than any year since 2002. The reason is reduced rainfall during the wet season because of El Niño. The result could be intense fires in the Amazon later this year.
In April 2016, indigenous leaders travelled from Colombia, Indonesia, Liberia, and Peru to Europe, calling for action on human rights violations and land grabbing associated with the expansion of oil palm plantations in their countries.
In early November 2015, the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) met in Livingston, Zambia. During the meeting it approved US$168 million funding for eight projects. One of these projects aims to deforestation in wetlands on largely indigenous peoples’ territories in the province of Datem del Marañón in Peru.
Last week, the Indigenous Environmental Network held a press conference at COP21 in Paris. Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said, “REDD and other carbon market regimes violate our traditional beliefs”.
On the first day of the UN climate negotiations in Paris, the governments of Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom pledged US$5 billion for REDD, between 2015 and 2020. The GNU countries say they “have signaled they will increasingly target results-based finance for countries who deliver verified REDD+ emission reductions”.
Under the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Peru aims to preserve 54 million hectares of forest. Under a 2014 REDD agreement with Norway and Germany, Peru pledged to reduce net deforestation to zero by 2021. Yet deforestation continues.
A paper published this week in Nature concludes that the Amazon is losing its capacity to absorb carbon. In the past decade, the carbon absorbed by the Amazon each year has decreased by about one-third.
“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.”
In September 2014, Peru and Norway signed an agreement to reduce deforestation in Peru. When the US$300 million agreement was signed, AIDESEP and Rainforest Foundation Norway warned that Peru needed to improve its policy on Indigenous Peoples.
“REDD is a risky and false solution to climate change, both in theory and in practice,” argues a new report by Friends of the Earth International. “Now it is time to ditch risky REDD for known community approaches that are effective, ethical and equitable.”
On 23 September 2014, Peru and Norway signed an agreement to reduce deforestation. AIDESEP, the main organization for the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, and Rainforest Foundation Norway welcome the deal, but warn that Peru must improve its “policy and practices on forests and indigenous peoples’ rights”.
