Singapore | REDD-Monitor

Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Posted on 23 January 20146 October 2015

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed international trade agreement, involving 12 countries and covering a range of topics including intellectual property, the environment and workers’ rights. The TPP has been negotiated in secret for almost four years.

Singapore chokes on haze from Sumatra fires. Again. Wasn’t REDD supposed to stop this?

Posted on 25 June 20136 August 2015

Last week, the pollution from fires in Sumatra set new records. The smoke in Singapore this year is worse than it was in 1997 and 2002, both years of major forest burning in Indonesia.

“Quite simply the input is cash from us to plant the forests and the output is carbon credits from the trees, which we can then trade. It involves a lot of land… A forest could have a very long life and so companies could sign up to buy carbon offsets from us for 30 years. Effectively, we can securitise the carbon, allowing companies and governments to buy into it to offset their emissions on a long-term basis… If we get this business right, it will be huge.”

— Vincent Tchenguiz, property entrepreneur, September 2007 (2011: Tchenguiz was arrested in a probe into the 2008 collapse of Kaupthing, an Icelandic bank)