To reject REDD+ and extractive industries

To confront capitalism and defend life and territories - On the occasion of the UN climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru - known as COP20 - we warn that rejecting REDD+ and 'environmental services', under the 'green economy' umbrella, is a central part of our struggle against capitalism and extractive industries and in the defense of territories, life and Mother Earth.

To reject REDD+ and extractive industries. 54051.jpeg

COP20, Lima, December 2014

On the occasion of the UN climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru - known as COP20 - we warn that rejecting REDD+ and 'environmental services', under the 'green economy' umbrella, is a central part of our struggle against capitalism and extractive industries and in the defense of territories, life and Mother Earth.

The United Nations' climate agreements have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the mechanisms and policies that have emerged from these agreements - including REDD+ - have allowed for the continuation, legitimization and intensification of destructive activities such as mining, oil, gas and carbon extraction, tree monocultures and agroindustry, among others. These industries, which are the main ones responsible for the climate crisis, have adopted discourses on 'sustainability', 'zero deforestation', 'socio-environmental responsibility', 'decoupling' or 'low-carbon projects' all under the umbrella of the "green" economy.  But we know that beyond the propaganda used to clean up their image, the extractivist model and institutionalized global capitalism always lead to the pillaging of Mother Earth, as well as the eviction, violence, destruction and the criminalization of communities, peoples, land and territories.

In the 'green' economy framework, its promoters aim to make us believe that 'sustainable economic growth' is possible and can be 'decoupled from nature' by using capitalist forms of production, or that it is feasible to 'compensate' or 'mitigate' contamination or destruction in one place by 'recreating' or 'protecting' another. Under an unjust and colonialist logic, the 'green' economy subjugates nature and autonomous peoples by imposing restrictions on the use of and control over their territories in order to fill the pockets of a few, even when communities possess the deeds to their land.

One of the fundamental pillars of the new global capitalism is 'environmental services'. This involves the financialization and commodification of nature, and signifies subjugating and enslaving it to the logic of capital. The carbon market, biodiversity offsets and water markets are part of this kind of capitalism. 'Environmental services' are, in themselves, dependent on the hegemonic economic model.

There are many kinds of environmental services, namely the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, as well as conservation, sustainable forest management and the increase of carbon 'reserves' (REDD Plus or REDD+) and more recently, the so-called 'climate smart' agriculture. The promoters of REDD+ hope that COP20 in Lima will establish the bases for its inclusion in the next international climate agreement in 2015 during COP21 in Paris. In any case, this kind of projects and programs has existed for years and are in constant expansion. Numerous corporations, NGOs and governments, as well as the World Bank and the UN's carbon funds are committed to advancing this business.

In practice, given that forests are found mainly on indigenous land and peasants feed the world, these schemes turn indigenous territories and agricultural lands into both carbon dioxide 'sinks' and water or biodiversity 'banks'.

Furthermore, from the perspective of fighting against deforestation, this mechanism is also absurd: the more deforestation and threats to forests there are, the greater the number of REDD+ projects that can be justified and implemented with the goal of selling this 'scarce' carbon commodity. Thus, with REDD+, the forests and soils' capacity to absorb carbon and retain it, and plants' capacity to photosynthesize, breed water, grow and generate biodiversity are being quantified, monetized, appropriated, privatized and financialized, just like any other commodity. The 'environmental services' trade also fuels the impunity of polluters and destroyers: instead of complying with laws that prohibit polluting and deforestation, they can 'compensate' for these ills. This trade also diverts attention from combatting climate change, as it does not attack the cause. The urgent need to stop extracting fossil fuels and halt industrial agriculture and monoculture plantations, and to guarantee respect for the rights of indigenous people, dependent forest people and peasants to manage and control their territories is not on the negotiating agenda. As a result, the spiral continues and grows.

One clear example of how harmful REDD+ projects can be is the agreement signed between the states of California in the United States, Chiapas in Mexico and Acre in Brazil, which aims to allow industries in California to continue polluting in exchange for carbon credits purchased through REDD+ projects in Acre and Chiapas. Although Acre is usually presented to the world as the 'model for the green economy', the reality is different: carbon trading which facilitates timber exploitation have been devastating territories and violating the rights of the forest peoples (1), as the DHESCA human rights network has reported, following its 2013 mission to Acre (2). Other examples include the case of the N'hambita community in Mozambique that signed a contract with the British corporation Envirotrade on the trade of REDD+ carbon credits. According to the contract, the inhabitants of the community will have to 'cultivate carbon' on their territories, instead of food, for 99 years (3). Other examples in Kenya (4), Congo (5), Papua New Guinea (6), Cambodia (7), Brazil (8) and more cases, illustrate how REDD+ type projects can lead to forced evictions, arrests and the dispossession of territories.

Numerous communities have been pressured or tricked into signing contracts that involve the loss of their rights over their land and ancestral territories (9). Moreover, REDD+ type projects do not guarantee that extractive corporations do not enter their territories. For example, 'Socio Bosque' (Forest Partner), the REDD+-type program in Ecuador - where the communities are obliged to take care of forests for 20 or 40 years so that the State can ensure that 'environmental services' are conserved and can be traded - allows oil or minerals to be extracted in these areas (10).

However, REDD+ proclaims its desire to combat deforestation, guarantee local participation, improve forest management, improve the local population's living conditions and contribute to their development, and, occasionally, even implement territorial rights. It also alleges that it will fight climate change. Yet, the numerous national and subnational programs, bilateral and multilateral agreements, and REDD+ projects developed worldwide increasingly show that these are lies and that its objective is to accumulate more capital and control territories. Communities affected by REDD+ projects either directly or indirectly - by the polluting companies that benefit from the carbon credits generated by such projects, or by the State - have not truly been informed of what this kind of commitment means. REDD+ projects have already been defined by their promoters before they are presented to the communities, which, in practice, take away the communities' real chance to accept or reject the project. At other times, communities are simply tricked and fall into the 'REDD' trap. Promises are often not kept.

Likewise, instead of being a solution to climate change, so-called 'climate smart' agriculture is just another attempt by biotechnology and agribusiness corporations to patent and control seeds and farmlands.

This mechanism, promoted by the FAO and the World Bank, among others, ambitions that peasants adopt certain cultivation practices and use 'climate ready' genetically modified seeds, dispossessing them of their fields, autonomy, food sovereignty and ancestral knowledge. La Vía Campesina denounced that 'climate smart' agriculture is the continuation of a project that began with the Green Revolution in the 1940s and continued on in the 1970s and 1980s through the World Bank's poverty reduction projects. These projects decimated peasant farmer economies, especially in the South, which provoked the loss of food sovereignty and made these countries dependent on the North to feed their population (11). Today, for example, a World Bank program in Kenya seeks to generate carbon credits by demanding 'sustainable land management practices', which include the use of a hybrid variety of corn seeds sold locally by Syngenta, pressuring peasants to abandon their native species (12). Supporters of this dangerous false solution want to convert fields, soils and crops into carbon credits, which will lead to an increase in land grabbing and rights dispossession.

Even tree monocultures are being camouflaged as 'climate smart'. The advance of large-scale eucalyptus, pine, acacia, rubber and oil palm plantations is, in fact, a part of process to deepen capital accumulation driven by corporations in territories. The plantations are considered carbon 'sinks' and therefore, they are eligible for carbon credits. As such, in Aceh, in the north of Indonesia, a REDD+ project covering 770,000 hectares was developed by the International Fauna & Flora NGO, the Carbon Conservation carbon broker company and the governor of Aceh at the time. The project's document affirms that one way to 'compensate' for the loss of forests in the area designated under REDD+ was through oil palm plantations, whose 'capacity to absorb carbon' has been estimated in order to anticipate how many carbon credits the project can generate. As for the local communities in the project's area, they have affirmed on several occasions that they were not duly consulted on the project and have not received any benefit from it. On the contrary, the tenure of their land continues to be a serious problem that has yet to be resolved (13).

Corporations like Shell Oil or Rio Tinto mining corporation; tree plantations and pulp and paper producers like Green Resources and Suzano; agribusiness firms like Wilmar, Monsanto and Bunge; multilateral institutions like the UNDP and FAO; conservation transnationals like Wildlife Works, WWF, The Nature Conservancy or Conservation International; consulting firms, public and private banks and many governments elaborate, support and fund REDD+ and 'climate smart' agriculture projects and programs. These mechanisms undermine the real solutions to climate change, as they serve as a distraction from changes to the modes of production and consumption and towards economies and societies that are free from fossil fuels.

We must not allow ourselves to be fooled by the lies of vulgar propaganda. We know that climate negotiations, which are increasingly controlled by corporate power, do not try to save the climate, nor protect forests and soils, eradicate poverty or respect indigenous peoples' rights. On the contrary, they cowardly protect predatory corporations and reinforce a destructive and patriarchal model. What is worse, they manipulate information to put the blame on small farmers and the peoples who depend on the forests. They accuse them of being the main cause of deforestation and climate change, since they create parcels of land for subsistence agriculture. In reality, however, the traditional inhabitants of the territories are precisely the ones who have guaranteed the conservation of the forests, water sources and ecosystems.

We cannot allow false solutions to climate change - including REDD+ and the so-called 'climate smart' agriculture - destroy the balance on Mother Earth.

We must oppose these types of programs and 'environmental services' that seek to perpetuate capitalism.

We must continue pushing for the transformation of the current production model and fighting against policies imposed on the peoples that prioritize the reproduction of capital over the reproduction of life. It has been the struggles of indigenous peoples, peasants, urban dwellers, fisher folk, pastors, women, men and youth to defend their rights and territories that have been leading the way. It is the peoples opposing oil extraction and mining, environmental services, industrial agriculture projects and monocultures who are taking the right steps on climate change. These people must be respected, and not criminalized, and their efforts to contribute to global change must be recognized.

We must organize ourselves to defend indigenous territories, populations who depend on forests, autonomy in control over their territories and Mother Earth.

For these reasons, we say YES to the defense of territories,

to the defense of the populations who depend on, live and are part of the forests,

to their autonomy over their territories and

to the defense of the rights of nature.

NO MORE EXTRACTIVIST PROJECTS,

NO TO ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES,

TO FIGHT AGAINST REDD+ IS TO ALSO FIGHT CAPITALISM!

NO TO THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE PEOPLES WHO DEFEND THEIR TERRITORIES!

JOIN THE PEOPLE'S SUMMIT MARCH!

Initial signatories:

Acción Ecológica, Ecuador

Aliança RECOs - Redes de Cooperação Comunitária Sem Fronteiras

Amigos de la Tierra América Latina y el Caribe (ATLAC)

Amigos de la Tierra, Brasil

Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales, México

Carbon Trade Watch

Ceiba / Amigos de la Tierra, Guatemala

Censat / Amigos de la Tierra, Colombia

Cesta / Amigos de la Tierra, El Salvador

Coeco Ceiba / Amigos de la Tierra, Costa Rica

Conselho de Missão entre Povos Indígenas, Acre e Sul do Amazonas, Brasil

Conselho Indigenista Missionário, Brasil (CIMI)
Grupo de Estudos em Produção do Espaço Amazónico (UFAC)

Instituto Transnacional (TNI)
Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres

Movimento Mulheres pela P@Z!    

Movimiento Mundial por los Bosques Tropicales (WRM)
Núcleo de Pesquisa Estado, Sociedade e Desenvolvimento na Amazônia Ocidental (UFAC)

Oilwatch América Latina

Oilwatch Internacional

Otros Mundos Chiapas / Amigos de la Tierra, México

Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de árboles (RECOMA)
REDES / Amigos de la Tierra, Uruguay

Redmanglar Internacional

Regional Latinoamericana de la UITA

Sindicato dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras Rurais de Xapuri - Acre, Brasil

To join this call, send the name of your organization or group and country to [email protected]

NOTAS:

1.    World Rainforest Movement (WRM). Brazil: continued destruction of forests and biodiversity in the State of Acre, considered a model of the "Green Economy" in the Brazilian Amazon. Bulletin 183. October 2012.

2.    DHESCA Platform Brazil, http://www.escr-net.org/es/node/364729

3.    Vía Campesina.  Mozambique, Carbon Trading and REDD +: farmers 'grow' carbon for the benefit of polluters. 22 June 2012.

4.    REDD-monitor. Illegal evictions of the Embobut Forest in Kenya. 15 January 2014.

5.    Griffiths, Tom. "Seeing REDD? Forests, Climate Change Mitigation and the Rights of Indigenous People and Local Communities". May 2009.

6.    The Economist. "Money grows on trees". June 6, 2009.

7.    World Rainforest Movement (WRM). Forest Carbon Project in Paraná, Brazil: Reduction of deforestation and persecution of local communities. Bulletin 169. August 2011.

8.    See for example: Friends of the Earth, the Great REDD Gamble, 2014

9.    CEDIB. PETROPRESS 21. August 2010. Industrias extractivas y el programa REDD. El que peca y reza, empata. 

10.             Via Campesina. Un-masking Climate Smart Agriculture. September 2014

11.              Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policies. An Update on the World Bank's Experimentation with Soil Carbon. October 2012.