Seeing ‘RED’ ?

‘Avoided deforestation’ and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities

Executive Summary

‘Avoided deforestation’ (AD) – referring to the prevention or reduction of forest loss in order to reduce emissions of global warming gases – has become a key issue in policy debates about climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s scientific body is due to report on how to achieve ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation‘ (RED) at its next ‘Conference of the Parties’ to be held in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007. Proponents of RED want incentives for

forest conservation to be part of the Kyoto Protocol’s trading instruments during its next phase (post-2012). Proposals for global and regional ‘avoided deforestation’ funds are also multiplying rapidly.

The World Bank is seeking to become the lead international agency heading up global RED initiatives. In mid-2007, the Bank is asking the G8 group of industrialised countries to give political and financial backing to its contentious plans for a new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) that would pilot schemes to reduce emissions from deforestation in five tropical countries.

The core idea is for Northern countries to pay Southern countries to reduce forest clearance within their national borders. One proposal is to give them aid money for the purpose. Another is for Southern countries to sell the carbon locked up in their forests to the North to allow Northern industries to continue polluting as usual under a global system of carbon trading. Others suggest that funding for AD schemes should come from a combination of public funds and the carbon market.

All such schemes have important implications for how forests are managed, who manages them, and what may or may not be allowed to happen in them. What are the implications of these changes for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people and other forest-dependent communities whose livelihoods, cultures and futures are bound up with forests? This briefing is designed to alert community advocates and other policy-makers to this little-discussed issue. It notes similarities and key differences between different AD proposals and documents concerns over initiatives like the World Bank’s Global Forest Alliance (GFA) and FCPF. It cautions that rapid expansion of AD schemes without due regard to rights, social and livelihood issues risks:

• renewed and even increased state and ‘expert’ control over forests
• overzealous government support for anti-people and exclusionary models of forest conservation (evictions, expropriation) to protect lucrative forest carbon ‘reservoirs’
• unjust targeting of indigenous and marginal peoples as the ‘drivers’ of deforestation
• violations of customary land and territorial rights
• state and NGO zoning of forest lands without the informed participation of forest dwellers
• unequal imposition of the costs of forest protection on indigenous peoples and local communities
• unequal and abusive community contracts
• land speculation, land grabbing and land conflicts (competing claims on AD compensation)
• corruption and embezzlement of international funds by national elites
• increasing inequality and potential conflict between recipients and non-recipients of AD funds
• potential conflict among indigenous communities (over acceptance or rejection of AD schemes)

If these risks could be eliminated or reduced, then AD policies and increased funding outside carbon trading might offer opportunities for some indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities.

However, simple assurances from global agencies and governments that the potential problems with top-down AD policies can be overcome through ‘certification’ and ‘participatory approaches’ are not good enough. There is a need for more solid guarantees that the human and customary rights of forest peoples will be respected and that the priorities of indigenous peoples and local communities will be properly addressed in any future AD policies and programmes. As a first step, it is essential that indigenous peoples and other grassroots movements become fully involved in the debate about the pros and cons of avoided deforestation in global climate policies.

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