First Name | Jeff |
---|---|
Last Name | Conant |
Email Address | jc@globaljusticeecology.org |
Affiliation | Global Justice Ecology Project |
Subject | REDD and Carbon Offset Programs Will Make the Climate Crisis Worse |
Comment | As a journalist and environmental justice advocate just returning from the UN Climate Summit in Cancun, Mexico, I have deep concerns about California’s participation in a REDD/carbon offset program. What I witnessed in Cancun was widespread criticism of REDD as a strategy for addressing climate change; indeed, many indigenous peoples’ groups and forest-dwelling peoples are concerned that REDD may bring about what they are calling “perhaps the largest landgrab in history”. In Cancun, many organizations, including indigenous leaders from the Amazon, youth groups, advocacy organizations like Friends of the Earth International, research organizations such as Biofuelwatch, Carbon Trade Watch, and others, as well as La Via Campesina – the largest federation of smallholder farmers in the world – were very vocal about their opposition to carbon offset programs in general, and to REDD in particular. Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, was outspoken in Cancun as an ardent opponent of REDD, saying “such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. Such agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs – anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions. Language ‘noting’ rights is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities, women and youth.” Using offsets to reduce emissions on paper has multiple negative effects; on the one hand, it fails to actually reduce emissions at the source, which will allow continued toxic exposure of California communities such as those living near the Richmond refineries, Kettleman City, and other hotbeds of polluting industries. On the other hand, offset programs such as REDD use dubious standards and profoundly troubling strategies, such as offering carbon credits to agrofuel/biofuel plantations, waste-to-energy facilities, and other projects that are falsely presented as “green.” Indeed, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, biofuel plantations of Jatropha curcas are extending throughout regions that previously or currently are home to indigenous subsistence farmers. Such plantations – which are erroneously called “forests” under the United Nations definition – involve massive agrochemical inputs, low-wage labor, and displacement of land-based peoples; at the same time, looked at in terms of its entire lifecycle, biofuels have been shown to be just as Co2 intensive as fossil fuels. In order for California to truly take leadership on the environmental front, we must avoid toxic programs like REDD and carbon offsets in general, which will fail to address the problem of climate change while also leading to human rights abuses and displacement of peoples from their lands in Chiapas and throughout the global South. |
Attachment | www.arb.ca.gov/lists/capandtrade10/1147-whyreddiswrong.pdf |
Original File Name | WhyReddIsWrong.pdf |
Date and Time Comment Was Submitted | 2010-12-15 10:35:36 |
If you have any questions or comments please contact Clerk of the Board at (916) 322-5594.