Comment Log Display

The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international
non-governmental organization composed of grass roots indigenous
communities and organizations located throughout Canada and the
United States, including California. We work with associated
Indigenous organizations and Indigenous communities in Central and
South America, Africa and Asia, and the Pacific, who inform our
work. We have followed California’s climate change initiatives with
great interest, and with the well being and the rights of
Indigenous Peoples well in mind.

Our forest dependent partners and communities have, as we do, great
concerns about forest offsets, particularly REDD+ type projects and
programs that threaten their food security and food sovereignty,
the use of their forests for medicine, ceremony, their cultures and
world views, their identity and ways of life. They are put at great
risk by REDD and REDD+. 

We note that the White Paper cites meetings on forest offsets where
Indigenous Peoples and their organizations were in attendance
ostensibly in support of forest offsets and REDD, in Barcelona,
Spain, and the consultations held in UC Davis, (the most recent in
October 2015, in Sacramento California). The White Paper also
mentions international REDD Readiness projects and the massive
amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Norway
and other counties as well as the World Bank. Perhaps if funding
were available to bring Indigenous communities with real and
negative experience with REDD+ projects to CARB meetings and
consultations, CARB might be better informed as to the real impact
of REDD+ on Indigenous Peoples. We would be glad to nominate
representatives of these indigenous communities for consideration.


The Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River
Basin (COICA) is prominent among those in attendance at these
meetings. This large and important South American Indigenous NGO,
as the White Paper states, has, “declared their interest in and
support of REDD mechanisms that respect the rights of traditional
forest-dwelling people, and have partnered with research and
environmental organizations in assessing GCF member inclusion of
rights recognition, participatory processes, benefits sharing,
territorial security, and governance.”

It is noteworthy that COICA, in spite of years of participation in
the international REDD+ process has as yet a REDD+ project in any
of the communities it represents. Their demands are specific and
aspiriational. Their vision of REDD+ is one where all of their
rights as recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the
rights of indigenous peoples (2007), as well as International
Labour Organization Convention No. 169 (!989) are fully recognized
and respected. This vision is fully outlined in the COICA
publication, REDD Indigena Ambiental - RIA. But the sad fact is
that the Amazon basin governments, including MOU partner Acre,
Brazil, are not receptive to these aspirations. The same can be
said of Mexico, and MOU partner, Chiapas.

Essential to this vision are internationally recognized right of
indigenous peoples includes their self determination and the right
to their ancestral lands. As one of the Indigenous participants at
the October 2015 CARB meeting reflected in responding to a
question, a critical aspiration for REDD+ is that it will lead to
the titling of their lands. But the Brazilian indigenous
representative also reflected that legislation recently introduced
in Brazil would impede the recognition and titling of indigenous
lands. Indeed, Brazil has as yet to share with Amazonian indigenous
peoples, the benefits of funds received from the Amazon Fund.

The Indigenous Environmental Network is in full solidarity with
these aspirations including the right of Self Determination and all
that the term implies internationally. We are also in solidarity
with the recognition and titling of Amazonian indigenous ancestral
lands. We need ask if California is willing to undertake the
fulfillment of these aspirations within their REDD forest offset
program.

The Great REDD Gamble, a recent report by Friends of the Earth
(FoE) pointed to the failures of these aspirations in existing
REDD+ projects:

“The most egregious of these is that by increasing the value of
standing forests, REDD is exacerbating existing tensions around
land tenure and access to resources. It can also impede ongoing
efforts to resolve land tenure disputes [fn] as REDD presents
governments with an increasing financial incentive for the state to
retain or assert ownership. And,

“One common factor that emerges very strongly from these case
studies is the extraordinarily disruptive influence that REDD+
projects can have on Indigenous Peoples and local communities,
especially if people have not consented to the project in question
or been engaged in its design, or if there are existing
uncertainties about land tenure. We also found that REDD+ projects
can trample over existing local knowledge, and interfere with local
food security.”

With regard to consent and engagement in design as mentioned by
FoE, we recall that the Chiapas representative described
consultations held in Chiapas regarding REDD, as a one day meeting
where all of civil society, including business, land owners,
environmental NGOs, local governments and other non-indigenous
representatives, as well as indigenous peoples, were invited and
attended. She reflected that this was done in the interests of
democracy. But this kind of democracy does not auger well for those
indigenous communities directly affected.

The fact remains that much of the Amazon Forest loss is due to the
expansion of cattle ranches, large mono crop plantations and
illegal logging where local government authorities are many times
complicit. As FoE points out, REDD generates land grabs and the
violations of the rights of forest dependent peoples where only the
governments and the already rich benefit. But questions of
corruption and attenuate racism and the violence it continues to
inflict on indigenous peoples in these countries, particularly
Mexico, remain the silent elephant in the room. 

Under any international relationship it remains to the State and in
this case of jurisdictional forests offsets, to local government as
well, and their willingness to recognize and title ancestral lands,
and the respect indigenous peoples’ self determination over those
lands, territories and forest resources. We have serious doubts
that the State of California can guarantee those rights to forest
dependent peoples. Jurisdictional REDD has other purposes.