Analytical Background Paper

on the Legal Aspects of REDD+

and Recent REDD+

Policy DevelopmentsNovember 2011

Indigenous Peoples´ Biocultural

Climate Change Assessment Initiative

Indigenous Peoples´ Biocultural

Climate Change Assessment Initiative

IPCCA

Asociación Andes - IPCCA

Marina Apgar

IPCCA

Mar Soler

Raúl Basurco Marroquín

Raúl Basurco Marroquín

raulbasurco@gmail.com

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More information: http://creativecommons.org

Foreword

Most of the world’s remaining forests are located within indigenous territories, territories of our forest dwelling brothers and sisters who have, over

millennia, used their knowledge and governance systems based on local customary practice and worldviews, in which we are an integral part of

Mother Earth, to nurture culturally and biologically diverse forest ecosystems. Forests are life, as are all beings present in Mother Earth, and life for

us is sacred.

The Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative has emerged as an indigenous response to the challenge that

climate change poses to our ability to continue to exercise our rights as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples. Through the IPCCA, partners in a diversity of ecosystems around the world are undertaking local assessments of the complex dimensions

of climate change and their impacts upon communities, ecosystems and livelihoods. The local assessments are taking a biocultural approach, which

permits each particular local context to drive a process of inter-cultural and transdisciplinary inquiry. The assessment processes are empowering

indigenous communities to respond with a territoriality and ecosystems approach to the challenge of climate change from their own perspectives.

Partners in forest ecosystems must address the added challenge of climate change mitigation programs focusing on reducing deforestation, which

are targeting their territories. This analytical background document aims to provide information on REDD+ mechanisms, and critically analyses how

these mechanisms can potentially impact upon the rights of indigenous peoples. It also provides proposals for responding to the challenges through

a biocultural approach. We hope that our forest dwelling partners will use this document in building analysis of REDD+ in their local assessments

and navigating how to best make local to global links.

From the IPCCA Secretariat, we hope that with this we are taking a first step into a biocultural analysis of REDD+ and similar market based climate

change mitigation mechanisms. As one of our strategic goals is to contribute into global policy development we offer this initial analysis in order to

inspire all those interested in indigenous peoples rights in the larger debate of climate justice to further deepen our tools for analysis and responding.

Alejandro Argumedo

Coordinator

IPCCA Secretariat

Asociación ANDES

Executive summary

REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks. It is a forest policy that is

currently being elaborated under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Indigenous Peoples play an important

role in the conservation of the world’s forests, and many Indigenous Peoples depend on forests for their livelihoods, so theoretically, policies to

reduce emissions from forest loss should provide positive opportunities for Indigenous Peoples.

However, there are a number of inherent problems with REDD+. Due to the nature of the climate regime, REDD+ policies are based on the principle

that developing countries, and actors within those countries, will be paid for the amount of carbon they succeed to store or sequester in their forests.

These “forests” do not necessarily have to be biologically diverse, as the definition of “forests” used for REDD+ includes monoculture tree plantations

and even clearcut areas. So the replacement of biologically diverse forests and other ecosystems by monoculture tree plantations is not necessarily

sanctioned by REDD+, even though there are some non-binding safeguards that prioritize the conservation of natural forests and even discourage

the direct replacement of forest by tree plantations. The replacement of other ecosystems like grasslands, that tend to be of significant importance

especially to mobile Indigenous Peoples, is still allowed under REDD+ though.

The system of so-called “performance-based payments” for forest conservation and tree planting makes it attractive for powerful actors like logging

corporations, plantation companies, large conservation organizations and Governmental forestry agencies to obtain significant areas of forest land,

which can subsequently be used to store or sequester carbon in return for payments. Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities risk

loosing their land and tenure rights over their forests due to the sharply increased value of forestland. Even if they are allowed to stay on their land,

powerful actors will try to obtain the majority of the benefits of performance-based payments for forest conservation. Especially if the actual payments

are derived from private sources like carbon markets, these powerful actors will be in a better position to negotiate agreements to sell forest carbon,

also because monitoring, verifying and reporting the actual amount of carbon stored in forests is a highly complicated process. While Indigenous

Peoples tend to possess profound knowledge of the interactions between forests and other elements of the biosphere, their traditional methodologies

are currently not accepted by the climate regime. So while some Indigenous Peoples might be able to participate in the implementation of REDD+

projects and even obtain some modest payments, most REDD+ projects are likely to be undertaken at the expense of Indigenous Peoples, with

most benefits flowing to the corporations and conservation organizations that administer them. In the worst case, REDD+ is likely to lead to violent

conflicts: all over the world Indigenous Peoples are being confronted with involuntary resettlements and other human rights violations as a result of

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REDD+ projects. They are also confronted with liability clauses in REDD+ agreements, which force them to guarantee the trees they plant or

conserve are left untouched, despite the fact that climate change itself is causing a greater risk of forest fires and other climate hazards that might

cause unwanted forest loss.

There are also a large number of inherent REDD+ risks and complications that might undermine the climate regime itself, as the emissions that are

to be “reduced” will not be real, new, permanent, and/or additional. Moreover, it has often been pointed out that deforestation will only move from

one area to another if forest conservation projects are implemented without addressing the main drivers of forest loss like the consumption of wood,

agrofuels and other products that trigger forest loss. As climate change itself forms a major threat to Indigenous Peoples, these risks and complications

are significant for Indigenous Peoples too.

Despite these risks and complications, which are recognized by many renowned research institutions and policy-makers, donors and institutions

like the World Bank and the UN have already committed up to 7.7 billion USD to projects and policies to make more than 39 countries “ready” for

REDD+. Additionally, in 2010, some 178 million USD was being dedicated to REDD+ style projects through the voluntary forest carbon offset market.

Whether these financial investments will continue to be this high is doubtful, though. Many developed countries have already indicated that they

expect the majority of future funding for REDD+ and other climate mitigation projects to come from the private sector, that is, carbon offset markets.

But as many developed countries refuse to commit themselves to future binding emission reduction targets, the future of carbon markets looks very

bleak at the moment. If countries and companies have no obligation to reduce their emissions, they will not see a need to buy forest carbon credits

to compensate these emissions. Already, carbon offset markets have proven to be a highly uncertain, volatile and inequitable source of funding, so

the current financial investments in “readiness” might very well be “as good as it gets”.

Thanks to the active campaigns of Indigenous Peoples’ representatives themselves, there is a growing awareness amongst climate negotiators of

the important role played by Indigenous Peoples in forest conservation, and the need to respect their rights as recognized by the UN Declaration on

the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs) and other human rights instruments. Both the Parties to the Climate Convention and a number of

important multilateral REDD+ donors have adopted so-called safeguards that call for the participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+ design and

implementation, and respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples as stipulated in UNDRIPs. One of the most important rights is the right to free, prior

and informed consent (FPIC). However, in reality most Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities are only being consulted in a superficial

manner about REDD+. As they are not informed in an unbiased manner of all the risks of REDD+ and as consultation processes are far too short

to allow for a profound consideration of options through customary consultation and decision-making processes, most Indigenous Peoples are not

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able to develop their position in a balanced manner. Moreover, they are often confronted with a “take-it-or-leave-it” situation, in which significant sums

of money are offered if they accept REDD+ only, without alternative forest conservation and benefit sharing scenarios.

Biocultural protocols can play a role in ensuring a more genuine FPIC process, as they allow Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities

to map and document their own territories, rights, governance systems and development aspirations before they are confronted with the question

whether they want to engage in a REDD+ project or policy or not. These protocols, and a full awareness of their rights, including their right to say

yes or no to REDD+, will enable Indigenous Peoples and local communities to negotiate from a stronger position. It is recommendable for people

to take into account the uncertain future of forest carbon markets and other sources of REDD+ funding when they negotiate their positions on

REDD+. Consolidating land titles and gaining respect and support for traditional knowledge and customary management practices might be more

reliable outcomes of the current readiness processes than promises to participate in payment for environmental services’ schemes that might never

be funded. Most importantly, Indigenous Peoples should be well aware that many of the actors in REDD+ policy making have significant financial

and other interests in REDD+ themselves, and that the information shared might seldom be fair, complete and unbiased. This report is an attempt

to provide a more critical perspective in this respect.

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Introduction350 million of the world’s poorest people, including an estimated 60 million Indigenous People, depend almost entirely for their subsistence and

survival on forests1. For many Indigenous Peoples, forests are more than their home and livelihood; they see themselves as part of the forest, and

the forest as part of their biocultural heritage. The term biocultural expresses the inherent links between biological diversity and cultural diversity.

Biocultural diversity is the diversity of life in all its manifestations – biological, cultural and linguistic – which are interrelated within a complex socio-

ecological adaptive system. According to the UN,

“This concept encompasses biological diversity at all its levels and cultural diversity in all its manifestations. Biocultural diversity is derived

from the myriad ways in which humans have interacted with their natural surroundings. Their co-evolution has generated local ecological

knowledge and practices: a vital reservoir of experience, methods and skills that help different societies to manage their resources.

Diverse worldviews and ethical approaches to life have emerged in tandem with this co-evolution of nature and culture.”2

Ecosystems like forests have thus shaped the cultures and livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples and local communities that depend on them, as

much as these cultures and livelihoods have influenced forests. Deforestation, which continues to be a rampant global environmental trend, does

not only deprive these peoples of their main source of subsistence and survival, it deprives them of their biocultural identity. For many Indigenous

Peoples, especially Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation, forest conservation is a matter of survival.

Because of this strong relationship, Indigenous Peoples have developed effective traditional norms and management practices to conserve the

forests on their lands and territories. There is growing scientific evidence that deforestation rates on lands and territories governed by Indigenous

Peoples are significantly lower than deforestation rates on non-Indigenous lands.3 They are even found to be lower than deforestation rates in areas

with a formal protected status, like national parks and nature reserves.4 Indigenous Peoples can thus play a central role in policies to reduce

deforestation, while policies to reduce deforestation contribute in an essential manner to the well-being and survival of Indigenous peoples.

1 World Commissionon Forestsand Sustainable Development,1999,“Our Forests, Our Future, Summaryreport, World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, WCFSD,Winnipeg, Canada. http://www.iisd.org/pdf/wcfsdsummary.pdf

2 http://www.unesco.org/mab/doc/iyb/icbcd_working_doc.pdf3 D. Nepstad, S. Schwartzman, B. Bamberger, M. Santilli, D. Ray, P. Schlesinger, P. Lefebvre, A. Alencar, E. Prinz, G. Fiske and A. Rolla, 2006. Inhibition of Amazon Deforestation and Fire by

Parks and Indigenous Lands, Conservation Biology Volume 20, No.1,65 – 73. Society for Conservation Biology, 2006http://www.funai.gov.br/procuradoria/docs/Artigo%20Terras%20Ind%EDgenas.pdf

4 Porter-Bolland,L.,etal.Community managed forests and forest protected areas: An assessment of their conservation effectiveness across the tropics. Forest Ecol. Manage. (2011),doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2011.05.034

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As explained below, the conservation and restoration of forests is an essential strategy in efforts to halt climate change. Climate change is one of the

most important environmental threats to the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples. This implies that, in principle, policies and measures to

reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) would contribute to the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples. However,

as explained below, there are a large number of risks to Indigenous Peoples that are inherent to the way in which REDD policies are currently being

designed. Many of these risks are the result of the characteristics of the main international agreements that deal with climate change: The UN

Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol.

The aim of this analytical background paper is to contribute to the climate change assessments in local biocultural systems and the formulation of

policy proposals by the IPCCA Community REDD network members.

The background paper will particularly contribute to the following IPCCA objectives:

to help and support indigenous communities to better understand key issues when considering their involvement in REDD;

to support experience-based engagement in international fora and to contribute to a reframing of the REDD debate from a local, biocultural

and community perspective.

The paper will start with an introduction to forests and climate change and the rights and role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, which

will be followed by an explanation of what REDD is, and where it came from. Chapter 3 will explain some of the risks and complications related to

the proposal to fund REDD policies and actions through carbon markets, while Chapter 4 will provide information on the existing public funding flows

for REDD. Chapter 5 will elaborate on some of the social, environmental and cultural risks of REDD. Chapter 6 will provide detailed information on

the existing safeguards that have been developed to mitigate some of these risks. Chapter 7 will elaborate on some of the alternatives to REDD and

the role Biocultural protocols could play in this respect. The conclusions and outlook for the future will build on these alternatives and highlight the

role of Biocultural protocols in developing local safeguards and standards for forest conservation initiatives.

Chapter 1:An introduction to forests and climate change,

and the rights and role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities

The global climate system has been changing since Earth was born, but never at a speed it is changing at the moment.5 The emission of carbon

dioxide, a gas that results, amongst others, from burning wood and fossil fuels like oil and gas, is causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to

increase. This puts a kind of blanket over the earth, in so far that the heat from the sun that reaches the earth gets trapped. The result is what they

call global warming. However, it should be emphasized that climate change does not only lead to higher temperatures. Overall global warming

particularly leads to more instability in the climate. As a result, there will be more droughts in some places, but more rain, storms and floods in other

regions. These increased climatic extremes, as they are called, have significant negative impacts on Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The consumption of fossil fuels by people in Northern countries is by far the main cause of climate change. More than 80% of emissions are caused

by the minority of the world’s population that lives in the so-called “developed” countries in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand,

while the impacts of this environmental problem are felt, first and foremost, by people living in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the rest of the Pacific.

For that reason, a growing group of social movements has been calling for “climate justice” to be at the heart of climate policies. They call upon

Northern consumers to take the lead in reducing emissions, and to pay compensation to the countries most affected by climate change through a

repayment of the so-called ecological debt and through providing generous support for policies and projects that help these countries to adapt to

climate change.

The Role of Forests

Deforestation and forest degradation are important causes of greenhouse gas emissions – it is estimated that some 17% of all greenhouse gas

emissions caused by human interventions is caused by the destruction of forests ecosystems6. Forests also play an important role in strategies to

adapt to climate change. Forests and other native vegetation retain water and fertile soils, so if forests are cut, it is more likely that soils will turn into

deserts, that rivers will dry up in the dry season and that they will cause floods in the wet season.

5 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis report Summary for Policymakers. IPCC, Switzerland. Seehttp://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spm.html

6 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR 4, Technical Summary of Working Group III

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Forests also provide a very important source of livelihood and a home to over 1 billion rural people. An estimated 350 million people, including 60

million indigenous people, depend almost entirely for their subsistence and survival on forests7. For many forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples, the

forest is inherently linked with their People’s existence and cultural values systems.

“Indigenous People have always considered that this land is sacred and that the welfare and health of the planet depend on their health

and conservation. This is the vision that has and is still motivating our communities to maintain the conservation and restoration of our

territories. We are seeking to recover usurped ancestral lands, and to restore their vitality, to recreate the forests as they once were,

before the expansion of Western agriculture and deforestation” 8

For women, who are traditionally responsible for providing fuelwood as the main and often only source of energy of their families, the loss of forests

may not only lead to an extra work burden in terms of having to walk longer distances, but it also increases risk of sexual violence and associated

diseases.

The Role and Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Forests are not only important to Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are also important to forests. As explained above,

forests and other ecosystems are as much shaped by the world’s diversity of cultures and livelihoods as the world’s cultures and livelihoods are

shaped by forests and other ecosystems. There is ample evidence that deforestation rates on Indigenous territories are much lower than deforestation

rates on non-Indigenous territories, as many Indigenous peoples foster traditional knowledge and values that instruct them to conserve their forests

and homelands.9 In fact, there is increasing evidence that deforestation rates in forests controlled and managed by communities are lower that

deforestation rates in forests that are strictly protected as a national park or other protected area.10

Community governance over forests can take many forms. It is important to distinguish community-based forest management, which is an often-

used term in the forestry sector, from community-driven initiatives to conserve and restore forests. Community-based forest management does not

7 World Commissionon Forests and Sustainable Development,1999,“Our Forests, Our Future, Summary report, World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, WCFSD,Winnipeg, Canada. http://www.iisd.org/pdf/wcfsdsummary.pdf

8 Geodisiocastello, an Indigenous legal expert from Kuna Yala, Panama, during the 2010 national workshop on the underlying causes of forest restoration in Panama, in “Hall, R. (ed,)2010. Getting to the Roots, Underlying Causes of Deforestation and forest Degradation and Drivers of Forest Restoration, Global Forest Coalition, Amsterdam, 2010

9 Hall, R (ed.) 2010, Ibid. 10 Porter-Bolland, L., et al. 201110 Porter-Bolland, L., et al. 2011

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necessarily imply that communities control their forests. Instead, in many cases it concerns projects that have been designed and developed by

outside actors like Non-governmental organizations or governmental forestry departments, and that only involve community members in the

implementation of these projects. Community-driven forest conservation and restoration initiatives are initiatives that are designed and developed by

the communities themselves. Even such initiatives do not necessarily imply that the communities concerned have full control over the forests, as

many community-driven initiatives take place in forests that are formally located on State land or land of private individuals who are free to participate

or not in the community initiative.

The Convention on Biological Diversity recognizes the role of biocultural practices in biodiversity conservation, and the rights of Indigenous and local

communities in this respect. Article 8 (j) of the Convention on sustainable use of the components of biological diversity states:

“Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate…..j) Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge,

innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of

biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices

and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices;”11

While Article 10 emphasizes:

“Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate…. (c) Protect and encourage customary use of biological resources in

accordance with traditional cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use requirements;”12

These commitments have been further elaborated by subsequent decisions of the Conference of the Parties of the Biodiversity Convention. For

example, in 2004, the Conference of the Parties adopted the Akwé: Kon Voluntary Guidelines for the Conduct of Cultural Environmental and Social

Impact Assessment regarding Developments Proposed to Take Place on, or which are Likely to Impact on, Sacred Sites and on Lands and Waters

Traditionally Occupied or Used by Indigenous and Local Communities.13

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11 http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles/?a=cbd-0812 http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles/?a=cbd-10

13 Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2004. Akwe: Kon Voluntary Guidelines for the Conduct of Cultural Environmental and Social Impact Assessment regardingDevelopments Proposed to Take Place on, or which are Likely to Impact on, Sacred Sites and on Lands and Waters Traditionally Occupied or Used by Indigenous and LocalCommunities. CBD Secretariat, Montreal, Canada.

Forests form an inherent element of the territories of Indigenous Peoples, of their homelands (“Tekoha” as the Guarani say). The UN Declaration on

the Rights of Indigenous peoples14, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007, spells out the biocultural rights of Indigenous Peoples

regarding their lands and forests. It states amongst others that:

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue

their economic, social and cultural development. (Art. 3)

Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters, which would affect their rights, through representatives

chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-

making institutions. (Art. 18)

Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise

used or acquired. (Art. 26.1)

Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of

traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired. (Art. 26.2)

States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with

due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned (Art. 26.3)

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories

and other resources. (Art. 32.1)

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in

order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources,

particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources. (Art. 32.2)

14 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html

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States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to

mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact. (Art. 32.3)

UNDRIPs itself is not a legally binding instrument according to international law. Declarations can become customary international law if they are

broadly recognized as legally binding by Governments and international courts, which is currently not the case. However, that does not imply that

the individual rights enshrined in the declaration are per definition non-binding. Many governments have already incorporated several of the rights

enshrined in UNDRIPs in their national laws, and the Government of Bolivia has even adopted the full declaration as legally binding. The UN itself

has incorporated the rights enshrined in its UN Development Group guidelines on Indigenous Peoples Issues15, which constitute a set of guidelines

all UN agencies and programs are committed to follow (see also below).

15 http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/UNDG_training_16EN.pdf

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Chapter 2:What is REDD+ and where did it come from?

The History of the Climate Convention

Inspired by the alarming conclusions a major report by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that had been set up by the United Nations

to study the phenomenon of climate change, its causes and its consequences, Governments decided in 1990 to negotiate a treaty to solve this

global environmental problem. The original intention was that the treaty would be ready in time for the UN Conference on Environment and

Development, which was organized in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. However, the negotiators run out of time. So they agreed to adopt a

Framework Convention on Climate Change that enshrined the broad commitments countries had to fulfill. All countries together were supposed to

halt dangerous climate change, be it that the Convention recognized that developed countries should take the lead in doing so – the so-called

principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which is still considered a cornerstone of the climate regime. The idea behind this framework

convention was that specific commitments to reduce greenhouse gases for each country, based on an overall calculation of how much reduction

had to take place to prevent dangerous climate change, would be adopted in subsequent protocols to the Convention. The UNFCCC does ask all

countries to report on their greenhouse gas emissions, as Parties were hoping this would provide an incentive for individual countries to reduce

these emissions. But it was recognized that these and other commitments were difficult for developing countries to fulfill if no new and additional

financial support was generated to help them with these obligations. Thus, the Convention included an obligation for Northern countries to provide

such new and additional support.

The Kyoto Protocol

Immediately after the Rio Conference, negotiations continued on a first protocol. In 1997, the Parties to the UNFCCC succeeded to adopt a first

protocol at their Conference of the Parties in Kyoto, Japan. This Kyoto Protocol does include an annex with specific legally binding commitments to

reduce greenhouse gas emissions per country. In line with the principle that developed countries should take the lead, this annex only includes the

highly polluting developed countries, so-called “Annex 1 countries”.

Regretfully, the actual commitments taken up in the Kyoto protocol, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by on average 5.2% compared to 1990

levels in 2012, were far too low to halt climate change. So it was clear from the outset that an additional protocol would be needed with much more

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ambitious reduction targets for the period after 2012. It took the Parties to the FCCC almost 10 years to agree on a plan of action to negotiate such

a new protocol. But even this so-called Bali Plan of Action, which was adopted in 2006, was not complied with – the protocol was supposed to have

been in place by 2009, but some of the most polluting developed countries, including in particular the United States, refused to commit themselves

to legally binding commitments to reduce their emissions. Instead, these countries insisted on developing countries like China and India to take up

legally binding reduction commitments as well. But the per capita emissions of these countries are still about 5 to 20 times lower than the per capita

emissions in the USA, which implies that calling for the same action from these countries is violating the common but differentiated responsibilities

principle enshrined in the Convention. So these countries, and other developing countries united in the so-called Group of 77 (G77) have refused to

engage in negotiations about legally binding commitments for developing countries. Instead, they insist that the financial commitments in the

Convention are fulfilled, so that enough financial resources are made available to help them implement the different actions mentioned in the UNFCCC.

As a result of this profound dispute, the UNFCCC negotiations are currently in a total deadlock. Not only the USA, but also countries like Japan,

Canada, Australia and Russia have already announced they will not join a second protocol, while developing countries continue to insist on previous

decisions of the Conference of the Parties that clearly state such a second protocol for what is called the “post-Kyoto period” should be agreed

upon. No significant breakthrough in this conflict is expected at the upcoming Conference of the Parties in December 2011, and the chances for a

breakthrough in 2012 are very low. As we will see below, this has severe implications for the overall climate regime.

Forests in the Climate Convention

The original FCCC negotiators already recognized that deforestation and other forms of land use change were important sources of emissions. For

that reason, an article was included that states:

“All Parties, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development

priorities, objectives and circumstances, shall…Promote sustainable management, and promote and cooperate in the conservation

and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, including

biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems.16”

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16 Article 4.1 (b) of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Rio de Janeiro, 1992http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf

The Convention makes it clear that developed countries are supposed to provide financial support to enable developing countries to implement this

commitment. In the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, more specific commitments were included regarding the so-called Land Use, Land Use Change and

Forestry (LULUCF) sector, but as explained these specific commitments applied to Annex 1 countries, that is, the developed countries minus the

USA, only.

In order to report properly on their greenhouse gas emissions and their emission reductions, methodologies had to be developed to calculate

greenhouse gas emissions. It was recognized from the outset that it is highly complicated to calculate the precise amount of emissions that are

caused by deforestation and other forms of land use. It is known that forests store carbon in their steams, roots, branches and leaves, and it seems

clear this carbon will be emitted in the form of carbon dioxide, the most well-known greenhouse gas, if forests are burnt or otherwise destroyed. But

as explained in chapter one, forests play more roles in climate change. They also influence rain patterns, have a cooling effect on the local climate

by providing shade and include a lot of small plants and other undergrowth aside from trees. It is increasingly recognized that a significant amount

of carbon is actually stored in the soils of healthy ecosystems. So simply counting the number of trees that grow in a forest and estimate the amount

of carbon that will be released if those trees are burnt or cut is an overly simplistic methodology.

In 1997, negotiators once again run out of time, so while a clause was included that allowed Annex 1 countries to take into account the carbon stored

by growing trees, the decisions on the proper methodologies to calculate greenhouse gas emissions were postponed. Only in 2001, at the Conference

of the Parties (and Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol) in Marrakesh, Morocco, a number of accords were adopted that elaborated definitions

and rules to calculate the emissions caused by forest loss and other forms of land use change.

One remarkable feature of these Accords is the definition of “forests” that was adopted. This definition was based on a definition used by the forestry

department of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, a department that, until then, had merely focused on timber production. It was

heavily influenced by forestry practices in Europe and other Northern countries where there had been a century long tradition of replacing biologically

diverse forest ecosystems with pine tree monocultures. These monocultures were still called “forests”, despite the fact that they lacked undergrowth

or biodiversity in general. But the climate negotiators were merely interested in the amount of carbon stored in the trees themselves, as that was the

factor they could most easily calculate. Thus, the following definition was adopted:

(a) “Forest” is a minimum area of land of 0.05-1.0 hectares with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10-30 per

cent with trees with the potential to reach a minimum height of 2-5 metres at maturity in situ. A forest may consist either of closed forest

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formations where trees of various storeys and undergrowth cover a high proportion of the ground or open forest. Young natural stands

and all plantations which have yet to reach a crown density of 10-30 per cent or tree height of 2-5 metres are included under forest, as

are areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily unstocked as a result of human intervention such as harvesting

or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest;

Because of these accords, a so-called “Kyoto forest” includes any kind of monoculture tree plantation and even areas that are clearcut, provided

they are “expected” (at an undefined date) to revert to forests. The definition does not necessarily exclude urban zones, in fact, it has been calculated

that significant parts of Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, are officially a “forest”, if this definition is applied.

It was immediately recognized in Marrakesh that the definition that was adopted might have some negative side effects, but once again, negotiators

run out of time. So they just agreed to try to develop “biome-specific” definitions, which never happened.

Negotiations on REDD

The only good news was that this flawed definition applied to the “forests” in Northern Annex 1 countries only, Southern countries were only bound

by the very general commitments in the original UNFCCC. It was not until 2005 that a group of countries took the initiative to ask for formal negotiations

on “policies and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries” (REDD). It has often been written

by advocates of the REDD agenda that forests were “excluded” from the FCCC until the REDD negotiations were started but that is legally incorrect

as the original climate convention clearly includes an obligation to promote forest conservation for all countries – taking into account that Northern

countries should take the lead in mitigating climate change. This original obligation also includes an obligation to “enhance carbon stocks”, and

after a few negotiation sessions the Parties to the Convention decided to include this activity as well. For that reason, they added the “+” to REDD.

It should be noted that different policy-makers often give a different explanation for the abbreviation REDD+. The official text as adopted by the

Parties to the Convention is:

“Policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in

developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in

developing countries.”

20

Not included in the UNFCCC itself are quantified commitments per country. While the original definition of REDD+ adopted by the Parties to the

Climate Convention – policies and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – does not specify whether the results

of such policies and incentives are to be quantified, the idea behind REDD+ was that it would be based on so-called result-based payments:

Countries, and actors within those countries, would receive a specific financial compensation if they succeeded to reduce a specific amount of

emissions from forest loss. This system of results-based payments is partly based on the original assumption included in the UNFCCC and other

agreements from the Rio 1992 conference that new and additional financial resources should be provided to developing countries that undertake

actions that do not only contribute to national environmental objectives, but also to international environmental objectives. In fact, the financial

mechanism to the Convention, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has already spent 1.6 billion USD on forest conservation projects that contribute

to global environmental objectives like mitigating climate change and conserving biodiversity. As explained below, the GEF also includes a small

grants program for NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations implementing projects that contribute to global environmental objectives.

Opportunity Costs

The other assumption that forms the basis of REDD+ is that the main reason forests are being destroyed is that their economic value is lower than

the economic value of alternative forms of land use like agriculture.17 For that reason, it has been suggested by many REDD+ proponents that the

so-called “opportunity costs” of not being able to undertake these more profitable activities should be compensated. The assumption is that such

REDD+ payments would make standing forests worth more than dead forests, as forest owners could claim, through carbon markets or public

funds, a significant price for the carbon stored in the forests.

It should be emphasized that the lack of economic valuation of forests has been identified as one of the main underlying causes of forest loss

indeed,18but it is only one of the underlying causes, and more recent analysis on the motivations Indigenous Peoples and local communities have to

conserve forests demonstrates that a general understanding of the many values of forests often provides sufficient incentive for people to conserve

forests, provided they are able to make a sustainable living through economic activities that do not require forest destruction.19So this economic

argument for REDD+ is contested.

17 e.g. Angelsen, A. (ed.), 2008. Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options and implications. CIFOR, BOGOR, Indonesia.18 Moussa et al, 199919 Global Forest Coalition, 2010. Getting to the Roots. Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation, and Drivers of Forest Restoration, Global Forest Coalition, Amsterdam,

December 2010.

21

A significant complication with the opportunity cost argument is that it depends entirely on the profitability of the different forest-destroying activities

that are to be compensated whether it is more attractive, from a purely economic point of view, to conserve forests or not. Moreover, the profitability

of these activities changes when the prices of the commodities produced increase. The current boom in food prices, for example, has significantly

increased the costs of REDD+ as it has become far more attractive to clear new forest areas for the production of crops like soy, meat and palmoil.

It should be emphasized that such price increases are often partly the result of government interventions – there is increasing evidence that biofuel

subsidies have played a significant role in the current food price crisis20.

Partly due to the biofuel boom, prices for products like palmoil are now so high that it is far too expensive to cover the full opportunity costs of

preventing the expansion of these crops. For that reason, some researchers21 have proposed REDD+ and other so-called payments for environmental

services should mainly focus on small farmers practicing shifting cultivation, as the economic value of these activities can easily be compensated

by REDD+ funds. The same researchers have suggested there is little economic rational to pay Indigenous Peoples for forest conservation, as most

Indigenous Peoples conserve their forests for cultural reasons anyhow, so there is no need to pay them, at least not from a merely economic point

of view.

Monitoring REDD

As explained it is highly complicated to calculate how much influence forest loss exactly has on the climate. Even the Norwegian Government, which

is by far the largest donor to REDD+, has admitted that:

“There are major scientific and political challenges involved in measuring carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation,

and in setting reference emission levels.”22

Monitoring carbon losses by deforestation and forest degradation is an extremely expensive process that requires highly professional Western

scientific skills. Indigenous knowledge includes comprehensive knowledge of the role of forests in influencing the climate, but this knowledge is not

20 Committee on World Food Security, High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, 2011. “Price volatility and food security. FAO, Rome, July 2011.http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/hlpe/hlpe_documents/HLPE-price-volatility-and-food-security-report-July-2011.pdf

21 Wunder, S. 2007. The Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services in Tropical Conservation. In Conservation Biology Volume 21, No. 1. 48 - 58, Society for Conservation Biology.22 http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md/Selected-topics/climate/the-government-of-norways-international-/why-a-climate-and-forest-initiative.html?id=547202

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quantified in the manner described by the Western scientists that elaborated the Marrakesh accords and subsequent accounting methodologies. As

a result, the well-paid job of monitoring and calculating forest carbon stocks is almost always taken up by outsiders. Even the participatory monitoring

schemes that have been developed in some countries are still dominated by well-paid outsiders that determine the monitoring rules and

methodologies.

Having said that it should be emphasized that specific communities can definitely benefit from certain REDD+ projects. Precisely because forest-

dependent community members tend to have very little monetary resources, relatively small financial contributions for something they were planning

to anyway – conserving their forests – can provide a significant contribution to their welfare. While REDD+ benefits are seldom shared equitably,

even a tiny share of the benefits can form a significant increase in monetary income for forest-dependent community for whom 10 dollars can imply

that they can buy school books for their children, conventional medicines for a sick family member or food in times when their harvests fail. For that

reason, local community members and their community leaders all over the world have already given their formal consent to REDD+ project

developers. As explained below, it can be questioned whether this consent was based on full and unbiased information about all the different aspects

of REDD+. Experiences in countries like Ecuador have shown that individual communities are more likely give their consent to REDD+ projects than

the national organizations or movements that represent them. The main reason is that the latter are aware of the impact individual REDD+ schemes

have on overall forest and climate policy, and their rights in general, while individual communities are, quite understandably, most concerned about

their own direct income in the short term – especially when their livelihoods are normally marked by economic hardship.

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Chapter 3:REDD+: Funds versus carbon markets

From the very first days of the Convention, there was a lively debate amongst negotiators about the way in which the convention should direct action

on the ground. The social-democrat politicians who still dominated environmental decision-making in the European Union in the early nineteen

nineties felt that the Parties to the Convention should prescribe, or at least recommend, concrete policies and measures that countries should take

to implement the broad commitments of the convention.

Carbon Trade

More neo-liberal policy-makers, especially in the US, proposed a “cap and trade” system. The idea was to agree on certain targets per country,

translate those into specific targets for each polluting corporation, and leave it up to those corporations to determine in which way they would reach

the target. To make the system even more market-oriented, the US proposed that corporations should be allowed to trade their emissions. That is,

if corporation A had received a target to reduce 5 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and corporation B had received a target to reduce 3 tons of

emissions, corporation A should be allowed to buy part of the emissions reductions of corporation B instead of having to achieve them all by itself.

This could be profitable if corporation B was an industry that could reduce its emissions in a very cheap manner, so that it was able to reduce more

than the 3 tons that had been assigned to it. The US had based this idea on its experience with its Clean Air Act in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

However, it should be pointed out that there are a number of important issues with this example. The Clean Air Act dealt with a number of specific

gases the emissions of which could easily be monitored with available technologies, whereas the sources of greenhouse gas emissions are very

diverse and include sources that are hard to measure like, in particular, land use change.23 It is also questionable whether the success of the Clean

Air Act was actually due to this trading system, or to the fact that it had set sharp and mandatory reduction targets. What could be argued, was that

the trading system made these sharp targets more palatable for the influential US industries, as it made it cheaper for these industries to achieve the

necessary reductions. These industries found an ally in a handful of large US conservation groups who embraced this cap and trade system as a

new and innovative manner to deal with environmental challenges and to obtain additional funding for their own forest conservation projects – if they

were to be included in this market.

25

23 Carbontrade Watch, 2003. The Sky is not the Limit. Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, few other countries were enthusiastic about such an emission trading system during the early days of the Convention. Almost all agreed

that mandatory targets for each developed country were needed based on a global assessment of the total reductions required. Not all were

enthusiastic about the idea to prescribe detailed policies and measures. But the US was virtually the only country actively pushing for a trading

system. Developing countries like Brazil, who played a strong leadership role in the early days of the Convention, were even less enthusiastic. They

instead proposed that countries that failed to comply with their target would have to pay a fine over the amount of emissions they had failed to

reduce. These fines would be collected in a special fund that could finance so-called “carbon offsetting” projects to reduce emissions in developing

countries.24

In the chaotic last days of the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the US saw a chance to merge its proposal with that of the Brazilians. The

participation of what was by far the largest polluter in the climate regime was considered crucial, so the US had pursued a lot of influence over the

negotiations. They simply refused to consider a Protocol that did not include a trading system between the countries that would take up mandatory

targets, and between countries that had targets and countries that did not. The latter system would be facilitated through what was now called a

Clean Development Mechanism – a mechanism where Northern industries could buy emission reductions obtained from specific projects in the

South.

The irony of the history of climate negotiations is that the US succeeded to get almost all what it wanted in the Kyoto Protocol – but once the Protocol

was adopted it refused to even sign it. As Larry Lohmann writes in his detailed analysis of carbon trading:

“Its environmentalist backers....were left in the odd position of having to champion an agreement largely written by the US for US purposes

based on the US experience and US economic thinking, but which no longer had US support.....a little tested idea spearheaded by a

small US-elite was now perceived as a global consensus and the ‘only show in town’.”25

26

24 Lohmann, L., 2006. Carbon Trading, a critical conversation on climate change, privatization and power. What Next Development Dialogue September 2006, Dag Hammerskjöld Centre,Uppsala, Sweden.

25 Lohmann, L. 2006. Ibid.

The Complexities of Forest Carbon Markets

The possibility to trade emissions creates a couple of complexities that have a strong potential to undermine the effectiveness of the climate

convention. It should be ensured emission reductions that are bought are real, so effective, non-disputable monitoring, verification and reporting

(MRV) systems and technologies are needed to avoid fraud. As explained before, this is a major challenge in forest projects, especially as the costs

are exceptionally high. As a recent report by a company with expertise in international commodity markets concluded:

“Assuming that forest carbon requires a quantification process similar to the one used today, there is no reason to expect that the market

for REDD forest carbon will behave any differently. The expertise, travel requirements and operational scale required to follow IPCC-like

standards almost certainly requires a multinational organization, one that is well-capitalized and capable of managing many clients at

once.

Will these organizations be numerous? Unlikely. Will they be domiciled in developing countries? It seems improbable. These skills

and scale cost money to deploy, and that – far more than avarice or inefficiency – explains why REDD projects are likely to spend so

much on MRV…… Forest carbon is likely to behave as any commodities market would, which implies that producers will derive only

marginal benefits from the market as a whole. Moreover, the unique logistical challenges posed by counting carbon to IPCC-like

standards imply a very limited population of providers willing to do this for projects.”26

Permanence

It should be ensured the reductions that are bought are permanent. This is already a challenge when it concerns industrial emissions, but in most

cases it can be assumed that a number of tons of greenhouse gases that are not emitted due to, for example, a cleaner production technology that

was installed in the plant, will not be emitted later on. However, an ecosystem like forests is per definition very vulnerable – it can burn, or be destroyed

by a storm or a flood. For that reason it has been pointed out that the carbon that is stored in forests is of an entirely different nature than the carbon

stored in fossil fuels like oil that have been resting for millions of years in reserves far below the ground. Forests can absorb some of the carbon that

26 The Munden Project, 2011. “REDD and Forest Carbon, Market Critique and Recommendations. The Munden Project, USA

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is emitted by burning such fossil fuels, but it will take thousands if not millions of years before such carbon is converted into a relatively stable stock

that cannot be lost by a storm, fire, drought or other “climatic extreme”. This issue is even more important these days as climate change itself is

leading to a more frequent occurrence of phenomena like forest fires (often caused by excessive drought), storms and floods. It should be noted

that Northern countries, which are supposed to report on emissions caused by forest loss, have been proposing for years that emissions caused by

such “force majeure” in the forest sector are excluded from the calculations. But such exclusion would undermine the climate regime, as the climate

itself does not mind whether certain emissions are intentional or not. In fact, it is broadly feared the failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to

the level needed will cause the climate to reach a certain “tipping point” in the coming decades or even years, after which things will spiral out of

control due to an unstoppable set of ever more serious events including massive droughts and forest fires in, for example, the Amazon. Small specific

projects to conserve relatively small forest areas in the Amazon seem a bit naïve in the light of this tipping point theory, which argues that the

“permanence” of these projects might be seriously affected by a total collapse of the Amazon bioregion – a collapse that might have been initiated

already.27

Additionality

When trading involves a developing country that does not have a country-wide reduction target there is another complication: it should be ensured

that the project reduces emissions additional to the amount of emissions that would be reduced in a so-called “business as usual” situation, and

that those emissions are not displaced to another forest area.

The additionality question is one of the stickiest issues in the debate about forest carbon trade and performance-based payments in general. If a

project concerns reforestation (restoring a forests or establishing a plantation on a piece of land where there had been forests for the past 50 years)

or afforestation (establishing a plantation on a piece of land was originally, or at least for the past 50 years, was not covered by forest), it can be

claimed that the “business of usual” situation without the project would have been that the land would continue to be without forest. Even that is

disputable, as many forest lands in the tropics will naturally restore themselves are they have been cut down, in fact, many traditional shifting cultivation

systems in the tropics are based on this capacity of tropical forest lands to rapidly restore themselves if left fallow for one or two decades. Moreover,

there is an increasing tendency of tree plantations companies to claim forest carbon investments for tree plantations they might have established

27 http://www.whrc.org/policy/pdf/cop13/Amazon-Vicious-Cycles.pdfSee also http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/03/tree-deaths-amazon-climate

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anyway – in a recent proposal pushed by allies in the Brazilian Government to allow forest carbon offset funding for so-called “forests in exhaustion”

they are asking for carbon offset funding for areas where the companies themselves have exhausted the soil to an extent that it would normally not

be profitable to re-establish a tree plantation. Needless to say, such offsets would provide a subsidy for environmentally irresponsible corporate

practices that lead to soil exhaustion.

The additionality question is even more complicated when it concerns a project that pretends to reduce emissions by avoiding deforestation. It is per

definition hard to estimate what would have happened to a certain forest area in the absence of a REDD+ project. Forest carbon offset developers

are claiming that sound methodologies have been developed that can calculate the additionality of forest conservation projects, but as noted by

researchers like Alan Karsenty28 there is a significant risk of false assumptions combined with a strong incentive for project developers to engage in

such false assumptions – if the threats to the forest are exaggerated, they can sell more emission reductions to “reduce” those disputable threats.

In general, roads play an important role in increasing deforestation threats. So there is an overall incentive for governments who want to benefit from

forest carbon offset markets to construct roads into forest areas, as it increases the threats to these areas and thus the “additionality” of forest

conservation projects.

Leakage

The displacement of emissions caused by forest loss is euphemistically called “leakage” in climate circles. It often concerns more than just a couple

of drips. In fact, leakage could imply that the results of a REDD+ project are zero: If a specific forest area is threatened by agricultural expansion, a

project to avoid that area from being converted will normally lead to another area to be converted unless the demand for agricultural land is reduced.

Likewise, if wood consumption is not reduced, any efforts to reduce forest degradation in one area by reducing logging will per definition lead to

increased logging in other areas. There is thus a need to address the so-called “drivers” or “direct and underlying causes” of deforestation and

forest degradation.

Some conservation groups have proposed a so-called “nested approach” to deal with this problem. This approach boils down to a flexible

combination of specific projects and a national policy. While countries would be allowed to start with projects, they are expected to develop a national

28 Karsenty, A. 2008. The architecture of proposed REDD schemes after Bali: facing critical choices. In International Forestry Review Vol. 10(3), 2008 (pp. 443 – 457)

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policy that addresses the drivers of forest loss through more generic policies as well.29 However, most drivers are linked to international markets in

timber, and commodities that lead to forest replacement like meat, soy and palmoil. It has been emphasized by a number of countries with a high

stake in an effective climate regime30 that leakage will always occur as long as these international drivers are not effectively addressed. But the design

of the climate regime implies that there is little incentive for countries to address these international drivers as it is unclear who could claim the

credits31: if a reduction by the European Union (EU) of subsidies for the use of palmoil as biofuel relieves pressure on Indonesian forests that used

to be threatened by oilpalm expansion, is the European Union able to claim credits for this? Under the current carbon trading system this is not

possible, so while laudable, the EU would only be punished for the fact that it looses a cheap opportunity to replace fossil fuels with an alternative

that, under current accounting rules, seems to cause less carbon emissions.

Environmental Integrity

Due to the above-mentioned problems, which remain largely unresolved, there is a serious concern that the inclusion of forests in carbon markets

will undermine the effectiveness of the climate regime, or, as it is called in the negotiations, the “environmental integrity” of the regime. After all, if a

polluter can avoid reducing a ton of carbon by buying a ton of carbon from a REDD+ project that in reality does not reduce emissions, because the

project is not additional, not permanent, not well-calculated, or leads to increased emissions elsewhere, the main losses are with the climate regime

itself.

It should be noted that it was mainly the concern about potential fraud with estimating the additionality of forest conservation projects that triggered

the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (which by then excluded the US) to exclude these projects from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) when

they determined the rules of the game in 2001. The EU went even further: while it launched its own internal emission trading system in 2005 which

nowadays represents 97% of all formal carbon trade32, it decided to exclude the possibility of buying forest-related projects from the CDM. As a

result, only 29 reforestation and afforestation projects are currently registered to be financed through the CDM, which is 0.73% of all CDM registered

projects33.

29 Angelsen, A. with Borckhous, M., Kanninen, M., Sills, E., Sunderlin, W.D. and Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S. (eds.) 2009. Realising REDD+: National strategy and policy options. CIFOR, Bogor,Indonesia.

30 http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2007/sbsta/eng/misc14a03.pdf31 See also Humane Society International, 2011 “LULUCF Perverse Incentive for Bioenergy Must Be Remedied” in Special Bulletin, May 2011, HSI, Avalon.

http://www.hsi.org.au/editor/assets/Publications/HSI%20Special%20Bulletin%20Truth%20in%20Targets%20Part%202.pdf32 http://carboncapitalist.com/state-of-the-market-reports-released-at-carbon-expo/ last accessed on 24 August 201133 http://cdm.unfccc.int/Statistics/Registration/RegisteredProjByScopePieChart.html last accessed on 24 August 2011

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The exclusion of forest conservation projects from the CDM was considered a major defeat for the handful of large US conservation organizations

that had been enthusiastically lobbying to include such projects in global carbon markets. Using arguments that “forests had been left out of the

climate convention”, they continued a vehement campaign to include forests in carbon markets at a later stage, when the second protocol or another

successor to the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.

Voluntary Forest Carbon Offset Markets

They and other groups also put a lot of effort into promoting the so-called voluntary forest carbon offset market. This “market” concerns projects

outside of the formal regulated markets that are linked to the Kyoto Protocol. The actors involved do not buy emission reductions they can use to

compensate their own binding emission reduction targets, as it concerns projects that are not approved by the CDM. In many cases it even concerns

“buyers” who have no legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gases in the first place, for example US corporations. The main profit motive for these

uncontrolled deals is public relations: by investing in tropical forest conservation these companies pretend to contribute to mitigating climate change

by ‘compensating’ their emissions. These green marketing agreements have become remarkably popular the past decades. As early as 1997

companies like British Petroleum, American Electric Power and Pacificorp started investing in the Bolivian Amazon, financing the Noel Kempff reserve

as a presumed “compensation” for their greenhouse gas emissions at home.34 The Juma project is mainly financed by the worldwide Marriot hotel

chain: Guests at the luxurious Marriot hotels are told a small part of their generous hotel bill is spent on conserving forests in the Amazon, to

‘compensate’ for the emissions they caused during their stay. Especially airline companies have embraced these carbon offset projects as an easy

way to convince their passengers they do not have to worry about the emissions their flight is causing (it should be noted that another popular

strategy for airline companies to “reduce” emissions is to use biodiesel based on palmoil that contributes to massive deforestation in, amongst

others, Indonesia).

34 Densham, A., Czebiniak, R., Kessler, D. And Skar, R., 2009. “Carbon Scam: Noel Kempff Climate Action Project and the Push for Sub-national Forest Carbon Offsets”. GreenpeaceInternational, Amsterdam, October 2009

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Phases

Of course, REDD+ projects and policies can also be financed through public funds. As explained below, several bilateral and multilateral donors are

already providing significant amounts of public support for REDD+, especially for so-called “readiness processes”. These processes are aimed at

making a country “ready for REDD+”. Negotiators have started to talk about three phases in this respect. The latest decisions of the Conference of

the Parties (which were not adopted by consensus) suggest that REDD+

”… should be implemented in phases, beginning with the development of national strategies or action plans, policies and measures,

and capacity-building, followed by the implementation of national policies and measures and national strategies or action plans … and

evolving into results-based actions that should be fully measured, reported and verified;”35

It is generally assumed that the first phase and probably the second phase as well will mainly be funded through public sources. However, until

recently there has been an assumption by many policy makers and other actors that the third phase, the “results-based actions” will mainly be

financed through carbon markets. Many countries have proposed a “basket of funding approaches” in this respect, which is a technical term for a

combination of funds, and markets subsidized by those funds.

It is important to realize, however, that in the absence of the political will in key polluting countries to take up legally binding targets, there is a significant

chance there will not be any new binding climate agreement for many years to come. This implies that no global carbon market will be established

to succeed the current Clean Development Mechanism. As the EU has decided to exclude forests from its own trading system, which currently

represents 97% of all formal carbon trade, until at least 2020, chances of significant investments in REDD+ projects through mandatory carbon

markets are looking bleaker by the day.

The voluntary carbon offset market provides a significant funding source for forests as well. Partly due to the interest in REDD, the total value of

transactions surged to 178 million USD in 2010, although this number includes both direct investments in projects and indirect transactions. Until

2011, there have been a total of 432 million USD in transactions related to projects covering more than 7.9 million hectares in 49 different countries.36

35 Decision FCCC/CP/2010/Add.135 Forest Trends, 2011. State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2011. http://www.forest-trends.org/publication_details.php?publicationID=2963 last accessed 5 October 2011

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It is expected this funding source will not dry up immediately, but REDD+ project developers should take into account that part of this voluntary

market concerns a speculative market of companies that had started to invest in forest carbon offsets hoping that the carbon credits accumulated

would become profitable once a global mandatory carbon market would be established by a new protocol or other post-2012 agreement. Already,

carbon prices are at their lowest level ever due to the meager expectations as far as such an agreement are concerned.37 This implies that only

companies who invested in carbon offsets for purely philanthropic reasons are likely to continue doing so when there is no sight on a global agreement.

The rapidly increasing criticism on REDD+ by social movements and progressive NGOs, however, makes forest carbon offsets increasingly less

attractive from a public relations perspective. So this source of finance is increasingly unreliable as well.

37 http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL6E7J50VS20110805 last accessed on 25 August 2011

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Chapter 4:Existing financial flows for REDD+

Aside from the voluntary market, which is partly funded and subsidized by conservation groups and public funds, including public funds supporting

the work of these conservation groups, there are several existing funding schemes for REDD+ that were set up since 2007.

The Global Environment Facility

It should first be mentioned that the original financial mechanism of the Convention, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), includes a significant

funding window for forest conservation. Since its establishment in 1991, this joint initiative of the World Bank, the UN Development Programme

(UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has funded over 300 projects and programs focusing on forest conservation, totaling 1,6 billion

USD. Remarkably, on its website the GEF states:

“Since 2007, the GEF has increasingly provided resources for pilot projects focusing on REDD”38

without explaining what these REDD projects actually add to its existing efforts to fund projects to conserve forests, and use and manage forests

sustainably. It is to be expected that the 1.6 billion USD GEF has already spent on forest conservation has reduced emissions from deforestation

and forest degradation as well.

GEF also has a quite successful small grants programme for NGOs and community-based organizations, which has already provided 12000 small

grants to NGOs and communities in 122 countries, totaling 401 million USD. The program is administered by UNDP, and the procedures to access

grants are not overly complicated.39 However, applicants should seek the approval of the national GEF focal point(s) before submitting an application,

which can be complicated for Indigenous Peoples. A little over half of the projects funded until now concern biodiversity conservation initiatives, and

a significant proportion of these projects concern the conservation of forest ecosystems.

35

38 http://www.thegef.org/gef/SFM39 http://sgp.undp.org/index.cfm?module=ActiveWeb&page=WebPage&s=EligibilityQuiz

The World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility

The World Bank has always been an enthusiastic supporter of REDD+. At the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in 2007 in Bali, the World

Bank launched its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), even before the Conference of the Parties had formally decided to start serious

negotiations on REDD+. This has raised the concern that one of the main objectives of this initiative was to steer the REDD+ debate, rather than to

serve as a facility to implement this governmental proposal.

Despite, or perhaps because a large number of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations strongly protested against the establishment of the FCPF in

2007, the World Bank has made a lot of efforts to liaise with Indigenous Peoples and involve them in this facility. In 2008, as part of the design process,

the Bank organized three regional consultations with Indigenous peoples in Latin America, Africa and Asia. However, many Indigenous representatives

that participated in these meetings felt their objective was merely to convince Indigenous Peoples to support the FCPF rather than to consult them.40

The facility itself already became operational in June 2008. Since then, 37 countries were invited to submit project proposals. Until now, thirteen of

these countries (Argentina, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guyana, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Mexico, Nepal, Panama,

the Republic of Congo and Tanzania) have submitted what is called Readiness Preparation Proposals, which, if approved, are supported by grants

of up to 3.6 million USD. A total of 16 donors, including conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy, have promised and/or contributed a total

of 447 million USD to the facility.

On 25 July 2011, the FCPF announced that its Carbon Fund had become operational as well. 41This fund will provide payments for verified emission

reductions from up to 5 countries that have been declared “ready” for REDD+, based on a review of what they call their readiness package, which

is the REDD+ program description they prepared.

The World Bank Forest Investment Program

In 2008, the World Bank also set up a Forest Investment Program (FIP), as part of its Strategic Climate Fund, one of the Climate Investment Funds it

has set up to support programs to mitigate climate change in developing countries. According to the Bank

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40 That these events were merely organized to win Indigenous Peoples’ support for the facility than to consult them was made clear by a comment of one of the Bank staff members at theAfrican event: “How could I go back to the Bank Headquarters and tell my bosses that despite 5 days of consultations Indigenous Peoples still do not support me!”. Personalcommunication, May 2008.

41 http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/fcp/sites/forestcarbonpartnership.org/files/Documents/PDF/Jul2011/FCPF%20Update%20EN%2007-25-11_2.pdflast accessed on 18 August 2011

“The main purpose of the FIP is to support developing countries’ REDD-efforts, providing up-front bridge financing for readiness reforms

and investments identified through national REDD readiness strategy building efforts, while taking into account opportunities to help

them adapt to the impacts of climate change on forests and to contribute to multiple benefits such as biodiversity conservation and

rural livelihoods enhancements. The FIP will finance efforts to address the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation

and to overcome barriers that have hindered past efforts to do so.”

Until now, the Forest Investment Program has only disbursed 300.000 USD to the Democratic Republic of Congo and 300.000 USD to Burkina Faso

for the preparation of an investment plan, but the FIP Steering Committee has approved grants up to 60 million USD for 8 countries: Burkina Faso,

Brazil, DRC, Ghana, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Mexico and Peru.42 On top of this, 6 million USD has been disbursed to its own administrative budget.43Six

donors have pledged a total of 578 million USD through contributions to the Strategic Climate Fund. This includes 168 million USD from the US

government, 159 million from the UK government and 146 million from the Norwegian government.

It should be emphasized that a significant part of the investments by this fund will be in the form of loans instead of grants, which implies the money

will have to be paid back at some time. For example, it is stated that part of the funds will be used to facilitate

“scaled-up private investment in alternative livelihoods for forest dependent communities that over time generate their own value”.

However, it is unclear how it can be ensured that these livelihoods will be so economically profitable that it allows the communities involved to pay

back significant debts to the World Bank. It has also been pointed out that the provision of loans instead of grants is contrary to the principles of

climate justice and common but differentiated responsibilities, as it implies that developing countries, and communities within those countries, are

taking up the main burden for mitigating climate change.

The World Bank claims to be dedicated to prioritizing the rights and needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the implementation of

the Forest Investment Program. For this reason, it is in process of elaborating a dedicated grant mechanism for Indigenous peoples and local

communities.44 Four regional meetings and two global meetings to consult representatives of Indigenous peoples and local communities were

organized until now. No agreement between the Bank and the Indigenous Peoples consulted has been reached as yet, even though the Bank is

pushing the Indigenous Peoples to agree on the designated grant mechanism design proposed before November 2011, when it wants to formally

present the proposal. The latest draft of the proposal suggests that 50 to 75 million USD should be generated in grants to indigenous Peoples as

support, amongst others, for securing and strengthening customary land tenure and resource rights and traditional forest management systems,

42 http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/sites/climateinvestmentfunds.org/files/FIP%20CRP%206%20distribution%20of%20grant%20resources.pdf last accessed on 18 August 201143 See http://www.climatefundsupdate.org/listing/forest-investment-program last accessed on 18 August 201144 See http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/workingdocuments/3465 for the latest draft proposal. Last accessed 18 August 2011.

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support the development of pilot project proposals, for example for providing alternative livelihoods, and support for the involvement of Indigenous

Peoples in REDD+ policy development and the monitoring and evaluation of forest activities. Up to 77% of the overall funding will be granted to

Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the 8 countries that have been approved by the FIP Steering Committee.45

UN-REDD

Partly as a response to these World Bank initiatives, the UN Development Program, the UN Environment Program and the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the UN (which has traditionally been the lead organization for forests in the UN system), established their own, separate REDD+

financing mechanism, called the UN-REDD programme. Only three donor countries, Norway, Denmark and Spain have provided support to UN-

REDD until now, with Norway being by far the largest donor, having provided 84,406,889 USD of the total of 93,798,576 USD UN-REDD has received

until December 2010.46 Until December 2010, 12 countries had received a funding allocation of in total 51,350,441 USD from UN-REDD: Democratic

Republic of Congo (7,383,200 in total), Bolivia (4,708,000), Cambodia (3,001,350), Indonesia (5,644,250), Panama (5,300,000), Papua New Guinea

(6,388,884), Paraguay (4,720,001), Solomon’s Islands (550,000), Tanzania (4,280,000), The Philippines (500,000), Vietnam (4,384,756) and Zambia

(4,490,000). So only 60% of the total budget has actually been allocated to the countries, which does not imply that these countries already received

that money on their bank accounts: Of the 12 countries mentioned above only 7 had actually received (some of) their funding by December 2010.

In general, there is a significant concern by REDD+ recipient countries that funds have only been promised but not yet released – a UN administered

REDD database47 revealed in June 2011 that of the in total 7.7 billion USD bilateral and multilateral donors had claimed to have allocated to REDD+,

only 0.7 billion USD was reported to have been received by the recipient countries.

Norwegian Forests and Climate Initiative

A significant amount of this total 7.7 billion has actually been committed by just one country: Norway. The Norwegian Forests and Climate Initiative

was launched in December 2007 with a promise by the Norwegian Government to donate 3 billion Norwegian Krone (approx. 550 million USD) per

year to different initiatives to promote and implement REDD+ over a period of 5 years.48 As mentioned above, some of this money was channeled

through multilateral initiatives like FCPF and UN-REDD, but a significant portion was donated directly to a limited number of countries, as bilateral

45 http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/sites/climateinvestmentfunds.org/files/FIP%206%20Dedicated%20Grant%20Mechanism%20IP.pdf last accessed on 18 August 201146 UN-REDD Programme, 2010 Year in Review, published by UN-REDD, Geneva, Switzerland, March 201147 REDD+ Partnership, 2011. REDD+ Partnership Voluntary REDD+ Database Updated Progress Report, 11 June 2011, page 6, table 1. See http://reddplusdatabase.org/ 48 See http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md/Selected-topics/climate/the-government-of-norways-international-/why-a-climate-and-forest-initiative.html?id=547202 for more information

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aid. Brazil, Indonesia, Tanzania and Guyana are the main countries benefiting from bilateral support, with a little over 1.5 billion Krone (273 million

USD) destined for the Brazilian Amazon fund, 500 million Krone (91 million USD) granted to Tanzania and no less than 1 billion USD promised to the

Government of Indonesia. Moreover, a total of 250 million USD was promised to the tiny country of Guyana, which has actually hardly suffered from

deforestation until now. August 2011, most of these funds have not been released yet.

REDD Readiness

It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of the funding mentioned above is not so much destined for reducing deforestation itself, but rather

for what is called “REDD readiness” programs. These are national programs that are supposed to make a country ready for REDD. The programs

normally include a comprehensive assessment of the state of forests in the country, an analysis of the main causes of forest loss, capacity-building

in the calculation of the carbon stored in these forests, and some kind of participatory process to develop a national REDD program. They also

almost always include a REDD pilot project. These pilot projects show the real nature of REDD, as they are almost always based on the principle of

payments for environmental services. What is unclear, is who will pay the country, and the actors within the country, once the country is “ready for

REDD”. Performance-based payments to all countries that are currently preparing a REDD program will require billions of dollars per year, but at this

moment in time it is highly uncertain where these billions will come from. Most large donors have not yet made a firm commitment to contribute

money to REDD once countries are ready for REDD. There is a vague commitment by a large number of Parties to the Climate Convention at the

otherwise failed Conference of the parties in Copenhagen in 2009 that they would contribute up to 100 billion per year, but the internal plans of one

of the largest donors, the European Union, reveal that only a small amount of this money will exist of actual donations by the European governments.49

They count on a significant part of this funding to be contributed by developing countries themselves, but it is unlikely developing countries will have

the resources to provide results-based payments for halting forest loss for all forest owners and forest-dependent communities and Indigenous

peoples in their countries.

Due to the ongoing economic and financial crises, “austerity” and “budget cuts” are terms that far more frequently heard in the financial departments

of these potential donor countries that “generosity” and “increasing financial support to developing countries and their forest-dependent communities”.

The EU actually expects a majority of the funding “committed” to come from the private sector, arguably in the form of investments in carbon offsets.50

But in the absence of a global mandatory carbon market any time soon, this source of funding is, to say the least, highly uncertain. The only funding

source that is not expected to dry up in the short term is the voluntary forest carbon offset market, but as explained, this funding source is the most

unreliable of all. August 2011, the carbon price actually reached its all time low,51 and all market analysis are predicting this market will continue to

be in significant problems unless a truly ambitious mandatory target for emission cuts is set, which currently is a distant dream.

49 http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/articles/financial_operations/pdf/sec_2011_487_final_en.pdf last accessed on 25 August 201150 http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/articles/financial_operations/pdf/sec_2011_487_final_en.pdf last accessed on 25 August 201151 http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL6E7J50VS20110805 last accessed on 25 August 2011

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Chapter 5:REDD+ Risks

Their financial unsustainability in terms of depending on significant permanent funding flows, which are as yet totally uncertain, is just one of the risks

that are inherent to the current REDD+ proposals. A broad set of risks is related to the specific nature of forests as an ecosystem that tends to be

inhabited by people that are economically and politically marginalized, including in particular Indigenous Peoples.

Risks for Marginalized Communities and Women

Historically, in the absence of well-enforced regulations that protected them, forests have been destroyed in areas that were attractive for agriculture

or other forms of land use that were more profitable from a purely economic point of view. A noteworthy exception are forests that are found on

Indigenous territories or territories of local communities and ethnic groups that fostered strong cultural and traditional values about forest conservation.

But sadly , many of those groups were politically weak, and in many colonial and post-colonial regimes their lands were robbed away from them. As

a result, the forests that remain on this planet are, in overwhelming majority, located in areas that are relatively unattractive for agriculture or other

alternative forms of land use. They can be found in areas that are too cold (the boreal forests), too hot, too wet, or too hilly, and that have, partly

because they were not that attractive for agriculture or other economic activities, very scarce if any infrastructure. Their inaccessibility has always

been one of the greatest factors of survival of forests, and it is no surprise in this perspective that road building forms one of the most important

threats to forests.

Because they are relatively unattractive, many forests in the world became a refuge for Indigenous Peoples, ethnic minorities and other politically

and economically marginalized groups that were excluded or violently expelled from the more attractive agricultural lands. As these people tend to

have less monetary resources, they depend strongly on non-monetary resources, including in particular the many natural resources provided by

forest ecosystems. For millions of Indigenous Peoples, forests are their main if not only source of livelihood. Forests also play a particularly important

role for women. While the latest research52 suggests that women do not necessarily obtain more valuable products from the forests than men, these

products are relatively more valuable to them: due to the significant amount of time women spend on family and household tasks that are not

economically rewarded, their monetary income is much lower than the income of the male members of their family. The latter are far more often

41

52 http://blog.cifor.org/3803/in-the-management-of-forests-gender-matters/ last accessed on 25 August 2011

working in paid jobs, and other economic activities that provide them with a concrete, and on average much higher, income. As they have, on average,

far less money than men, women are not in a position to buy alternative products like charcoal when they loose access to forest products like

fuelwood, for example due to forest loss or conservation projects that block their access to the forest. This also implies that they become more

dependent on their husbands and/or other male members of the family who do have a (higher) income. The commercialization of forest products

thus has effects that do not only impact on the traditional values and social coherence of Indigenous and other communities, it also affects individual

members of those communities, including in particular women.53

Risks of Conflicts and Human Rights Violations

Due to the fact that forests tend to be inhabited by socially, economically and politically marginalized Peoples and communities, who often live in

areas that are remote from other human settlements, there is an inherent risk of conflict, human rights violations and further social and economic

marginalization in forest policies. On average, forest-dependent peoples have less political power than other actors like, often urban-based,

conservation groups, policy-makers and donor institutions. This means that they are far more likely to loose any conflicts that may arise over their

lands and territories. While the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples highlights a large number of rights Indigenous Peoples have

over their lands and territories, there is still a significant gap in the implementation of these rights. In many countries, Indigenous Peoples are being

discriminated against, their land rights are being denied, their cultures, languages and traditional knowledge systems ignored and serious human

rights violations including murder are still happening on an almost daily basis in countries all over this world54.

Elite Resource Capture

By significantly increasing the value of the forests upon which many Indigenous Peoples and politically and economically marginalized communities

depend, REDD+ is an inherent source of increased conflict with potentially serious negative impacts. Performance-based payments for forest

conservation come with an inherent risk of so-called elite resource capture55, the risk that rich elites, including urban elites, will try to obtain most of

the profits from these schemes.

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53 Lovera, S., 2008. Life as Commerce: The Risks of Market-based Conservation Mechanisms on Women. Global Forest Coalition, Amsterdam, 2008,http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Impacts-marketbasedconservationmechanisms-on-woman4.pdf

54 See for example UNGA, 2005. Note by the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, UNGA, New York.http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/513/14/PDF/N0551314.pdf?OpenElement

55 Karsenty, A. 2008. The architecture of proposed REDD schemes after Bali: facing critical choices. In International Forestry Review Vol. 10(3), 2008 (pp. 443 – 457)

The fact that performance-based payment schemes require detailed monitoring, reporting and verification of the carbon stored in forests increases

this risk even further, as the methodologies that are recognized by the FCCC are scientifically complicated and do not recognize non-Western

knowledge systems. This implies that forest-based communities and Peoples will almost always need the assistance of expensive technical experts

from outside the community to perform these tasks, even when these communities would take the lead in developing a project themselves. Recent

attempts with participatory monitoring are interesting, but fail to address the lack of equitable benefit sharing triggered by the difference in salary

levels between community members and the experts that tend to “build their capacity” in these areas. For example, the World Rainforest Movement

compared the per capita incomes of local communities and project managers involved in the Juma forest carbon offset project in the Brazilian

Amazon, and discovered that an average community member received 0.18 US dollar per day as a benefit from the project, while the project manager

was paid 25000 US dollar per month, while boils down to approximately 830 US dollar per day.56

To counter these inequities in benefit sharing, a number of NGOs57 have proposed that REDD+ schemes use more generic indicators for improved

performance, that is, that communities and countries are allowed to provide evidence of reduced forest loss by showing progress in developing

rules, regulations, measures and practices that indicate more socially and environmentally sound and effective forest policies in general rather than

measuring exactly how many tons of carbon have been saved. This proposal has many advantages, but it should be emphasized that it is incompatible

with a REDD+ system that is financed through carbon offset markets, as such markets require that the “seller” can demonstrate that there has been

real and verifiable reductions in carbon emissions to compensate for the increased carbon emissions that will be caused by the project the REDD+

project is offsetting. Without such evidence, there is a significant risk that the reductions are not real. This means there is no proper compensation

and the climate ends up with more greenhouse gases. So the environmental integrity of the climate regime requires that emission reductions are

carefully monitored, independently verified and not undone by non-permanence, leakage or other forms of unintended side effects.

For these and a large number of other reasons, including the ones mentioned in chapter 3, the NGOs proposing more generic forms of monitoring

reduced forest loss are strongly against the inclusion of forests in carbon markets. It should be emphasized, though, that it will also be complicated

to provide performance-based payments for forest conservation from public funding without accurate forest carbon monitoring, as the entire climate

regime, at least as it was shaped under the Kyoto Protocol, is based on the concept of specific, quantified emission reductions rather than a generic

56 http://www.redd-monitor.org/2010/08/02/juma-reserve-project-in-brazil-fundacao-amazonas-sustentavel-responds-to-criticism/#more-528757 http://www.redd-monitor.org/2011/08/23/redd-and-carbon-markets-ten-myths-exploded/

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approach to mitigating climate change. So generic indicators would probably require a very different approach to mitigating climate change and

halting forest loss than REDD+ offers – or at least than the way REDD+ is currently being designed and implemented in more than 40 countries.

Risks related to Land Tenure

Aside from these significant challenges with the equitable sharing of benefits of forest conservation under a quantified performance-based payments

regime, there are other fundamental risks of REDD+. Most REDD+ projects and programs are based on the principle of providing payments for

forest conservation or restoration to the owners of a certain piece of forests. That is, they demand some form of secure land tenure, like individual

property rights over land. This requirement is based on the presumption that REDD+ should only provide payments for forest conservation to those

people who actually have the right not to do so, and the underlying presumption of REDD+ is that landowners have the right to destroy the forests

on their land.

This presumption is actually quite remarkable. It assumes a rather extreme approach to property rights that claims an absolute freedom to do with

one’s property whatever one pleases. This approach might be supported by rightwing political thinkers in the US and other (former) colonial states,

but it certainly is no legal reality in most of the world - In fact, in the overwhelming majority of countries one needs at least a governmental license to

deforest one’s own property. In most countries in Europe, which has seen an increase in what is called forest cover the past century (although it

should be cautioned this “forests” includes significant amounts of monoculture tree plantations), it can be extremely complicated to obtain such a

license. Strict bans on deforestation are a normal rule in other countries as well. Countries as varied as Costa Rica, Bhutan, Switzerland and China

have successfully banned deforestation in their country, and even in countries like Paraguay and Brazil land owners are not allowed to destroy more

than a certain percentage of forests on their land – the old Brazilian Forest Code that is currently under attack allowed land owners in the Amazon to

convert at most 25% of their forests. In most traditional cultures, there are even stronger rules, social and cultural norms and taboos that prohibit

forest destruction, regardless of the question of who formally owns the land.

Yet, most REDD+ schemes are based on the assumption that a forest owner has the full right to destroy his forest, and that he thus needs to be

compensated if he chooses not to. Meanwhile, most REDD+ schemes ignore the rights of forest users, people and communities who depend on a

forest for their livelihood, but who often do not possess legally recognized property rights over that forest. This denial affects women and Indigenous

Peoples disproportionately, who often depend on nearby forest resources, yet often do not have clear property rights over those forests lands yet.

44

Due to strong and effective advocacy campaigns by Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations themselves, backed up by international instruments like

Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, many countries have initiated

processes to consider Indigenous claims to respect their territorial rights. However, in the overwhelming majority of countries there is still a very long

road to go before all Indigenous Peoples’ claims to land, which are often based on Indigenous customary law systems yet were denied for centuries

by colonial powers and/or dictatorial regimes, are fully recognized.

For many years, REDD+ researchers and policy-makers have been stating that land tenure rights should be clarified before an effective REDD+

regime can be put in place.58After all, if it is unclear who has the formal title over a certain piece of land, it is unclear who should receive the REDD

payment – presuming that the heart of REDD is formed by a payment for environmental services system. But there are simply no developing countries

where all land tenure rights, including in particular the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, have been clarified. Realistically, most developing

countries will need 20 to 50 years more before they have settled the many irregular and often highly immoral situations around land ownership that

they inherited from previous colonial and/or dictatorial regimes. And it has been cautioned that a rushed up process to legalize land tenure could

actually be detrimental for Indigenous Peoples and other politically marginalized groups, as there is a severe risk their claims will be denied or even

ignored in such processes.59So either governments will have to wait for 2 or more decades with implementing REDD+, or there is a significant risk

REDD+ projects will undermine or frustrate existing land claims of Indigenous Peoples, especially if they try to rapidly clarify any outstanding land

tenure claims.

In the absence of such full settlement, REDD+ will reinforce historical injustices by providing payments for environmental services to land owners

who have obtained their land through colonial occupation, abusing land entitlement and land reform regimes or even more blunt hand-outs during

colonial and/or dictatorial regimes. Moreover, by raising the value of forest land, REDD+ will make it far more difficult to settle these land claims as

it creates a strong incentive for modern day estancioneros and other large landowners to reject land claims by Indigenous Peoples and landless

peasants. These large land owners tend to have significant political influence – 95% of the parliamentarians in Paraguay, for example, are large

landowners themselves. REDD+ will thus have an impact on national policy-making in the field of land reform and settling Indigenous land rights

that goes far beyond the direct impact on specific sites.

58 E.g . Peskett et al. 2008 "Making REDD work for the Poor", A Poverty Environment Partnership (PEP) Report http://www.povertyenvironment.net/pep and Angelsen, A.(ed.), 2008. Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options and implications. CIFOR, BOGOR, Indonesia.

59 http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/939007/warning_over_redd_projects_excluding_rural_poor_from_forests.html last accessed on 29 August 2011

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Corruption and Bad Governance

A closely related problem is the risk of corruption and the lack of good governance in general in countries with high deforestation rates. As

Transparency International has concluded60 the forestry sector is prone to large-scale illegality and corruption, especially due to the fact that forests

are often remote and inhabited by politically and economically marginalized groups that are seldom able to seek access to justice when confronted

with corruption. Forest conservation is an international legal commitment for the 193 countries that ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, so

those countries that still suffer from high deforestation rates 17 years after this Convention entered into force are obviously failing to comply with

international legally binding commitments. This means their forest governance is, per definition, failing. In a 2008 comparison of the global corruption

index and some of the most important countries targeted for REDD+, it was concluded that 8 of the 21 countries belonged to the 30 most corrupt

countries of the world, 12 belonged to the 60 most corrupt countries and only 1 belonged to the 50 least corrupt countries in the world.61

The Risks of Market-based REDD

If REDD+ is mainly financed through voluntary carbon markets, which is increasingly likely, there are a number of additional risks that are inherent

to exposing local communities and Indigenous peoples to international commodity markets. An analysis of the Global Forest Coalition of the impact

of market-based conservation in five different communities revealed that

“The use of market-based mechanisms inevitably means that the odds are stacked against those in a weaker initial negotiating position.

This includes people with no legal land tenure and those unable to afford the considerable expense involved in the preparation of

environmental impact assessments, the delivery of environmental services, the fulfillment of a range of quantifiable qualification criteria

and the provision of upfront and operational finance, including insurance against project failure. This implies that market-based

conservation mechanisms will inevitably lead to increased corporate governance over biodiversity conservation, and erode the

governance systems of (monetary) poor communities and social groups including Indigenous Peoples and women.”62

60 Transparency International, 2009. Global Corruption Report, Climate Change. Transparency International, Berlin, Germany.http://www.transparency.org/publications/gcr/gcr_climate_change2#Individual

61 http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/05/risk-the-fatal-flaw-in-forest-carbon-trading/62 Global Forest Coalition, "Life as Commerce, the impact of market-based conservation on Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women", GFC 2008

46

These conclusions are fully in line with the predictions of the Munden Project, a consultancy firm specialized in international commodity markets, that

were mentioned above.63

The most significant impact reported in the same analysis was the sense of disempowerment felt by many community members. In all cases in the

study, local residents reported that their control over their forests and livelihoods had decreased because “the main decisions were now taken by

other actors”. Thus, communities that had their own governance systems promoting collective sustainable management of biodiversity became,

under the impact of market-based mechanisms, more likely to act individually (deliberately or otherwise) and pursue individual economic interests

such as jobs, profits and financial rewards. Traditional biodiversity-related knowledge was less likely to be shared, communal lands were more at

risk of being privatized and sold off, and biodiversity-friendly economic activities like bee-keeping were likely to be substituted by monoculture timber

plantations. The position of women within the communities was also affected, as women’s interests are more likely to be over-looked in commercial

transactions normally closed by men. Women have a disadvantageous position in monetary economies in general, as they spend a significant part

of their time on activities such as childcare, household management, procuring clean water and other goods for the family, which are not rewarded

in monetary terms. Moreover, women are generally underpaid also in the formal labor market,64

Many of these risks and concerns are also reflected in a major report by a Poverty and Environment Partnership of a large number of UN agencies

and (potential) REDD+ donors called “Making REDD work for the Poor”65. In the report, it is highlighted that REDD+ might lead to higher food and

land prices and that REDD policies and measures might have significant negative impacts on the communities that depend on forests for their

livelihoods. The report warns that due to the lack of information and understanding and a bias towards more visible activities than community forestry,

poor communities might be excluded from REDD benefits. High compliance costs could be a barrier for small producers as well. The report highlights

the risk of elite capture of the benefits of REDD and the risk of possible conflicts over land and carbon rights.

While forest carbon markets can bring economic benefits to local communities in the form of payments for forest conservation and tree planting, it

is important to analyze any economic costs in terms of decreased food security and food sovereignty and the loss of alternative sources of jobs and

income related to for example the establishment of labor-extensive tree plantations too.

63 The Munden Project, 201164 Global Forest Coalition, 2008, ibid.65 Peskett et al. 2008 "Making REDD work for the Poor", A Poverty Environment Partnership (PEP) Report http://www.povertyenvironment.net/pep

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Liability Risks

Another significant risk for Indigenous Peoples and local communities that become engaged in a REDD project, especially if it is financed through

the carbon market, is that they will be held liable if something goes wrong with the project. If the forest they were supposed to protect is affected by

fire, storms, droughts or other climate-related events, or illegally encroached upon by outside actors like plantation or mining companies, the

community that has signed a contract in which it committed to save forest will probably be held liable for the fact that less carbon was stored than

expected. They might have to pay a fee, or be confronted with an obligation to replant the forests. In some cases, the community might end up with

more costs than benefits from the REDD+ project.

Tree Plantations and Clearcuts

Significant additional risks arise from the fact that forests and monoculture tree plantations are treated as one and the same thing under the climate

regime. As described above, the definition that was adopted for Northern forests by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol includes any kind of monoculture

tree plantation, and even clearcuts. No separate definitions have been developed for REDD+, and the national REDD+ programs make it clear that

tree plantation establishment is one of the activities that can be financed with REDD+ funding. “Sustainable forest management”, which includes

so-called reduced impact logging, also qualifies, provided the logging companies can demonstrate that the activities financed with REDD funds will

lead to less carbon emissions than the original logging plans. Logging and tree plantation establishment have had serious negative impacts of

Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent peoples. From Brazil to Malaysia, one can find hundreds of examples of severe conflicts between

these companies and the Indigenous communities that aim to defend their forests against these environmentally destructive practices.66 Especially

tree plantations have a severe impact as they lead to the permanent take-over of Indigenous lands, while providing very little labor per hectare of

land. Meanwhile, as these industries are already profitable by themselves, even a relatively small financial REDD+ contribution to ‘improved timber

production practices’ like ‘reduced impact logging’ (as compared to so-called “business as usual” practices that are even more destructive) makes

these economic activities more profitable for investors, and thus triggers their expansion, to the detriment of Indigenous Peoples and local

communities. In many countries, tree plantation companies and the pulp and paper sector in general are actively lobbying to ensure a significant

amount of the available REDD+ funding is used to subsidize the establishment of tree plantations and ‘reduced impact logging’.

66 See http://www.wrm.org.uy for a large Lumber of examples of the negative impacts of tree plantations and jogging on Indigenous Peoples and local communities

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The Risks of Climate Change

Last but not least, it should be emphasized again that the main environmental threat to Indigenous Peoples and local communities is climate change

itself. The Global Humanitarian Forum has estimated that, already now, at least 300.000 people per year die and 325 million people are seriously

affected by the consequences of climate change, and this figure is expected to rise sharply.67Indigenous Peoples and local communities are at the

forefront of these impacts. Thus, any policy proposal that undermines the so-called ‘environmental integrity’ of the climate regime forms a serious

risk for Indigenous peoples and local communities. As explained in chapter 3, the inclusion of REDD+ in carbon markets triggers a large number of

questions about additionality, permanence, leakage, and the possibility to verify carbon reductions in a genuine, accurate but not overly costly

manner. These questions have not been resolved yet. The Parties to the Climate Convention are currently engaged in negotiations about policies

and methodologies that are supposed to resolve them, with a number of workshops planned for the coming years. Yet, it is the firm conviction of a

growing number of NGOs and social movements, that these issues cannot be resolved, as they are inherent to the REDD+ system. That would

make REDD+ a fundamental threat to the survival of thousands and possibly millions of people on the planet.

67 The Global Humanitarian Forum, 2009. The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis. Human Impact Report Climate Change. GHF.,Geneva. http://www.ghf-ge.org/human-impact-report.pdf

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Chapter 6:REDD+ Safeguards

Traumatized by the dramatic collapse of the Copenhagen conference in 2009, the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change worked

hard at the 16th Conference of the Parties that followed in 2010 to ensure they could at least pretend to have reached agreement on some issues.

The resulting “Cancun agreement” was not adopted by consensus, as required by the rules of procedure of the Convention; the Bolivian Government

persisted until the very last moment in its opposition to what it considered a far too weak deal that would allow global temperatures to rise to

unacceptable levels. So the formal legal status of the Cancun agreement is ambiguous, but it was nevertheless taken as a basis for the negotiations

that continued in 2011.

The Cancun REDD+ Safeguards

The Cancun agreement includes an elaborate decision on REDD+.68 It encourages developing countries to undertake activities to reduce emissions

from deforestation and forest degradation, to conserve and “enhance” forests and to undertake sustainable management of forests. Furthermore, it

requests countries to develop a national strategy or action plan, in which they are supposed to address drivers of forest loss, land tenure issues,

forest governance issues, gender considerations and the safeguards mentioned below, while

“ensuring the full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, inter alia indigenous peoples and local communities”.

Countries are also requested to elaborate a system to monitor forest loss and some kind of information system on the implementation of REDD

related safeguards, and what is called forest reference emission levels – which would form the basis to calculate the additionality of REDD+ efforts.

As mentioned above, these reference levels are supposed to describe the “normal” rate of forest loss, but policy-makers are currently struggling

with the question what a ‘normal’ rate of forest loss is.

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68 Decision FCCC/CP/2010/Add.1

All these activities are supposed to take place “in the context of the provision of adequate and predictable support”, and Parties, “in particular developed

country Parties” are asked to support the elaboration of national strategies and action plans, and the elaboration and implementation of specific

policies and measures and capacity-building activities. The Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention, which

is the main negotiation forum for the future of the Convention in general (there is a parallel forum to specifically discuss the successor to the Kyoto

Protocol), is asked to explore financing options for “results-based actions”.

An important breakthrough in Cancun was the adoption of an elaborate list of so-called safeguards. These safeguards aim to prevent some of the

potential negative environmental and social impacts of REDD+. They are included in an annex to the decision rather than the decision itself, but the

decision itself states in its preambular paragraph:

Affirms that the implementation of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 below should be carried out in accordance with appendix I

to this decision, and that the safeguards referred to in paragraph 2 of appendix I to this decision should be promoted and supported;

Several other clauses in the decision itself request Parties to promote, support69 and address70 the safeguards and to provide information on how

they are being addressed and respected.71 As the decision only requests Parties to respect the safeguards, they are not legally binding.

The full text of the REDD decision and the safeguards is included in annex 1 of this report. The most important safeguards for Indigenous peoples

and local communities are:

(c) Respect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples and members of local communities, by taking into account relevant

international obligations, national circumstances and laws, and noting that the United Nations General Assembly has adopted the United

Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

(d) The full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular indigenous peoples and local communities, in the actions

referred to…

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69 Paragraph 69 of decision FCCC/CP/2010/Add.170 Paragraph 72 of decision FCCC/CP/2010/Add.171 Paragraph 71 (d) of decision FCCC/CP/2010/Add.1

The rather ambiguous reference to the Un Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs) is the result of long and complicated

negotiations, as especially the US, which is the only country that still does not formally support UNDRIPs, opposed a more explicit reference to the

rights enshrined in UNDRIPs. Thus, this crucial instrument is only “noted” as one of the sets of relevant international obligations, national circumstances

and laws the Parties should comply with. Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, which includes an explicit and legally binding

recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples as well, is not even mentioned, but it is supposed to fall under the “relevant international obligations”

that are supposed to be taken into account by the 22 countries that ratified the instrument.

There also is an important safeguard regarding the potential impacts of tree plantations and logging operations that might be funded with REDD+ funds:

(e) That actions are consistent with the conservation of natural forests and biological diversity, ensuring that the actions referred to in

paragraph 70 of this decision are not used for the conversion of natural forests, but are instead used to incentivize the protection and

conservation of natural forests and their ecosystem services, and to enhance other social and environmental benefits.”

This safeguard is accompanied by a footnote that states

“Taking into account the need for sustainable livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities and their interdependence on

forests in most countries, reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the International

Mother Earth Day.“

This safeguard is open for mutual interpretation. In any case it seems clear that countries should ‘ensure’ that REDD+ funds are not used to convert

natural forests, and that they should ‘incentivize’ the protection and conservation of natural forests in a manner that is consistent with biological diversity.

However, it should be cautioned that there has been a tendency amongst forest policy-makers, and some large conservation organizations, to consider

the establishment of tree plantations as ‘consistent’ with biodiversity provided they do not replace what is called ‘high conservation value areas’ or

‘biodiversity hotspots’.72 The classification of such areas tends to take into account scientific values of biodiversity only, not the socio-economic value

of an area for Indigenous Peoples or local communities, for example as grazing land for their cattle or a source of traditional medicines and fodder.

This implies that ecosystems like drylands, savannahs and other grasslands can still be replaced by REDD+-funded monoculture tree plantations

that, in the eyes of timber producers and some conservation groups, lower the pressure on natural forests and thus ‘incentivize’ their protection.

72 See for example: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/forestry/sustainablepulppaper/plantations/

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The footnote includes an important reference to such livelihood issues, but regretfully it only asks countries to take such issues into account, which

does not necessarily imply that projects can be stopped on the basis of this safeguard. No other safeguard refers explicitly to the need to defend

the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples who are dependent on free access to forests and non-forest ecosystems. In the REDD+ guidance, which is

included in the same annex as the safeguards, reference is made to the need to implement REDD+ “in the context of sustainable development and

reducing poverty” and it emphasizes that the multiple functions of forests and other ecosystems should be taken into account, but this guidance

provides little legal guarantee that REDD+ will not impact on the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples. There is no safeguard or guidance that prescribes

the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of REDD+. This principle is embedded in the Convention on Biodiversity, which has been ratified by

practically all countries except the USA, but it legally refers to genetic resources only, not to the benefits of the carbon stored in an ecosystem like

forests.

So the legal value of the safeguards adopted in Cancun is limited. Having said that, as guidance and recommendations that should be taken into

account, the safeguards can play an important role in shaping national REDD+ related rules, regulations and action plans, which could be binding.

If Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and social movements representing local communities are able to influence national REDD+ policy-development

in an effective manner – building on the recommendation that they should participate fully and effectively in such processes – they can use the

safeguards and guiding principles as political arguments to elaborate them into concrete and hopefully binding rules and regulations that truly

safeguard their rights. They can also insist that addressing land tenure implies recognizing their territorial rights, and that addressing gender

considerations implies that the rights and needs of women should be respected in REDD+ policies and actions.

Safeguards adopted by REDD Donors

It is important to know in this respect that a number of REDD+ donors have already expressed their full commitment to the implementation safeguards.

The Norwegian Government, for example, has frequently expressed its commitment to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.

It states explicitly on its website that:

“All recipient countries that are selected as partners for the Climate and Forest Initiative must have the clear political intention of working

systematically to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and must later demonstrate this in practice. This work will include

developing and implementing national REDD strategies, and protecting the rights of local people and their opportunities for

development.”73

73 http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md/Selected-topics/climate/the-government-of-norways-international-/why-a-climate-and-forest-initiative.html?id=547202

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The three main multilateral REDD+ funds have adopted some guidelines or principles too.

The Forest Investment Program design document74 includes a number of criteria, including:

“Inclusive processes and participation of all important stakeholders, including indigenous peoples and local communities. Consistent

with relevant international instruments, obligations and domestic laws, FIP investment strategies, programs and projects at the country

or regional level should be designed and implemented under a process of public consultation, with full and effective participation of all

relevant stakeholders on matters that affect their distinctive rights, including in particular groups that historically have tended to be

marginalized such as indigenous peoples, local communities and women;” 75

FIP financed activities should, moreover, be consistent with, and/or complement, national sustainable development plans and be based upon broad

community support and effective collaboration between indigenous peoples and local communities, government ministries, private sector and

financial institutions in planning and implementing investment strategies. FIP should also seek to engage other major stakeholders such as major

groups identified by Agenda 21.

The design document subsequently refers to a set of guidelines that should be followed to ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous

peoples and local communities. The FIP also includes a so-called “biodiversity safeguard” which stipulates:

“Safeguarding the integrity of natural forests. Consistent with its objectives, the FIP should safeguard natural forests and should not support

the conversion, deforestation or degradation of such forests, inter alia, through industrial logging, conversion of natural forests to tree

plantations or other large-scale agricultural conversion. In particular, the FIP should safeguard high conservation value forests….”76

Aside from these specific criteria, the design document also includes a set of principles, including a principle that states:

“Contribution to sustainable development. The FIP should contribute to the livelihoods and human development of forest dependent

communities, including indigenous peoples and local communities, and should generate benefits to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem

services;” 77

74 World Bank, 2009. Design Document for the Forest Investment Program, a targetted program under the SCF Trust Fund. World Bank Group, Washington.http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/sites/climateinvestmentfunds.org/files/FIP_Final_Design_Document_July_7.pdf

75 Forest Investment Program Design Document paragraph 16 (d)76 Forest Investment Program Design Document paragraph 16 (g)77 Forest Investment Program Design Document paragraph 13 (b)

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The host institution of the FCPF and FIP, the World Bank, has a number of important safeguards in the form of 10 operational policies, including

Operational Policy 4.10 on Indigenous Peoples. 78 The Operational Policy demands that any project financed by the Bank that affects Indigenous

Peoples requires a screening by the Bank to identify which Peoples might be affected, a social assessment by the borrower, a process of free, prior

and informed consultation (not consent) with the affected Indigenous Peoples at each state of the project to “ascertain their broad community support

for the project”, and the preparation of an Indigenous Peoples Plan or Indigenous Peoples Planning Framework. According to the Bank Procedure

no 4.1079,

“free, prior, and informed consultation is consultation that occurs freely and voluntarily, without any external manipulation, interference,

or coercion, for which the parties consulted have prior access to information on the intent and scope of the proposed project in a

culturally appropriate manner, form, and language;”

The operational policy further stipulates that during the consultation process, methods should be used that are appropriate to the social and cultural

values of the affected Indigenous Peoples’ communities and that give special attention to the concerns of Indigenous women. The consultation

process itself is carried out by the borrower, but the Bank has to review the process to

“satisfy itself that the affected Indigenous Peoples’ communities have provided their broad support to the project.”

The operational policy states that

“The Bank does not proceed further with project processing if it is unable to ascertain that such support exists”.

Some special considerations should be taken into account when a project affects the ties between indigenous Peoples and their lands and related

natural resources –as is the case in most REDD projects. In that case, attention should be paid in the social assessment at the Indigenous peoples

Plan or Planning Framework to the customary rights of Indigenous peoples regarding those lands and resources, the need

“to protect such lands and resources against illegal intrusion or encroachment”,

78 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/EXTPOLICIES/EXTOPMANUAL/0,,contentMDK:20553653~menuPK:64701637~pagePK:64709096~piPK:64709108~theSitePK:502184,00.html79 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/EXTPOLICIES/EXTOPMANUAL/0,,contentMDK:20553664~menuPK:64701637~pagePK:64709096~piPK:64709108~theSitePK:502184,00.html

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the cultural and spiritual values that are attributed to such lands and resources and traditional management practices and the long-term sustainability

of such practices.

Paragraph 18 of the operational policy is particularly interesting for REDD+. It states:

“If the project involves the commercial development of natural resources (such as minerals, hydrocarbon resources, forests, water, or

hunting/fishing grounds) on lands or territories that Indigenous Peoples traditionally owned, or customarily used or occupied, the borrower

ensures that as part of the free, prior, and informed consultation process the affected communities are informed of (a) their rights to

such resources under statutory and customary law; (b) the scope and nature of the proposed commercial development and the parties

interested or involved in such development; and (c) the potential effects of such development on the Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods,

environments, and use of such resources. The borrower includes in the IPP arrangements to enable the Indigenous Peoples to share

equitably in the benefits to be derived from such commercial development; at a minimum, the IPP arrangements must ensure that the

Indigenous Peoples receive, in a culturally appropriate manner, benefits, compensation, and rights to due process at least equivalent

to that to which any landowner with full legal title to the land would be entitled in the case of commercial development on their land.” 18

The policy states that physical relocation of Indigenous Peoples should be avoided as much as possible, and should in any case not be carried out

without obtaining broad support for it from the affected Indigenous Peoples. The policy also stipulates that

“restrictions on Indigenous Peoples’ access to legally designated parks and protected areas, in particular access to their sacred sites,

should be avoided”.

In exceptional cases when restrictions cannot be avoided a process framework should be developed in consultation with the Indigenous Peoples

concerned, which includes a management plan developed with the participation of Indigenous Peoples. It also states that in such a case Indigenous

Peoples should

“share equitably in the benefits of the parks and protected areas.”

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There is an ongoing discussion whether these safeguards also apply to readiness processes. Remarkably, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility claims

these and other operational policies of the World Bank are not necessarily applicable to the REDD readiness processes it supports. It states that:

“During the Readiness process, the scope of application of World Bank safeguard policies will depend on the nature of the activities for

which a REDD Country Participant seeks support from the Readiness Fund”.

Instead, they ask the countries they fund to elaborate a Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment (SESA) that should “comply with World Bank

safeguards”. 80 The Bank claims that the FCPF funded readiness processes are just capacity-building processes, so there is no need to have them

covered by the operational policies. However, many readiness processes include pilot projects and there is no sound argument to claim that the

safeguards would not apply to such projects.

Moreover, it is clearly stated in the FCPF information memorandum81 that any

“Investment activities supported by the Facility through an ERPA will be expected to comply with the Bank’s applicable environmental

and social safeguard policies.”

The UN-REDD program has not adopted any strict safeguards or standards for its REDD+ activities. However, the UN-REDD Framework Document82

does highlight that the programme will be guided by the five so-called “inter-related principles of the UN Development Group”, including its principles

on gender equality and environmental sustainability, and in particular the UNDG Guidelines on Indigenous Peoples Issues.83 The latter are a

comprehensive set of guidelines based on amongst others ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIPs, as well as other human rights standards. In practice,

this implies that UN-REDD, as a UN programme, is expected to fully comply with UNDRIPs.

Important rights enshrined in the UNDG guidelines include the right to self-determination, which is interpreted as including, amongst others, the

principle of free, prior and informed consent. This principle implies that there is an absence of coercion, intimidation or manipulation, that consent

80 http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/fcp/sites/forestcarbonpartnership.org/files/Documents/PDF/Oct2009/FCPF_ en_soc_guidelines_10-15-09.pdf activities.81 http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/fcp/sites/forestcarbonpartnership.org/files/Documents/PDF/FCPF_Info_Memo_06-13-08.pdf82 UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, 2008. FAO, UNDP UNEP Framework Document, 20 June

2008, http://www.un-redd.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=gDmNyDdmEI0%3d&tabid=587&language=en-US last accessed on 25 August 201183 http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/UNDG_training_16EN.pdf

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has been sought sufficiently in advance of any authorization or commencement of activities, that respect is shown for time requirements of indigenous

consultation/consensus processes and that full and understandable information on the likely impact is provided.

It also includes the principle of full and effective participation of indigenous peoples at every stage of any action that may affect them direct or

indirectly. The participation of indigenous peoples may be through their traditional authorities or a representative organization. This participation may

also take the form of co-management.

Furthermore, it prescribes consultation with the indigenous peoples concerned prior to any action that may affect them, direct or indirectly. Consultation

ensures that their concerns and interests match the objectives of the activity or action that is planned. Regarding their lands and territories, the

guiding principles state that

Indigenous peoples’ land and territories should be legally recognized demarcated and protected from outside pressures

States should recognize the traditional management systems of indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples also have rights to lands used traditionally

Where lands have been lost for the purposes of national development, restitution or redress is recognized

All efforts should be made to ensure that indigenous peoples determine the activities that take place on their lands and in particular that

impacts on the environment and sacred and cultural sites are avoided

Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation have the right to live free in that condition and States should adopt adequate measures to protect

their territories, environment, and cultures

The guidelines also state that

“Indigenous peoples’ rights to resources that are necessary for their subsistence and development should be respected”

and that

“The spiritual relationship of Indigenous peoples to their lands and territories and environmentally sustainable practices have been

recognized and conservation efforts on indigenous lands, including the establishment of new and management of existing protected

areas, have to take place with the free, prior and informed consent and full participation of the communities concerned.”

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The guidelines also state specifically:

“In the case of climate change…indigenous peoples must fully participate in the definition and implementation of policies and plans

related to climate change impact mitigation.”

It is also noteworthy that the guidelines specifically state that the exploitation of resources on indigenous peoples’ lands by the private sector

“should be permitted only with their full consultation, participation, and free, prior and informed consent”

and that

“under current international law, the responsibility to comply with consent is applicable to States, and not private companies. States

have the responsibility to hold private companies accountable.”

Complementary to these guidelines, UN-REDD has developed a set of guiding principles for the UN-REDD programme on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples and other forest-dependent communities, which is part of its working document on Engagement of Indigenous Peoples & other forest

dependent communities. 84 The principles reiterate the commitment of UN-REDD to the UNDG principles and UNDRIPs. They also include a number

of additional guidelines on Indigenous participation in REDD+ development processes and the UN-REDD structure itself, which, admittedly, are not

fully in line with the UNDG principles and UNDRIPs. For example, the procedures deny Indigenous Peoples the right to elect their own representatives

through culturally appropriate procedures.

The Value of Safeguards

It is important to realize that these principles and safeguards are either not binding at all, or quite hard to enforce. The only exception are the World

Bank operational policies, as far as they are applicable to future and potentially to existing REDD+ activities funded by the FCPF and FIP. If one of

the safeguards is not followed by the Bank, affected people can submit a grievance to the World Bank’s independent inspection panel. However,

84 http://www.un-redd.org/Portals/15/documents/events/20090309Panama/Documents/UN%20REDD%20IP%20Guidelines%2023Mar09.pdf

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this is a very complicated and lengthy process, which requires significant financial and human resources. The Bank Information Centre has a number

of practical toolkits available for those communities that want to challenge the violation of the Bank of its operational policies:

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Page.Toolkits.aspx

The most important value of these safeguards, especially the safeguard on Free Prior and Informed Consent, is their political weight. Indigenous

Peoples’ Organizations at the national and local level and community representatives can refer to these safeguards and insist that they have the

right to participate fully and effectively in all decision-making processes regarding REDD+, including the development and implementation of specific

local REDD+ projects like pilot projects. The right to say “no” to REDD+ is an inherent part of FPIC. According to the FPIC principle, IPs and local

communities have the right to demand full and unbiased information in culturally appropriate forms and local languages. It is important that this

information includes information about the potential impact REDD+ might have on the climate regime and the potential impact of a weak climate

regime on Indigenous Peoples. It is also mandatory to present alternatives to the proposed REDD+ programs and projects – if a community can

only choose between REDD+ support for forest conservation or no support at all, it cannot be said it had a free choice – and thus there is no FPIC

Elements of a common understanding of free, prior and informed consent:

(i) What

Free should imply no coercion, intimidation or manipulation.

Prior should imply that consent has been sought sufficiently in advance of any authorization or commencement of

activities and that respect is shown for time requirements of indigenous consultation/consensus processes.

Informed should imply that information is provided that covers (at least) the following aspects:

a. The nature, size, pace, reversibility and scope of any proposed project or activity;

b. The reason(s) for or purpose(s) of the project and/or activity;

c. The duration of the above;

d. The locality of areas that will be affected;

e. A preliminary assessment of the likely economic, social, cultural and environmental impact, including potential

risks and fair and equitable benefit-sharing in a context that respects the precautionary principle;

f. Personnel likely to be involved in the execution of the proposed project (including indigenous peoples, private

sector staff, research institutions, government employees and others);

g. Procedures that the project may entail.

Consent

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47. Consultation and participation are crucial components of a consent process. Consultation should be undertaken in good faith. The parties

should establish a dialogue allowing them to find appropriate solutions in an atmosphere of mutual respect in good faith, and full and equitable

participation. Consultation requires time and an effective system for communicating among interest-holders. Indigenous peoples should be

able to participate through their own freely chosen representatives and customary or other institutions. The inclusion of a gender perspective

and the participation of indigenous women are essential, as well as participation of children and youth, as appropriate. This process may

include the option of withholding consent.

48. Consent to any agreement should be interpreted as indigenous peoples have reasonably understood it.

(ii) When

FPIC should be sought sufficiently in advance of commencement or authorization of activities, taking into account indigenous peoples’ own

decision-making processes, in phases of assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and closure of a project.

(iii) Who

Indigenous peoples should specify which representative institutions are entitled to express consent on behalf of the affected peoples or

communities. In free, prior and informed consent processes, indigenous peoples, United Nations organizations and Governments should

ensure a gender balance and take into account the views of children and youth, as relevant.

(iv) How

Information should be accurate and in a form that is accessible and understandable, including in a language that the indigenous peoples will

fully understand. The format in which information is distributed should take into account the oral traditions of indigenous peoples and their

languages.

(v) Procedures/mechanisms

Mechanisms and procedures should be established to verify free, prior and informed consent as described above, inter alia, mechanisms of

oversight and redress, including the creation of national ones.

As a core principle of free, prior and informed consent, all sides in a FPIC process must have equal opportunity to debate any proposed

agreement/development/project. “Equal opportunity” should be understood to mean equal access to financial, human and material resources

in order for communities to fully and meaningfully debate in indigenous language(s), as appropriate, or through any other agreed means on

any agreement or project that will have or may have an impact, whether positive or negative, on their development as distinct peoples or an

impact on their rights to their territories and/or natural resources.

Free, prior and informed consent could be strengthened by establishing procedures to challenge and to independently review these processes.

Determination that the elements of free, prior and informed consent have not been respected may lead to the revocation of consent given.85

85 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 2005. Report of the International Workshop on Methodologies regarding Free, Prior and Informed Consent and Indigenous PeoplesE/C.19/2005/3, available at: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/243/26/PDF/N0524326.pdf?OpenElement

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The right to FPIC, in combination with the right to participate fully and effectively in the development and implementation of REDD+ policies and

projects, should theoretically give Indigenous Peoples and representatives of communities an important opportunity to ensure REDD+ benefits rather

than harms them. Global, regional and national Indigenous Peoples’ networks and organizations have definitely played a powerful role in influencing

REDD+ policies the past years, and the adoption of the above-mentioned safeguards and guidelines has very much been the result of their work.

Having said that one should not underestimate the challenges that Indigenous Peoples and local communities who want to participate ‘fully and

effectively’ in REDD+ design face. As described before, the fundamental problem with REDD+ is that it significantly increases the economic value

of forests, which implies that economically and politically powerful actors will try to obtain some financial interest from the carbon value of forests.

These actors are well positioned to manipulate national and local policy-making processes to their advantage. Especially at the national and certainly

at the local level, Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and social movements representing farming, pastoralist and other rural communities still suffer

from a severe lack of capacity in terms of human and financial resources and access to neutral information. They can easily be overshadowed by

often far better resourced conservation NGOs and other actors with a clear economic stake in REDD+. Even when a national Indigenous Organization

uses its right to say “no” to REDD+, it still risks being squarely ignored by its Government and donors alike. This was recently shown in Ecuador,

where the Government is going ahead with a process presumably seeking FPIC for its REDD+ policy while the national federation of Indigenous

Peoples has already used its right to say “No” to REDD.86

86 http://www.movimientos.org/enlacei/show_text.php3?key=19549

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Chapter 7:Alternatives to REDD+

Indigenous Peoples seldom need to be convinced to conserve their forests – all over the world they have been highly successful in conserving and

restoring their forest carbon stocks. All over the world one can also find examples of successful initiatives by non-indigenous communities to conserve

and restore their forests. A recent study87 concluded that deforestation rates in forests that are managed by communities are in fact lower than

deforestation rates in areas that are formally protected. As long as a community is able to develop a livelihood strategy that is not dependent on the

permanent conversion of forests or the overexploitation of resources like fuelwood and charcoal, there is ample scope for forest conservation and

restoration.88 Most forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples and local communities have developed such alternative livelihood strategies.

Appropriate Incentives

There is a strong need for legal, political and financial support for forest conservation and restoration initiatives by Indigenous Peoples and local

communities. Incentive schemes in the broadest sense of the word are needed, that respect and build upon the rights and customary laws of

Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Such schemes should:

provide a broad range of social, cultural, legal and economic incentives for forest conservation and sustainable use, especially by Indigenous

Peoples and local communities. Conservation is and should be part of cultural identity and pride;

ensure that incentive schemes and other forest policies recognize, respect and/or are based on the historical territorial and use rights of Indigenous

Peoples and local communities;

ensure that incentive schemes and other forest policies recognize and support the significant contribution of Indigenous territories and community

conserved areas to forest conservation;

ensure that such incentive schemes do not undermine the customary governance systems of Indigenous territories and community conserved

areas, and the values that have lead to their success in terms of forest conservation.89

87 Porter-Bolland, L.; Ellis, E.A.; Guariguata, M.R.; Ruiz-Mallén, I.; Negrete-Yankelevich, S.; Reyes-García, V, 2011. Community managed forests and forest protected areas, an assessmentof their conservation effectiveness across the tropics. Forest ecology and management. 2011. See http://www.cifor.org/nc/online-library/browse/view-publication/publication/3461.html

88 Global Forest Coalition, 2010. Ibid.89 http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/es/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/REDD_esp1.pdf

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Biocultural Rights

According to the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent, Indigenous Peoples should receive proper and unbiased information on REDD+ and the

alternatives to REDD+. Subsequently, they are entitled to elaborate their own proposals as a basis for negotiating an agreement they can consent with.

As highlighted in the introduction, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly recognizes the biocultural rights of Indigenous

Peoples, that is their rights to their territories and lands as a basis for the cultures, livelihoods and very existence. The two most relevant biocultural

rights enshrined in UNDRIPs Indigenous Peoples should be aware of when they are confronted with REDD+ programs and initiatives are:

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and

other resources. (Art. 32.1)

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to

obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in

connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources. (Art. 32.2)90

As stated above, all UN agencies have committed themselves to complying with these rights through the adoption of the UN Development Group

guidelines, and many national Governments have indicated their intention to respect these rights in REDD+ initiatives as well. It should be highlighted

that these biocultural rights do not only apply to REDD+ initiatives, they also apply to other forest-related programs and initiatives.

Biocultural Protocols

To ensure that the REDD+ project or its alternative is developed in a bottom-up instead of a top-down manner, the community should be able to

develop its own vision on what it aspires. In line with UNDRIPs, the community should be enabled to ‘determine and develop priorities and strategies

for the development or use of their lands or territories’. Biocultural protocols can play a very important role in this process. The objectives of a Biocultural

Protocol are to articulate how indigenous peoples practice conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Biocultural protocols provide parameters

for discussion within and among communities and between communities and other actors.

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90 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html

The concept is derived from the concept of collective/indigenous “biocultural heritage”. In constitutes a process of community empowerment,

maintenance of culture, and collective thinking about new issues and emerging legal frameworks, which should lead to livelihood improvement by

securing communities’ rights to their natural resources and traditional knowledge, emphasizing the dynamic and innovative nature of tradition. It

links to ecosystems and landscapes and recognizes economies based on biodiversity and culture and intercultural practice. It links different cultures

and economies under a respect-based process. Intrinsic elements include the rights of “Pacha mama” (Mother Earth) and “Ayni” (reciprocity) as the

basis of exchanges. The concept embraces an integrated approach to rights and links customary laws and positive law systems in a reciprocal,

complementary and supportive way to achieve “equity”.91

While there is no standard outline for a biocultural protocol, as it should be fully adapted to local circumstances, a possible outline of a biocultural

protocol could be a description by the community itself of:

Who they are

Their traditional territory

Their rights under international, national and customary law

Their customary laws regarding their forests and lands

The pressures they face

Their preferred development path

Their preferred way of being informed about and consulted on policies, projects and schemes proposed by outside actors

Their views on schemes and projects proposed by outsiders, like REDD+. This would include both the question whether they want the scheme

in the first place and the question how they would want to scheme if they want it.92

Precisely because they form a bottom-up culturally appropriate process of identifying and consolidating conservation and sustainable management

practices on the basis of cultural and traditional value systems, Biocultural Protocols can provide a very important basis for a sound FPIC process.

They allow communities to identify their own aspirations first, which can then be used as a basis for the culturally appropriate negotiation process that

a sound FPIC procedure should entail. Biocultural protocols can also assist in clarifying community membership and leadership, the full tenural rights

of the community, their rights under national and international law, any customary laws relating to their forests, and any values that should be taken

into account as part of an FPIC process. A sound Biocultural Protocol should be based on proper mapping of the territories and forest resources of

91 http://www.cbd.int/abs/side-events/ICNP1/potato-park-aargumedo.pdf92 See also: Wood, P. “Bio-cultural Community Protocols and REDD”, in Bavikatte, K. And Jonas, H. (ed.)“Bio-cultural community protocols, A Community Approach to Ensuring the

Integrity of Environmental Law and Policy”, United Nations Environment Program, 2009. http://www.unep.org/communityprotocols/PDF/communityprotocols.pdf

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the community, which is often an important empowering process for the community by itself, especially when it has access to modern technologies

such as geographic information systems and global positioning systems. By articulating customary laws and cultural and traditional knowledge and

practices, Indigenous peoples and local communities are able to document their own incentive systems for forest conservation and align international

support systems like potential REDD+ schemes to such bio-cultural systems.

As mentioned above, FPIC procedures in REDD+ development processes are almost always conducted by actors who have a very strong stake in

ensuring consent with the project – a project developer, or a country designing a REDD+ policy under the promise that, once it is “ready” for REDD+,

significant amounts of funding will follow for implementation. These actors are far from neutral, and will thus tend to present REDD+ as the only

alternative possible. By first developing their own Biocultural protocol, Indigenous Peoples and local communities can identify what they really aspire,

and subsequently make an informed decision whether the REDD+ policy or project would contribute to these aspirations, or whether an alternative

is needed.

As mentioned above, Biocultural Protocols can form a very powerful tool for identifying, documenting and sustaining such alternative livelihood

strategies that allow Indigenous Peoples and local communities to –continue to – live in harmony with their forests. They can form the basis for local

safeguard systems. Whereas the international safeguards adopted by the majority of the Parties to the FCCC and the different donors tend to be

hard to enforce, very non-specific, and often influenced by corporate interests, Biocultural protocols tend to be far more detailed and based on the

rights, needs and aspirations of local communities themselves. By insisting on and effectively using their rights to Free Prior and Informed Consent,

which are binding for countries that ratified ILO Convention 169, initiatives funded by the UN and de facto for initiatives funded by the World Bank (as

their operational policies require community consent), Indigenous Peoples can take the lead in developing their own safeguards and modalities for

projects. Moreover, the compliance with these safeguards and modalities is often secured by social control systems within the communities

themselves. Biocultural protocols also form a tool to ensure the rights, needs and aspirations of women are fully integrated into local livelihood

systems.

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Chapter 8:Conclusions and Outlook

REDD+ is based on two assumptions: that performance-based payments are a very effective way to conserve and restore forests, and that significant

amounts of money will be available in the near future to finance such performance-based payments. However, the financial future of REDD+ looks

very bleak at the moment. Carbon markets have proven to be a highly uncertain and volatile form of finance, which might soon dry up if no legally

binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are agreed upon. Sadly, perspectives for significant amounts of public funding look bleak as

well, with the 100 billion US dollar that was promised in Copenhagen being nothing but a vague and partially empty promise. There is a significant

risk that the millions of dollars that are currently being invested will be wasted on the design of overly expensive REDD+ projects trying to sell carbon

credits that will never find a buyer or otherwise be funded, no matter how well they “perform”.

Happily, Indigenous Peoples and local communities all over the world have demonstrated that they have a large number of motivations to conserve

and restore forests, provided their territorial and land tenure rights are respected. While some well-targeted and culturally appropriate financial support

for alternative livelihood systems can play a useful role, legal and political support for their forest governance systems are at least as important. Both

the development of Biocultural Protocols and the maintenance of sustainable livelihood systems that foster forest conservation need political and

other forms of support.

However, the sustainable livelihood systems of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are severely threatened by outside pressures, including

in particular the demand for land and wood. Land grabbing for bioenergy production and other forms of agricultural expansion is currently threatening

Indigenous lands and territories all over the world. Increasing consumption of meat and diary products is a major factor in increased forest loss and

land grabbing as well. The failure to reduce wood consumption to sustainable levels is another major cause of forest degradation, and while fuelwood

used to be a minor cause of forest loss only, rapidly increasing demand for fuelwood and charcoal by urban centers and even newly established

industrial bioenergy plants is turning it into an increasingly significant driver of forest loss.93

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93 Global Forest Coalition, 2010. Ibid.

Drivers

Performance-based payments for forest conservation will not address these drivers. Per definition, overconsumption of products like meat and energy

cannot be addressed by REDD+. Rather, it requires regulations, levies and other economic incentives and awareness-building schemes that target

consumers who often live on the other side of the planet. Even simple policy coherence would already be helpful: the same countries that are currently

pouring billions of dollars into REDD+ also pour billions of dollars into the promotion of bio-energy and other markets that constitute major drivers

of forest loss. Even more cynically, by subsidizing bio-energy they also increase the costs of REDD+, as they will need to offer more compensation

for not converting forests into palm oil plantations and other bio-energy feedstock.

Biocultural protocols and Local safeguards

Biocultural protocols and support schemes for Indigenous Peoples territories and community-driven forest conservation projects can help Indigenous

and non-Indigenous communities resisting these outside pressures. They also strengthen the capacity of Indigenous Peoples and local communities

to stand up for their rights, especially the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent, when they are confronted with REDD+ projects and policies.

Biocultural protocols can help them to identify, document and elaborate their own rights, aspirations and locally specific safeguards and standards,

which can form a basis for their negotiators with REDD+ project developers.

Biocultural protocols and locally specific safeguards and standards are not only important for REDD+ projects and policies. Due to the significant

uncertainty over its financial future, REDD might be dead in a few years, but forests must be kept alive. There is a strong need to develop and

strengthen socially, environmentally and financially sustainable forest policies beyond REDD. Recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local

communities to manage their own forests has proven to be a particularly powerful incentive for forest conservation and restoration. Countries like

Gambia, Bhutan and Rwanda, that never received any REDD+ funding94, have been highly successful in reducing and even reverting their forest

loss by granting community ownership or control over forest areas and strengthening traditional conservation values.

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Financial support can definitely play a role in supporting Indigenous Peoples territories and community initiatives to conserve forests too, but analysis

of the incentives that convince communities and Indigenous Peoples to conserve and restore their forests has learned that cultural and traditional

value systems and a general awareness of the role, functions and values of forest ecosystems in providing livelihoods tend to be at least as important

as financial incentives. Moreover, these other incentives form a far more sustainable basis for conservation – if the billions that were promised for

future REDD+ schemes turn out to be an illusion, as seems increasingly the case, individuals who only conserved their forests for financial reasons

will quickly return to their destructive practices, whereas Indigenous and other communities that conserved forests for cultural reasons will continue

to do so.

Even the participatory policy development processes that form part of the REDD readiness processes that are or will be taking place in almost 40

forest countries can and should be used to develop national forest policies that can be sustained, even if the billions of REDD dollars that were

promised turn out to be a dream. But only if Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, and other rightsholders and stakeholders are able to

participate fully, effectively and on equitable basis in the development of their country’ s future forest policy, taking into account that they have the

right to say “no” as part of their right to FPIC, there is a chance that such policies will be rights-based, socially just, and environmentally and

economically sustainable.

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Annex 1,REDD Decisions taken by the majority

of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCCin December 2010

C. Policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest

degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement

of forest carbon stocks in developing countries

Affirming that, in the context of the provision of adequate and predictable support to developing country Parties, Parties should collectively aim to

slow, halt and reverse forest cover and carbon loss, in accordance with national circumstances, consistent with the ultimate objective of the

Convention, as stated in Article 2,

Also affirming the need to promote broad country participation in all phases described in paragraph 73 below, including through the provision of

support that takes into account existing capacities,

68. Encourages all Parties to find effective ways to reduce the human pressure on forests that results in greenhouse gas emissions, including actions

to address drivers of deforestation;

69. Affirms that the implementation of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 below should be carried out in accordance with appendix I to this

decision, and that the safeguards referred to in paragraph 2 of appendix I to this decision should be promoted and supported;

70. Encourages developing country Parties to contribute to mitigation actions in the forest sector by undertaking the following activities, as deemed

appropriate by each Party and in accordance with their respective capabilities and national circumstances:

(a) Reducing emissions from deforestation;

(b) Reducing emissions from forest degradation;

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(c) Conservation of forest carbon stocks;

(d) Sustainable management of forests;

(e) Enhancement of forest carbon stocks;

71. Requests developing country Parties aiming to undertake the activities referred to in paragraph 70 above, in the context of the provision of

adequate and predictable support, including financial resources and technical and technological support to developing country Parties, in

accordance with national circumstances and respective capabilities, to develop the following elements:

(a) A national strategy or action plan;

(b) A national forest reference emission level and/or forest reference level or, if appropriate, as an interim measure, subnational forest reference

emission levels and/or forest reference levels, in accordance with national circumstances, and with provisions contained in decision

4/CP.15, and with any further elaboration of those provisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties; In accordance with national

circumstances, national forest reference emission levels and/or forest reference levels could be a combination of subnational forest

reference emissions levels and/or forest reference levels.

(c) A robust and transparent national forest monitoring system for the monitoring and reporting of the activities referred to in paragraph 70

above, with, if appropriate, subnational monitoring and reporting as an interim measure,7 in accordance with national circumstances,

and with the provisions contained in decision 4/CP.15, and with any further elaboration of those provisions agreed by the Conference of

the Parties;

(d) A system for providing information on how the safeguards referred to in appendix I to this decision are being addressed and respected

throughout the implementation of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 above, while respecting sovereignty;

72. Also requests developing country Parties, when developing and implementing their national strategies or action plans, to address, inter alia, the

drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, land tenure issues, forest governance issues, gender considerations and the safeguards identified

in paragraph 2 of appendix I to this decision, ensuring the full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, inter alia indigenous peoples

and local communities;

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73. Decides that the activities undertaken by Parties referred to in paragraph 70 above should be implemented in phases, beginning with the

development of national strategies or action plans, policies and measures, and capacity-building, followed by the implementation of national

policies and measures and national strategies or action plans that could involve further capacity-building, technology development and transfer

and results-based demonstration activities, and evolving into results-based actions that should be fully measured, reported and verified;

74. Recognizes that the implementation of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 above, including the choice of a starting phase as referred to in

paragraph 73 above, depends on the specific national circumstances, capacities and capabilities of each developing country Party and the

level of support received;

75. Requests the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice to develop a work programme on the matters referred to in appendix II to

this decision;

76. Urges Parties, in particular developed country Parties, to support, through multilateral and bilateral channels, the development of national

strategies or action plans, policies and measures and capacity-building, followed by the implementation of national policies and measures and

national strategies or action plans that could involve further capacity-building, technology development and transfer and results-based

demonstration activities, including consideration of the safeguards referred to in paragraph 2 of appendix I to this decision, taking into account

the relevant provisions on finance including those relating to reporting on support;

77. Requests the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention to explore financing options for the full

implementation of the results-based actions referred to in paragraph 73 above and to report on progress made, including any recommendations

for draft decisions on this matter, to the Conference of the Parties at its seventeenth session;

78. Also requests Parties to ensure coordination of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 above, including of the related support, particularly at

the national level;

79. Invites relevant international organizations and stakeholders to contribute to the activities referred to in paragraphs 70 and 78 above;

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Appendix I

Guidance and safeguards for policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from

deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of

forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries

1. The activities referred to in paragraph 70 of this decision should:

a) Contribute to the achievement of the objective set out in Article 2 of the Convention;

b) Contribute to the fulfillment of the commitments set out in Article 4, paragraph 3, of the Convention;

c) Be country-driven and be considered options available to Parties;

d) Be consistent with the objective of environmental integrity and take into account the multiple functions of forests and other ecosystems;

e) Be undertaken in accordance with national development priorities, objectives and circumstances and capabilities and should respect

sovereignty;

f) Be consistent with Parties’ national sustainable development needs and goals;

g) Be implemented in the context of sustainable development and reducing poverty, while responding to climate change;

h) Be consistent with the adaptation needs of the country;

i) Be supported by adequate and predictable financial and technology support, including support for capacity-building;

j) Be results-based;

k) Promote sustainable management of forests;

2. When undertaking the activities referred to in paragraph 70 of this decision, the following safeguards should be promoted and supported:

a) That actions complement or are consistent with the objectives of national forest programmes and relevant international conventions and

agreements;

b) Transparent and effective national forest governance structures, taking into account national legislation and sovereignty;

c) Respect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples and members of local communities, by taking into account relevant international

obligations, national circumstances and laws, and noting that the United Nations General Assembly has adopted the United Nations

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

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d) The full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular indigenous peoples and local communities, in the actions referred to

in paragraphs 70 and 72 of this decision;

e) That actions are consistent with the conservation of natural forests and biological diversity, ensuring that the actions referred to in paragraph

70 of this decision are not used for the conversion of natural forests, but are instead used to incentivize the protection and conservation of

natural forests and their ecosystem services, and to enhance other social and environmental benefits;1

f) Actions to address the risks of reversals;

g) Actions to reduce displacement of emissions.

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Annex 2,Abbreviations Used and Overview of Technical Terms

REDD = Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation

in developing countries, see page 8

REDD+ = Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest

Degradation in developing countries and enhancing forest carbon

stocks, see page 3

IPCCA = Indigenous Peoples Biocultural Climate Change Assessment

see Foreword

UNFCCC = UN Framework Convention on Climate Change see page 3

UNDRIPs = UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples see

page 4

IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change see page 11

LULUCF = Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry see page 19

GEF = Global Environment Facility see page 35

CDM = Clean Development Mechanism see page 26

MRV = Monitoring, Reporting and Verification see page 27

NGOs = Non-Governmental Organization see page 33

FCPF = Forest Carbon Partnership Facility see page 36

FIP = Forest Investment Program see page 36

UN-REDD = UN REDD Programme see page 38

FPIC = Free Prior and Informed Consent see page 4

Kyoto Protocol see page 17

Climate change see page 11

Global warming see page 11

Climate Justice see page 11

Principle of Common but differentiated responsibilities see page 17

Annex 1 countries see page 17

Bali Plan of Action see page 18

Marrakesh Accords see page 19

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Kyoto forest see page 20

Opportunity costs see page 21

Performance-based payments see page 28

Carbon trade see page 25

Permanence see page 27

Force majeure see page 28

Tipping points see page 28

Business as usual see page 28

Additionality see page 28

Reforestation see page 28

Afforestation see page 28

Forests in exhaustion see page 29

Leakage see page 29

Drivers of deforestation see page 4

Nested approach see page 29

Environmental integrity see page 30

Voluntary forest carbon offset market see page 30

Readiness processes see page 39

Basket of funding approaches see page 32

Readiness Preparation proposals see page 39

Strategic Climate Fund see page 36

Climate Investment Funds see page 36

FIP Dedicated Grants Mechanism see page 37

Norwegian Forest and Climate Initiative see page 38

REDD readiness programs see page 39

Elite Resource Capture see page 42

Reduced Impact Logging see page 48

Cancun Agreement see page 51

Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the

Convention see page 52

Cancun REDD Safeguards see page 52

Convention 169 ILO see page 53

World Bank safeguards and operational policies see page 56

UN Development Group guidelines see page 58

Biocultural protocols see page 66

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Contact:

IPCCA SecretariatAsociación ANDES

Ruinas 451Cusco, Peru

Tel: +51 84 245 021Fax: +51 84 232 603 ipcca-secretariat@andes.org.pe

Indigenous Peoples´ Biocultural

Climate Change Assessment Initiative

IPCCA