SAVE OUR BEAUTIFUL GREEN FOREST
Massive corruption undermines forest protection plan
SAVE FOREST
The UN's forest protection plan hasn't even started yet but already we are seeing massive fraud,
bribery and backdoor deals across the world. Tropical forestry is dominated by big companies
close to a number of the foremost corrupt governments on earth, who treat people like dirt after
promising them "development" reciprocally for cutting the trees down. Now they are being joined
by a brand new breed Of entrepreneurs, starting from carbon cowboys, bogus lawyers and even
environment groups all offer riches to people that leave the trees standing.
The lure is that the potential billions of dollars to be made up of buying and selling the
carbon rights to forests. If you hold the rights and may prove that "your" forest is in
danger, you'll - after you have been through qualifying hoops - sell the carbon not
released to rich consumers or companies who cannot offset their emissions.
So far, this nascent carbon capitalism has all been within the voluntary carbon market
and is worth a couple of billion dollars a year to companies and individuals, but if the
UN comes up with a worldwide global climate change plan in Cancun, Mexico, next month
the floodgates will open and over a few years, there could be S35bn a year flood-
ing into forestry protection from country to country.
The great green hope is that the UN's Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation
and degradation) the programme, which is ok in theory but proves a legal
nightmare in practice. Redd hasn't even started yet but already we are seeing
massive fraud, bribery, backdoor deals, and corruption from Asia to Africa and
all points between. Developing countries are hungry for new forestry funds;
rich countries need a deal because it'll allow them to hold on polluting as
before; environment groups can see how to broker conservation and
protect the forests; politicians see the influence. Win, win, win?
Perhaps but you'll see the legal problems a
mile aw•ay. A minute Australian company
working from what appears to be a
shopping mall in an Australian suburb
claims to have grabbed the carbon
rights to the entire Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC); a
three-man Kenyan company reckons
it can earn S 10m a year from the
rights to a stretch of Cameroonian
forest;
the family of Papua New
Guinea's prime minister has been
accused Of pressuring remote
villagers to sign away their land,
one of the lead negotiators for Indonesia's
climate delegation, and the architect of its
Redd programme, has been named as a
suspect by the
country's
corruption
anti-corruption agency. The list goes on.
Everyone agrees with Interpol that the
potential for criminality with Redd is
vast, ranging across ownership of the
rights, who collects the money, how it
is distributed; how the forests and the
money is monitored and how the
carbon in them is assessed.
Meanwhile, the big companies are
confident they can continue logging
as normal.
The warnings have come thick and fast within the
last few weeks:
Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson has
began extradition proceedings against a
British businessman, for allegedly
negotiating a closed-doors deal with a
group of corrupt Liberian officials to
purchase one-fifth of Liberia's rain-
forest; Greenpeace has declared that
Papua New Guinea is not ready to
implement Redd and Global Witness
has warned that the whole scheme
will be undermined by corruption.
There's a common perception among development
groups that forestry is best left to the environment
groups, and need not be tackled by people
involved in poverty reduction. The danger here is
that a badly thought through Redd deal is
shovelled through by eager countries in
Cancun and leads not too untold wealth and
resource protection, but to more poverty
and more corruption. Its effect on
development prospects than would be
enormous and tragic.
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