UN Admits Its Climate Change Program Threatens Indigenous Peoples

This is a press release brought here on the request of Earth Peoples. It notes that, business as usual, the United Nations have produced a report that condemns the actions that they nevertheless will take:

September 24, 2008, New York, NY — On the third day of the General Assembly’s 63rd Session United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Prime Minister of Norway launched the United Nations REDD program, a collaboration of FAO, UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank.

The inclusion of forests in the carbon market, or REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) has caused anxiety, protest and outrage throughout the world since it was created at the failed climate change negotiations in Bali and funded by the World Bank.

An estimated 60 million indigenous peoples are completely dependent on forests and are considered the most threatened by REDD. Therefore, indigenous leaders are among its most prominent critics. The International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change declared that: ‘…REDD will steal our land. States and carbon traders will take control over our forests.’

It is alarming that indigenous peoples’ fears and objections have now been confirmed by the UN-REDD Framework Document itself.

On page 4 and 5 it blatantly states that the program could “deprive communities of their legitimate land-development aspirations, that hard-fought gains in forest management practices might be wasted, that it could cause the lock-up of forests by decoupling conservation from development, or erode culturally rooted not-for-profit conservation values.”

It is further highlighted that “REDD benefits in some circumstances may have to be traded off against other social, economic or environmental benefits.”

In carefully phrased UN language, the document further acknowledges that REDD could cause severe human rights violations and be disastrous for the poor because it could “marginalize the landless.and those with. communal use-rights”.

This is tantamount to the UN recognizing that REDD could undermine indigenous peoples and local communities rights to the usage and ownership of their lands.

Could it be that the UN is paving the way for a massive land grab?

To read UN-REDD Framework Document: http://www.undp.org/mdtf/UN-REDD/docs/Annex-A-Framework-Document.pdf

To see photos from the protest against REDD and the World Bank in Bali:http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/gallery.php

To watch video from the protest against REDD at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtORVi7GybY