“For my people, the forest is sacred, it is life in all its essence, we can protect Pachamama only if this is respected. REDD and other market mechanisms have turned our relationship with forests into a business. As we are targeted, this is not only a new form of climate racism but also represents a false solution which undermines the climate regime” said Marlon Santi, a leader of the Sarayaku Quichua community of Ecuador.

The IPCCA leaders discussed their experiences with using a biocultural approach to assessing climate change impacts as well as the impacts on their livelihoods and the ecosystems found in their territories in order to develop appropriate responses. In forest ecosystems, impacts of REDD and market based mechanisms were analysed from diverse local contexts such as the Indian Adivasi and the Sapara Nationality of Ecuador to build a common understanding:

• They commodify life and undermine holistic community values and governance
• They block community access to forests and customary use
• They lead to establishment of monoculture tree plantations which promote land grabbing
• They are portrayed as vehicles for strengthening land tenure rights but in fact are used to weaken them
• They are used to justify continued emissions in the North and thus are hypocritical false solutions to the climate crisis

“IPCCA is an example of how indigenous communities are undertaking climate change assessments on their own terms, and are illustrating the danger of market based mitigation mechanisms. Our knowledge systems and our distinctive spiritual relationship to our territories can contribute to a deeper, localized and holistic understanding of what we and the world is facing” said Alejandro Argumedo, coordinator of IPCCA. “Solutions that will indeed reduce emissions and ensure local livelihoods must come from including such local analysis.” The IPCCA network is building alliances with organizations such as the Global Forest Coallition to bring much needed indigenous and local voices to forums as the UNFCCC COP 17.

Through the analysis undertaken in the IPCCA workshop, the realization that many indigenous peoples have either been manipulated into accepting REDD like schemes, or are facing precarious national situations that REDD becomes an option for their survival, that it is necessary to ensure that all REDD actors fully respect the rights of indigenous peoples, in particular, to their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent. However, they also caution that adherence to these principles does not solve the negative impacts, so they call upon all indigenous peoples to maintain their integrity and demand to be respected. | Download this press release |

See our declaration below (also in Spanish).

Contact:
Alejandro Argumedo,
International Coordinator
Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative
Asociación ANDES
Tel: +51 84 245021
alejandro@andes.org.pe

In Durban
Jose Proaño
Land is life
Telf +27 (0)793370519
infoamazonia@me.com

This new, open-access transdisciplinary journal Culture, Climate and Change: Biocultural Systems and Livelihoods aims to critically engage with and disseminate biocultural approaches to understanding and responding to climate change and global change processes.

The journal puts into practice the ‘epistemic bridging’ that lies at the heart of indigenous peoples’ biocultural understanding of territory, community, climate and ecosystems through sharing across practice based learning, research findings and conceptual papers.

A feature of this first issue will be a section on REDD and REDD+. We are particularly interested in articles that explore the relationship between the rights of forest dwelling indigenous peoples and climate change mitigation mechanisms for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

Types of Papers:

Research Articles (5 – 8,000 words)

Essays

Book and report reviews

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Please visit the CCC:BSL site at http://journals.sfu.ca/ccc/index.php/ccc/index for all the information on how to format your manuscript, as well as on-line submissions. Please note that you must register (go to http://journals.sfu.ca/ccc.index.php/ccc/user/register) as an author to be able to submit your manuscript.

For more information:

http://journals.sfu.ca/ccc/index.php/ccc/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Completed manuscripts submitted by December 23rd will be considered for the journal launch in January 2012.. Manuscripts submitted after this date will also be considered for the first issue, which will continue to publish papers through till March 2012.

Short contributions: Maximum length 2,000 words

Research articles: Maximum length 8,000 words

JOURNAL EDITORS

Dr Marina Apgar, Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative, Asociacion ANDES, Cusco, Peru

Dr Will Allen, Learning for Sustainability – http://learningforsustainability.net/

Dr Martin Pedersen, Co-founder | t r 3 3 |

Dr Nina Moeller, Freelance Consultant, UK

Further info:

A new journal of biocultural systems & livelihoods:

Climate change is perhaps the biggest challenge that communities and ecosystems across the world face today. Indigenous peoples and local communities living in biodiverse and fragile ecosystems of the planet are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to their direct reliance on local, natural systems for their livelihoods, well-being and cultural expressions. Paradoxically, they also potentially hold vital knowledge, gained through co-evolutionary relationships with the natural systems that have enabled their survival and resilience. Understanding climate change, its impacts on local and global systems, and potential solutions requires touching upon concerns of how to link the social to the environmental within a framework of equity and justice. It requires dialogue across scales from the local to the global. Holistic approaches, such as indigenous and biocultural approaches offer potential avenues for understanding the challenge and building appropriate solutions.

This new, open-access transdisciplinary journal Culture, Climate and Change: Biocultural Systems and Livelihoods aims to critically engage with and disseminate biocultural approaches to understanding and responding to climate change and global change processes.

The journal puts into practice the ‘epistemic bridging’ that lies at the heart of indigenous peoples’ biocultural understanding of territory, community, climate and ecosystems through sharing across practice based learning, research findings and conceptual papers.

In light of a commitment to building epistemological bridges between different knowledge systems, the journal will use an open peer review process which aims to promote an environment of cooperation, knowledge exchange and networking between authors and reviewers of the journal community.

Helsinki, Finland (IPCCA).

As the UNFCCC climate talks opened in Panama, a gathering in Finland of indigenous leaders from around the world has called upon the international community to remove scientific bias against indigenous knowledge from climate change science and policy. The “Sevettijärvi Declaration”, adopted at the meeting, calls on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to make all efforts necessary to include indigenous knowledge and local perspectives in its assessment processes.

“Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities are on the frontlines of climate change. Their knowledge of climatic phenomena and trends includes detailed understanding of impacts on ecosystems and livelihoods,” said Alejandro Argumedo, International Coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative, “Insights provided by this are critical for a comprehensive global understanding of climate change. Without indigenous knowledge, climate adaptation and mitigation efforts will continue to exacerbate inequities rather than redress them.”

“We have not contributed to the climate crisis, and we continue to have low carbon societies, yet we are suffering the biggest burden and face food insecurity”, said Sagari Ramdas, representing Adivasi Aikya Vedika of India. ¨Through our biocultural assessments of climate change, guided by indigenous knowledge, we are responding to the unprecedented impacts and building evidence-based adaptation and mitigation strategies. Our partnerships with research institutions and donor agencies enable us to bring knowledge systems together in our fight for survival. The IPCC should learn from our experience¨ she concluded.

The IPCCA leaders discussed their experiences and emerging findings which illustrate the major contributions that indigenous knowledge has made in the past, and continues to make today, to understanding what we all face. Tero Mustonen of Snowchange Cooperative, a host of the Northern gathering, added “The IPCCA is an example of how indigenous communities are undertaking climate change assessments on their own terms, building invaluable knowledge based on local information about conditions and trends in critical ecosystems. Our knowledge systems and our distinctive spiritual relationship to our territories should be fully recognized by the international community.”

The IPCCA network will be releasing a synthesis report of the results of their local assessments in 2012. The report will present evidence of climate change, impacts and adaptation and mitigation responses from the most representative ecosystems on the planet and provide recommendations to policy makers for future actions.

“Addressing climate change requires that climate justice be taken seriously”, said Paulina Feodoroff of the Skolt Sámi nation. “We remind the international community that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples establishes international minimum standards for the respect, protection and fulfillment of indigenous peoples’ rights. The IPCC and others are therefore obliged to include traditional knowledge in assessment reports.

We call upon our brothers and sisters to communicate the problem of bias against our knowledge in Western science, and to pressure the IPCC to make the changes we need for all of humanity to survive the climate crisis.” she concluded.

The “Sevettijärvi Declaration” contains further analysis and examples of the climate change impacts on indigenous peoples. The Declaration includes specific requests to the IPCC, United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and national governments on how ensure that indigenous knowledge properly informs climate change science and policy.

Contact:
Alejandro Argumedo,
International Coordinator
Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative
Asociación ANDES
Tel: +51 84 245021
alejandro@andes.org.pe

Paulina Feodoroff, Saa’mi Nue’tt
pauliinafeodoroff@gmail.com
+358 40 736 44 75

http://tr33.org.uk

http://commoning.wordpress.com

“… I thought we were an autonomous collective…”

World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth April 22nd, Cochabamba, Bolivia PEOPLE'S AGREEMENT Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger. If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of speci … Read More

via World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

The one we have been waiting for!

Your guide to the Facebook revolt of 2010

See also:

Why you should beware of Facebook: The global rise of Facebook is a matter for concern rather than excitement, writes Tom Hodgkinson. January 20, 2008

Commit suicide now!

http://www.seppukoo.com/

http://boingboing.net/2010/01/11/facebook-blocks-web.html

Alternatives to follow…… (see comments below)………..

Where and what is good agency put into which structures? It is an endless journey through the soul and the corridors of political thinking, philosophical reflection, historical recognition and ethical considerations – and it is also that first single step of your journey. It begins in the mind, unfolds in the imagination and will have a material impact on the place you go to.

Over the years we have spend a lot of time and energy helping people finding their ways in Ecuador and Peru, we have spend a lot of time suggesting projects, providing contacts and so on. However, in the end, people mostly go and do their own thing anyway. However, if you have only 4-6 months time and want to connect sooner, and should you really want to do something in or around Tena, Napo, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, or in San Francisco in Peru, and if working on a small scale and community level with people outside of NGO structures, doing down-to-the-ground, bottom-up work, with lovely families, if that is your thing, then do get in touch.

Personally, we think that you should go and find your own way – which is precisely what a contract and payment from home before you even leave makes impossible, but which is also what makes a lot of our efforts in vain and slightly frustrating – and therefore this is the message we have to everyone wanting to volunteer:

Do your research, be critical, be open and open-minded, go there, make friends, allies and connections and then do some good work.

Don’t bother going for less than 6 months, for social reasons and for environmental reasons. Read about your destination and its history. Learn about colonial history in general.

Be very critical and do your reading and talking to learned and experienced people beforehand, whether they are activists, social workers, development workers or academics. Remember, the anti-colonial movement is an intergenerational struggle and global process of commoning. A good focus for volunteering in places like the Amazon, apart from of course listening to the people, discuss and find out what they want, is to focus on their autonomy and self-determination. In some cases it might be that all you can do in this respect is to mention it and interact around it, offer workshops and capacity building courses, sharing knowledge, while practically your local friends want to create something that you do not entirely agree to, yet can see that it is ambiguous and that there will be some improvement of some life as a consequence, even if it is not very long-term and ideal. Other situations – and that is why staying long time is crucial – you will slowly find people with whom you share certain political ideals, such as respect for Pachamama or Mother Earth, trust can be built and that is the moment when you enter into the global process of commoning, in solidarity and with the ancestors for the children, the great movement of working for autonomous development and its moment of overwhelming feelings when a project is completed collectively in a shared vision. If that is your thing, get informed.

Read for example a book like Massimo de Angelis’s The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital, or Peter Linebaugh’s “The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All” and for women’s struggles particularly see the work of Silvia Federici, especially her “Caliban and the witch: women, the body and primitive accumulation“. Finally, maybe have a look at Jay Griffiths’s “Wild: An Elemental Journey“.

Show a good example! Try to understand the very different culture and ways of life, don’t judge and don’t assume you know. A different culture often has an entirely different system of knowledge and understanding; communication and humour can appear confusing, even intimidating, sometimes easy to misinterpret and possibly difficult to enter into. Suspend your reason on occasion, expand it when the chance offers itself. Let the shape of your mind be redrawn and the rational map enlarged or reshaped.

Most importantly of all: think and inform yourself very critically before you act – anything you do will have an impact, potentially an enormous one and easily a negative one, even though carried out with the best of intentions, if you do not know about local culture, politics and 500 years of colonisation by your fellow white people! Take note that many NGOs that mean well (or not!) have created a lot of mess in the name of development (“developmentalism”, even) and simply wanting to do good is not much of a foundation for trust and community: what is your good and have you done your homework?

That is a long time ago.

In 1982 Denmark followed the U.S. and the U.K. into the Reagan-Thatcher era with Poul Schlüter as Prime Minister.

That was the end of the social-democratic experiment.

Notable, for instance, in the destruction of what was once – as far as a nation state goes – a relatively benign state of affairs was Bertel Haarder (currently the Interior and Health Minister in the Cabinet of Lars Løkke Rasmussen). From 10 September 1982 to 25 January 1993 he was Education Minister and orchestrated the destruction of the educational system and returned in November 2001 and remained until February 2005 as Minister for Refugees, Immigrants and Integration in the Cabinet of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, which helped elevate Denmark to one of the primary targets of islamist extremism and made Denmark known as one of the most racist, xenophobic right-wing, imperialist warmongering countries in the world – just a couple of steps step down the totalitarian ladder from Iran and North Korea, one is tempted to suggest.

This is what it looks like (and sounds like) today as the police enters a bicycle workshop where people are playing music, repairing bikes and cooperating and sharing skills (notice the comments: “We don’t need any papers AT ALL … I am aware that you have another system in those countries where you are from”, spoken with that typical Danish superior attitude to foreigners..):

]]> http://colonos.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/barack-imposter-obama-jedi-mind-trick/feed/ 2 colono http://colonos.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/threatening-a-fascist-a-threat-to-democracy-the-danish-saga-continues/ http://colonos.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/threatening-a-fascist-a-threat-to-democracy-the-danish-saga-continues/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:14:56 +0000 colono http://colonos.wordpress.com/?p=1050 ]]> In today’s Politiken we are told that several people have been arrested for threats against “Dansk Folkepartis formand, Pia Kjærsgaard“, that is the ring leader of the fascistic, ultra right-wing, Islamophobic and generally xenophobic and racist, socalled Danish People’s Party. The first article tells no more than that, but soon others were to follow.

It is now declared that the five people arrested are supposed to have a Somalian background and that threatening a hate speaker is a threat to democracy. “If you threaten an elected politician you threaten all the people who voted for them”, says an appeaser of the Conservative Party, while the Prime Minister, also in dire need of some popularity, calls the threats “totally unacceptable“.  (EDIT: It has now been stated that one of the Somalians is a “self-taught imam” another is a director of a bank, allegedly with connections to al-Hikmah, that in turn relates to a school in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, called Ibnu Baz Islamic Center, and that “some of the school’s youth are suspected of having joined Hisbul Islam og al-Shabaab“).

Although colonos are not in favour of threatening people, we are also not in any possible way surprised: When you threaten an entire religion and way of life, then you threaten – or at least insult – all of those people who identify with that religion and way of life. How difficult can it be to understand that? Moreover, the vice-president of the party’s youth organisation, a local council member, has just been excluded for violent threats against named Danish individuals who are said to collaborate with legal muslim activities, such as the building of a mosque. In this case, the party does not deem it relevant to report the threat to the police – “they leave such doing to others“?!?

Of course the fascists are used to threats (which is why hateful Pia K. has tight security) and her party curiously also reported this threat themselves, which the Police’s Intelligence Service (PET) is now investigating and which the police on Politiken.TV states cannot be confirmed by any evidence – upon which the suspects have been released. They party  received a tip about the threat – sent anonymously in an English language letter to the party itself, according to its media spokesperson, who also stated that the letter read that there was a price on Pia K’s head – 500.000 DKR, less than 60.000 English Pounds. The police will not comment on the on-going investigation, but “generally state” that they have no knowledge of a price on her head and they do not know whether the specific threat is real and they also make it clear that they found no evidence of anything related when dozens of them violently kicked the doors in and searched the five Somalians’ homes.

The suggestion is obvious – as is now counter-claimed by a spokesperson of Somalian organisations – it is a populist media stunt to gain further support for Dansk Folkeparti’s crusade. Meanwhile the leader herself, who is continuously and severely criticised for her dictatorial leadership style, total control and self-referential command, says that “she will not change“. We can thus easily imagine what kind of country, what kind of democracy it is that Pia K. and her fascistic friends and followers (some of whom claim to follow her in fear!) have in mind for Denmark and the world as such.

The obvious question, then, keeping in mind the debates about appeasing Hitler with which many will be familiar, the question is what kind of democracy it is that is threatened when you threaten a fascist dictator, such as Pia K., recalling that her own party members call her a dictator and knowing that she spouts anti-islamic hate speech all the time? Can you threaten democracy by threatening a threat to democracy?

While we do not endorse assassinations of politicians (which, incidentally, the entire political establishment seem to do, when it comes to poor countries with rich resources), nor do we endorse threats to their lives, or any other form of violence that springs from religious lunacy and self-righteousness, it is certainly obvious that someone like Pia K. has cast the first stone and actually is the one who constitutes a threat to society’s freedoms. Indeed, her speech acts – and those of the backwards, medieval crusading Christian priests in her party, are themselves of a religious and self-righteous kind that structurally inflict violence upon others. With her we have no sympathy – and in the Danish “children’s game” of politics (as the Prime Minister’s spin doctor recently called the circus of Danes that she on Facebook admits to despise) she really does deserve to be held accountable for her actions.

However, this is most likely an act of spin, once again, to throw petrol on the fire she herself has started. If Danish politicians had any decency – AT ALL – it is precisely in moments like this that they should distance themselves from Dansk Folkeparti and their dictator, rather than uncritically support her in the name of the democracy that she is in fact an enemy of. Yes, it is not a good thing to threaten people, but after all she asked for it and constitutes a threat to the country’s freedom. Finally, how come you never hear anything about threats to left-wing politicians?

RIGHTS: U.N. Condemns Land Grabs in Native Territories, By Haider Rizvi.

http://sec.11alive.com/quote/04T44x81tc86J
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49986

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14, 2010 (IPS) – Millions of people around the world who belong to indigenous communities continue to face discrimination and abuse at the hands of authorities and private business concerns, says a new U.N. report released here Thursday.

It is happening not only in the developing parts of the world but also in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which champion the causes of human rights and democracy, the report says.

Despite all the “positive developments” in international human rights setting in recent years, the study’s findings suggest that indigenous peoples remain vulnerable to state-sponsored violence and brutality, which is often aimed at confiscating their lands.

“This carbon market insanity privatises the air and sells it to climate criminals like Shell so they can continue to pollute and destroy the climate and our future, rather than reducing their emissions at source…”

“Governments and the United Nations need to be serious about this,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpus, chairperson of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, an advisory body that works with the 54-member Economic and Social Council, after launching the report.

The 222 page-report, entitled “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples”, points out that an overwhelming majority of the indigenous population is condemned to live in extreme poverty. Its authors noted that while indigenous peoples are around five percent of the world’s population, they comprise 15 percent of people living in extreme poverty.

The first-ever comprehensive report on indigenous peoples’ rights comes as the U.N. is reviewing progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), globally agreed targets to reduce, poverty, disease and environmental destruction, among other issues, by the year 2015.

Explaining her findings, one of the report’s authors, Myrna Cunningham, said indigenous communities in many countries are living in abject poverty because they have lost their lands to private interests that are often backed by state authorities.

She also raised concerns about the extrajudicial killing of indigenous people in some parts of the world. In this context, she cited the examples of Colombia and Peru, where extreme hostility towards native people has been well-documented by human rights organisations.

“There are several cases where indigenous peoples are being identified by governments as terrorists,” Cunningham told IPS, adding that it was in clear violation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The U.N. Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 2007. The historic document calls for the recognition of native populations’ right to control their lands and protect their culture and language.

The report’s chapter dealing with environmental issues suggests that most of the deforestation is taking place on indigenous territories due to massive operations by mining corporations. It says many of the business ventures on native lands are illegal.

“We have agonised over many ongoing situations,” said Ben Powless, an indigenous activist in Canada who has attended numerous international meetings on climate change and biodiversity, including the U.N. summit held in Copenhagen, Denmark last month.

Powless said those situations included “the massacres of our relatives in the Peruvian Amazon, the evictions of our Masai families in Kenya, and the devastation of our communities by the impacts of climate change.”

Large dams and mining activities have caused massive displacements of indigenous peoples in many countries. The study’s authors documented several cases where native people were forced by the tourism industry to leave their ancestral lands.

The report points out that in many countries around the world, indigenous children are not only deprived of education, but also lack adequate access to health care and nutritious food.

That, according to Cunningham, is against “our right to self-determination”.

The U.N. General Assembly fully recognises indigenous populations’ right to exercise their right to “self-determination”. However, some powerful countries, including the United States and Canada, have rejected the Declaration.

Contrary to the previous U.S. administration’s stance, President Barack Obama seems willing to sign on to the declaration. ¨We are having a dialogue with the U.S. government,” Tauli-Corpus told IPS. “We are doing all we can.”

At the news conference, Tauli-Corpus raised hopes that at future talks on climate change, indigenous peoples’ rights to control their lands and forests will be given due consideration. But not all indigenous leaders think along the same lines.

Recent negotiations on climate change have suggested that deforestation in indigenous lands could be tackled by means of carbon trading. Many indigenous peoples see that as a tool of corruption and a threat to their cultural survival.

“Carbon trading and carbon offsets are a crime against humanity and Creation,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “The sky is sacred.”

“This carbon market insanity privatises the air and sells it to climate criminals like Shell so they can continue to pollute and destroy the climate and our future, rather than reducing their emissions at source,” he added in a statement.

Considering the fact that much of the world’s forests are located in indigenous peoples’ lands, Goldtooth fears that carbon trading would pave the way for more “land grabs, killings, evictions and forced displacement” of native communities.

(END)

Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
Bemidji Office, PO Box485, Bemidji, MN 56619 USA
Ph: + 1 218 751 4967
Fax: + 1 218 751 0561
Email: ien@igc.org
Web: www.ienearth.org

“Indigenous Peoples are being forced to sign over their territories for REDD to the Gangsters of the Century, carbon traders, who are invading the world’s remaining forests that exist thanks to the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples,” denounced Marlon Santi, President of the CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, one of the most powerful native organizations in the world. “Our forests are spaces for life not carbon markets.”

Indigenous leader kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to surrender carbon rights for REDD in Papua New Guinea

New York, USA — As carbon traders hawk permits to pollute at the Second Annual Carbon Trading Summit, Indigenous Peoples denounced that selling the sky not only corrupts the sacred but also destroys the climate, violates human rights and threatens cultural survival.

“Carbon trading and carbon offsets are a crime against humanity and Creation,” said Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network. “The sky is sacred. This carbon market insanity privatizes the air and sells it to climate criminals like Shell so they can continue to pollute and destroy the climate and our future, rather than reducing their emissions at source.”

“This Carbon Traitors’ Summit comes on the heels of the failed UN Copenhagen climate conference which put forests in carbon markets by creating a mechanism called REDD or REDD-plus (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).” According to Goldtooth, “Most of the forests of the world are found in Indigenous Peoples’ land. REDD-type projects have already caused land grabs, killings, violent evictions and forced displacement, violations of human rights, threats to cultural survival, militarization and servitude.”

A recent World News Australia television exposé sheds light on the risks of REDD, carbon traders and the shocking kidnapping of a Papuan New Guinea native leader. Abilie Wape, a leader of the Kamula Doso Peoples claims he was forced at gun point to surrender the carbon rights of his tribe’s forest. http://player.sbs.com.au/naca#/naca/wna/SpecialFeatures/playlist/PNG-climate-woes-continue/

A visibly shaken Wape told reporters, “They came and got me in the night… police came with a gun. They threatened me. They forced me to get in the vehicle. Then we came in the night to the hotel. They told me, “You sign. Otherwise, if you don’t sign, I’ll get a police and lock you up.”

“Indigenous Peoples are being forced to sign over their territories for REDD to the Gangsters of the Century, carbon traders, who are invading the world’s remaining forests that exist thanks to the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples,” denounced Marlon Santi, President of the CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, one of the most powerful native organizations in the world. “Our forests are spaces for life not carbon markets.”

Another REDD-type project, a UNEP-funded carbon forestry project in the Mau forest of Kenya has resulted in evictions and threatens the cultural survival of the Ogiek hunter-gathers. “Ordering us to leave Mau is like taking a fish out of water and expecting it to survive” said Ogiek People Development Program Director Daniel Kobei. According to REDD Monitor, “UNEP’s failure to prevent the eviction of thousands of people to make way for a carbon project…does not bode well for the millions of Indigenous Peoples and forest dwelling communities of the world.”

Survival International reports that REDD schemes could leave Indigenous Peoples “with nothing.” “Everyone who cares about our future, forests, Indigenous Peoples and human rights should reject REDD because it is irremediably flawed, cannot be fixed and because, despite efforts to develop safeguards for its implementation, REDD will always be potentially genocidal,” concluded Goldtooth.

“[We] should remember that the spirit of agricultural improvement in the 18th century was impelled less by altruistic desires to banish ugly wastes or – as the tedious phrase goes – to “feed a growing population” than by the desire for fatter rent-rools and larger profits” (Thompson 1963/1966: 217).

“The arguments of the enclosure propagandists were commonly phrased in terms of higher rental values and higher yield per acre. In village after village, enclosure destroyed the … subsistence economy of the poor – the cow or geese, fuel from the commons, gleanings, and all the rest. The cottager without legal proof of rights was rarely compensated. The cottager who was able to establish his claim was left with a parcel of land inadequate for subsistence and a disproportionate share of the very high enclosure costs: (Thompson 1963/1966: 217)

“For example, in the enclosure of Barton-on-Humber, where attention was paid to common rights, we find that out of nearly 6,000 acres, 63% (3,733 acres) was divided between three people, while fifty-one people were awarded between one and three acres: or, broken down another way, ten owners accounted for 81% of the land enclosed, while the reamining 19% was divided between 116 people. The average rental value of the arable land enclosed rose in five years (1794-9) from 6s. 6d. To 20s. an acre; and average rentals in the parish were more than trebled” (Thompson 1963/1966: 217; my italics)

That resistance fomented, riots broke out and uprisings were attempted repeatedly throughout the realm is hardly of surprise. Neither is it very surprising that consequently the systematic repression intensified and society became very polarised. “The profession of a soldier was held to be dishonourable” (Thompson 1963/1966: 81), the police was instituted as a preventative force of control and survelliance, deterrence and threat – although “[r]esistance to an effective police force continued well into the 19th century (ibid.) – and a very wide range of new “thanatocratic” laws to manage the effects of enclosure – vagrancy, poverty, despair, homelessness, hunger – were enacted. These processes have been covered in Peter Linebaugh’s “The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (Linebaugh 2003/2006; particularly 42-73). In very brief, these draconian laws to keep the poor in check well define what capitalist democracy looks like:

“The year 1661 saw the promulgation of the first slave code in English history, enacting that human beings become “real chattels” … Also in 1661 the thirty-six Articles of War were promulgated … twenty-two of which provide the death penalty … Besdies that thanatocratic code, discipline in the navy was maintained by “customs of the sea” [including]: the spead eagle, ducking, mastheading, keelhauling, marrying the gunner’s daughter, and the cat-of-nine-tails. In addition to the slave codes, the military codes and the Irish penal code, the criminal code with its “new” capital offences formed the characteristics of this era of substantive British law” (Linebaugh 2003/2006: 53).

Welcome to capitalist democracy – this is what its roots look like!

Download poster by Camilla Brodersen by clicking on it