It must be said: it is impossible to imagine Nigeria’s path to decarbonization without imagining it being fully lined with trees. There is a critical need to address deforestation, transform agricultural practices, and harness nature-based solutions like afforestation and reforestation if Nigeria were serious about reaching net zero by 2060 – a commitment the Nigerian government made at COP26 in Glasgow.

Nigeria is an oil giant in Africa, and unsurprisingly, most of its plans on decarbonization focus on the transition to renewable energy. Previously, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan had not considered the country’s emissions from the agriculture, forests, and land-use (AFOLU) sector.

However, our new report, which looks at different pathways for Nigeria to reach its net-zero-by-2060 goal, found Nigeria’s AFOLU sector has contributed the largest sectoral emissions at 30%, compared to the oil and gas sector at 29%. So while it is good that Nigeria has set its eyes on transforming the energy sector, it is also true that only in a renewable energy scenario that also transforms the AFOLU sector can Nigeria achieve its commitment of net zero by 2060 which will allow Nigeria’s economy to grow alongside reaching its sustainability goals.

“Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target

One of the main drivers of Nigeria’s AFOLU emissions is land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). The last decade has seen relentless deforestation in Nigeria, with Global Forest Watch data revealing that from 2010 to 2019, Nigeria lost 86,700 hectares of tropical forest. Alarming as this may be, without immediate action, an additional 25% of our remaining forests could vanish by 2060. The cause of deforestation is a confluence of different factors, including the population’s lack of access to electricity and increasing poverty rates.

The stark reality is that nearly one in three people in the country lack access to electricity. This energy disparity leads many to rely on traditional, polluting methods for energy generation, such as burning wood. Additionally, less than a quarter of Nigerians have access to “clean cooking,” forcing the majority—primarily women—to rely on inefficient and polluting cookstoves, using wood for fuel.

This reliance on wood for energy generation and fuel is a significant driver of deforestation in Nigeria, and is also a major contributing factor to residential emissions. Improving access to clean cooking is not only pivotal in reducing emissions but also a crucial step towards mitigating deforestation.

According to the World Bank, four in ten Nigerians – or about 80 million people – were living in poverty in 2019. A report by Mongabay revealed that with lack of available jobs, Nigerian forests are being lost to farming and logging. Here, the message is clear: we can only save our forests and be truly on our way to net zero if we address poverty and social inequalities.

Reversing deforestation is not an impossible feat, but it demands a commitment to reforestation efforts – a 2.3% annual reforestation rate – and addressing other root causes of the problem including access to electricity, job creation, and a reduction in poverty.  With reforestation efforts, Nigeria can not only halt the degradation but also bolster its carbon sink capacity, a crucial element in achieving the net-zero goal by 2060.

The commitment to net zero is not just an environmental pledge but a blueprint for economic growth and prosperity that aligns with our broader sustainability goals. It is time for Nigeria to seize the opportunity and lead the charge towards a greener, more resilient future.

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The equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical forests – 3.7 million hectares – were lost every minute in 2023 as the result of human activities and natural disasters, according to analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch.

While forest destruction slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, this was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss”, said Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Tropical forests are one of the world’s best defenses against global warming, as they absorb greenhouse gases. But they are also where over 96% of human-made deforestation occurs worldwide, according to WRI.

Missing targets

While total tree loss in the tropics decreased slightly last year, analysts estimated human-caused deforestation driven by agriculture, commodities extraction and urban expansion continued rising. 

That’s despite a 10% reduction being needed every year to meet a pledge to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” signed by 145 countries, including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Initially introduced as part of a voluntary commitment by governments at Cop26 in Glasgow, the target was mentioned for the first time in a Cop decision at last December’s climate summit in Dubai.

Weisse said the goal “has always been an ambitious one” and “it will certainly be difficult” to ensure enough progress from all countries to meet the target.

“I still find a lot of hope in the fact that Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia have managed to massively curb their rates of forest loss in recent years”, she added. “Those countries have demonstrated how critical it is to have strong political will to combat deforestation”.

Lula’s deforestation busting

Brazil continued to be the country that lost the most tropical forest in 2023 because of the size of its immense rainforests. But its losses dropped by more than a third last year, reaching the lowest level since 2015.

Progress in Brazil coincided with the return to office of President Luiz Lula da Silva. In his first full year in the post, he strengthened law enforcement against illegal loggers, revoked anti-environmental measures introduced by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and extended Indigenous rights.

Brazil is planning to put the protection of forests at the heart of its climate summit in 2025, which is set to take place in Belém, known as the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

“Holding Cop30 in the heart of the forest is a powerful reminder of our responsibility to keep the planet within our 1.5°C target”, said Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, last December.

In neighbouring Colombia, the rate of tree loss dropped by half in 2023, primarily as a result of policies introduced by President Gustavo Petro.

Forest protection is among the goals being negotiated by the leftist government with armed groups as part of wider efforts to bring “total peace” and end decades of violence.

Experts have also suggested that criminal groups have taken it upon themselves to rein in illegal logging as a way to strengthen their hand in the discussions.

Progress lost

But positive developments in forest conservation in Brazil and Colombia have been all but cancelled out by tree losses spiralling out of control elsewhere.

In Bolivia, forest losses remained at record-breaking levels for a third year in a row, driven by uncontrolled expansion of soybean and beef production and exacerbated by exceptional wildfires.

The government, which has prioritised development and agricultural exports over forest protection, has not joined the 2030 pledge.

It was at loggerheads with Brazil at the Amazon Summit last year, when it opposed the inclusion of any references to the target in an outcome document signed by the leaders of eight countries.

Dramatic upticks in deforestation were also seen in Nicaragua, in Central America, and Laos, in South-East Asia, last year.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Nicaragua lost over 4% of its standing forest in 2023 alone, as the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega continued to turn a blind eye to illegal logging.

Disregard for the preservation of forests, and the respect of the rights of Indigenous people living there, is also shutting the country’s access to international financial support.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund pulled out of a forest conservation project last month after local community groups complained about a lack of protection in the face of escalating human rights violations in the area.

In Laos, forest loss nearly doubled last year reaching an all-time high. Rapid expansion of farming, primarily driven by Chinese investments, is believed to be the main cause.

Financial incentives

WRI’s Weisse said that, while the cases of Brazil and Colombia demonstrate the importance of political will in reversing deforestation, that alone will not be enough.

“Political winds continuously change”, she added. “In order for progress to endure in any of the above countries will likely take making it more valuable to keep forests standing than to cut them down”.

Carbon credits have long been touted as a primary way to achieve that. But their credibility has come under fire over the last few years as numerous schemes faced allegations of exaggerating climate claims and failing to safeguard local communities. Various efforts to strengthen their rules are underway.

Regulations are also being introduced on the demand side, blocking access to markets for goods produced on deforested land.

In the European Union, firms will soon have to demonstrate that seven commodities, including beef and soy, are not linked to deforestation. Commodities-producing countries, such as Indonesia, have attacked the regulations which they have branded as protectionist.

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A spokesperson for the German government, the fund’s second-biggest donor, told Climate Home that support for such a project “is not possible” according to the rules of the fund, which was specifically set up to reduce forest destruction in the Amazon.

The United States is “confident” the fund will use its resources “consistent with its governing regulations”, a US State Department spokesperson told Climate Home.

Environmentalists fear the project would trigger an explosion in forest destruction by giving illegal loggers easier access to remote areas of the rainforest.

First ever Paris Agreement offsets face integrity questions

Investment in large-scale infrastructure projects is not listed among the target actions of the 2008 presidential decree that established how the fund should spend its money.

But officials in the Lula administration want to tap the green funds for the paving of the 900-kilometre long BR-319 highway, cutting through the rainforest and connecting Manaus and Porto Velho.

The lower house of the Brazilian Congress voted last December in favour of a bill that would allow for the use of conservation funds to finance public works aimed at “recovering, paving and increasing the capacity” of the road. The bill needs Senate approval before becoming law.

The German government said it “is observing the developments closely”. A spokesperson added that, if the bill was conclusively approved, the German government would affirm to the Amazon Fund’s managers that its resources cannot be used to pave the road.

‘Tremendous consequences’

Research shows every major highway project in the Amazon has set off a surge in land grabbing and illegal deforestation.

Philip Fearnside, a scientist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, told Climate Home “the consequences would be tremendous”.

He added that trees would not only be cleared on the roadside, but the project would create an interconnected network of major roads giving deforesters access to a much larger area.

Built in the 1970s by a military government, the BR-319 was abandoned a decade later due to a lack of maintenance.

Since disintegrated into a dirt road, much of the route is now impassable during the rainy season. Vehicles that attempt it during dry months crawl along the broken pavement.

A section of BR-319 in the Amazonas state of Brazil. Photo: Agencia CNT de Noticias

The Brazilian government has been sketching out plans to restore the highway on economic and social development grounds.

The transport minister, Renan Filho, announced last August that he was planning to pitch the Amazon Fund’s governing board a project to pave the road.

This would turn the road into the world’s “most sustainable highway” and would allow easier access for police patrols to monitor and prevent deforestation, the ministry argued.

But environmentalists argued that this is not the kind of project that the fund is meant to support. One of the fund’s creators, forest scientist Tasso Azevedo said the project “does not fit into any of the fund’s planned support lines”.

Amazon Fund revived

Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund has over $1.2 billion available for projects that prevent, monitor and combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The fund’s largest donors are Norway, Germany, the US, Switzerland and state-owned oil company Petrobras.

They have promised to inject an extra $800 million into the fund since President Lula revived the mechanism on his first day in office in 2023 after three years of inactivity.

“A la carte menu”: Saudi minister claims Cop28 fossil fuel agreement is only optional

Western donors had stopped money transfers in 2019, under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former president unilaterally suspended the board of directors and the technical committee of the fund.

The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) manages the fund and decides how to allocate its resources.

Last September it told Climate Home that any requests are processed “in accordance with the strategic vision, guidelines and focuses” outlined in the 2023-25 ​​Biennium, a new set of guidelines created by the Amazon Fund’s Guiding Committee. It has not replied to further requests for comment.

Donors sceptical over plans

A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry for cooperation and development, said the use of Amazon Fund resources “is clearly defined and restricted” by the presidential decree underpinning the fund’s creation. “Based on these rules and regulations, the use of financial resources for paving a road through the rainforest is not possible”, they added.

A US State Department spokesperson said they “are confident” the BNDES will use the fund’s resources “consistent with its governing regulations and Brazil’s public commitment to cease all deforestation in the Legal Amazon by 2030”.

Brazil cracks down on illegal gold miners

A spokesperson for the Norwegian embassy in Brazil said it is for the Brazilian government through BNDES to decide on the specific use of the resources in the Amazon Fund. “The Norwegian Government has no say in the selection of projects”, it added.

The Brazilian government controls BNDES and appoints its head. “It is not an independent institution and the government has put pressure on its decisions in the past”, says Fearnside. “It just depends on how high a priority the project is for the government. The indication is that, except for the Ministry of Environment, the rest of the government is in favour of this highway”.

Fast-tracking process

Meanwhile, a group of parliamentarians from the Amazon regions brought a new bill to Congress aiming to fast-track the construction project. The text, approved under a special ‘urgency’ procedure, calls the highway “critical infrastructure, indispensable to national security”. 

The bill would authorize the use of donations received by Brazil to help conservation of the Amazon for the repair works on BR-319.

“We want a road that gives us the right to go back and forth, to transport goods, to buy food. This is the only highway in Brazil that is not paved, we cannot treat people from the North as second-class citizens”, said Alberto Neto, the author of the bill, after its approval in the lower chamber.  

The article was updated on 11/01 to add a comment received after publication

The post Germany and US warn Brazil against using Amazon Fund to pave rainforest road appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nearly two years on, Climate Home News looks at how these commitments are holding up to the test of time.

• Methane Pledge
• Forest Pledge
• International Fossil Finance Pledge
• Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)

METHANE PLEDGE

WHAT: Reduce human-made methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. Cutting the amount of methane present in the atmosphere is important because it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide despite having a shorter lifespan.

WHO: 104 countries, led by the US and the EU, signed up to the pledge when it was first announced at Cop26 in Glasgow. The number of signatories has since risen to 150. However, they only represent about half of global methane emissions as China, India and Russia – three of the world’s top four emitters – have not joined the coalition.

HOW IT IS GOING: The raw figures paint a fairly grim picture. Since Cop26, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has kept rising fast and it is now more than two and a half times its pre-industrial level.

Over half of the emissions come from human activities, like fossil fuel extraction, farming and landfills, with the rest caused by natural sources. Under current trajectories, total human-made methane emissions could rise by up to 13% between 2020 and 2030 – the pledge’s timeframe.

This graph shows the globally-averaged, monthly atmospheric methane concentration since 1983. Image credit: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

Targeting the oil and gas sector is seen by many as the easiest and fastest way to bring down emissions in the near term. Experts say existing technologies already provide cheap and effective ways to plug leaky infrastructure like pipelines and gas storage tanks.

However, the technological developments have not yet been converted into real, widespread action. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), methane emissions from oil and gas remained “stubbornly high” in 2022 even as the energy companies’ bumper profits made actions to reduce them cheaper than ever. “There is just no excuse”, the IEA chief Fatih Birol commented.

Raft of initiatives

But judging the pledge’s progress on current numbers only tells half the story, argued Jonathan Banks, global director of the methane programme at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). “Emissions are not going to turn around immediately,” he told Climate Home. “If you look at the work going into the pledge, building the funding and technical resources to bring emissions down, I think it could potentially be on track for success”.

A series of initiatives have been set up to help countries deliver on the pledge. The UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is helping over 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans to achieve the 2030 target.

Canada has set out a strategy that it expects to reduce domestic methane emissions by “more than 35%” by 2030, compared to 2020.

Methane leaking from Chelmsford compressor station, UK on 15 October 2021, picked up by a special camera (Photo: Clean Air Task Force/ James Turitto)

The Global Methane Hub (GMH), a philanthropic organisation, is also supporting signatories of the methane pledge with technical assistance and funding. Carolina Urmeneta, a director at the GMH, told Climate Home News that over the last year, the group has focused its work on developing systems to monitor methane emissions rates from oil and gas and landfill installations using satellites.

She said reaching the 2030 target “is possible and cost-effective, but it is not easy. We need to improve data transparency and increase funding for projects with methane targets.”

Regulations drive

Some progress has also been made on the regulatory front. The USA introduced new rules to address methane emissions caused by oil and gas companies through the Inflation Reduction Act. Using a carrot-and-stick approach, it provides $1 billion in public subsidies to take action, while charging a fee for excessive emissions.

In May the European Parliament agreed on tougher measures to tackle methane emissions in the energy sector. The approved text calls for binding emission reduction targets, stronger obligations for fossil fuel operators to detect and repair leaky infrastructure and the application of the same measures to exporting countries outside of the bloc.

While the final rules are still being negotiated with the EU’s national governments, CATF’s Banks believes they could have a “huge global impact” if introduced in their current form. “The methane emissions associated with the gas Europe buys from the rest of the world is quite large, so such measures could really drive some change”.

New announcements are expected at Cop28 in Dubai, after the summit’s president Sultan Al Jaber set the phaseout of methane emissions in oil and gas by 2030 as one of his priorities. “More than 20 oil and gas companies have answered Cop28’s call,” he said this week. “And I see positive momentum as more are joining”. But the UAE has been accused of double standards as it failed to report methane emissions to the UN for a decade, as the Guardian reported.

While it has not signed the pledge, China is expected to announce its long-awaited methane plan at Cop28.

FOREST PLEDGE 

WHAT: End and reverse deforestation by 2030. Country leaders pledged to conserve forests, tackle wildfires, facilitate sustainable agriculture, support indigenous populations and “significantly” increase the provision of finance towards achieving those goals.

WHO: More than 140 countries joined the coalition. Signatories of the pledge – including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – cover around 90% of the world’s forests. But major G20 powers such as India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and rainforest nations like Bolivia and Venezuela did not join the group.

HOW IT IS GOING:  Countries remain off track to reach the goal of the Glasgow pledge and end deforestation by 2030, according to an assessment done by a coalition of NGOs.

Across the world, tree loss recorded in 2022 was 21% higher than the level needed to be on course to reach zero in seven years’ time, the report said.

Source: Forest Declaration Assessment

In fact, the situation is getting worse. Global deforestation grew 4% last year, wiping out 6.6 million hectares of forest, according to the study. That’s a tree-covered area nearly as big as Ireland disappearing in one year.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. All these promises have been made to halt deforestation, to fund forest protection. But the opportunity to make progress is passing us by year after year,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

Saving the Three Basins means stopping fossil fuel expansion

There are important regional differences, however. While tropical Asia is faring better, with Indonesia and Malaysia on track to hit their targets, Latin America and the Caribbean are farthest off track.

The election of President Lula da Silva in Brazil has led to a reversal in the skyrocketing deforestation rates in the country, which hosts most of the Amazon rainforets.

But efforts to create a regional forest protection coalition have failed. At the Amazon summit in August, eight South American countries failed to agree on a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 following opposition from Bolivia and Venezuela.

An aerial view shows deforestation near a forest on the border between Amazonia and Cerrado in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state, Brazil in 2021 (REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli)

While it included a larger number of countries, the Cop26 commitment was not entirely new: it repeated promises previously made in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which by then had already failed to achieve some of its core targets.

Keen to avoid the same fate, self-declared “high ambition” countries launched a new initiative designed to deliver the pledge.

“High ambition” efforts

Chaired by the USA and Ghana, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) has promised to spur global action and provide accountability.

Only a fifth of the original 140 signatories have joined the group so far, with Russia and Indonesia among the most notable absentees.

Christine Dragisic, who leads the forest team at the US State Department, said the goal is to create a “high-level community” that brings together governments, indigenous people, philanthropies, civil society and the private sector to drive action forward and hit the 2030 target.

“Can we do it? Yes. Is it going to be hard? Definitely. Does it require everybody to be at the table? For sure”, Dragisic told Climate Home.

An Indonesian ranger patrols a forest protected through a carbon credit project. Photo: Dita Alangkara/CIFOR

Since its launch last year, the FCLP has worked on a number of initiatives offering technical and financial solutions to forest nations, looking at the role of carbon markets and the forest economy in averting tree loss.

Finance gaps

As with most climate actions, however, it ultimately comes down to the question of money. “The delivery of climate finance is very important to achieve a lot of these targets and that is still very much lacking”, Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, director of climate change at Ghana’s forestry commission and co-chair of the FCLP, told Climate Home.

“The kind of finance we need is not finance for today or tomorrow, it’s finance for yesterday. We are already behind schedule. If it gets delivered fast there’s lots that we can do to close the gap that is now quite wide,” she added.

The Cop26 pledge was accompanied by a commitment from a group of rich nations to provide $12 billion in forest-related climate finance between 2021 and 2025. The money should be channeled to developing countries enacting concrete steps to halt forest loss.

The donor countries reported last year that they had provided $2.6 billion – over a fifth of the target amount – in 2021. They are expected to provide an update at Cop28.

INTERNATIONAL FOSSIL FINANCE PLEDGE

WHAT: End new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: 34 countries and five development banks – predominantly from wealthy cuontries – signed up to the pledge at Cop26. These included the G7 nations – with the exception of Japan – and most EU member states.

HOW IT IS GOING: Among the signatories that give lots of money to the energy sector, the vast majority have introduced policies in line with the promise made in Glasgow.

The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Sweden have stopped providing loans and guarantees for oil and gas extraction and processing overseas through their export credit agencies.

Their actions have shifted at least $5.7 billion per year in public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, according to analysis by Oil Change International and E3G.

On the other hand, however, the USA, Italy and Germany have continued funding international fossil fuel projects in 2023 in breach of the pledge.

They were supposed to stop funding foreign fossil fuels by December 2022. But since then, they collectively approved over $3 billion in financial support to oil and gas overseas programmes.

Most of the funding comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

Among the projects receiving backing from the US and Italy was the expansion of an oil refining facility in Indonesia’s Borneo.

The US Export-Import Bank justified its backing of the project by claiming it would allow Indonesia to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. The Italian agency did not provide a motivation for the decision.

Germany and the US have also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into projects aiming to boost the production and trade of liquified natural gas (LNG), which has been more sought after since Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe cut back on Russian gas.

Political splits and carve-outs

In the US, efforts to comply with the Glasgow pledge have caused a split among senior officials in the Biden administration and in the federal agencies charged with disbursing the money, as Politico revealed.

The White House has drafted guidance underpinning the investments - without making it public -, but the final decisions are made by agencies like the US Export-Import Bank (Exim).

“It is a struggle to get US Exim to comply, so far they’ve ignored the Cop26 commitment”, says Nina Pusic from Oil Change International. “It will require a lot of political weight from the Biden administration and Congress.”

Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations

Italy looks likely to keep funding fossil fuels overseas for years to come. Its policy guidance lays out a "gradual dismission of public support to new requests of fossil fuel projects", seeing support for gas extraction and production run into 2026. Oil processing and distribution projects should be excluded from the beginning of next year.

But Italy has also carved out a wide range of exceptions that allow its export credit agency to keep greenlighting support for fossil fuel projects on "national energy security" and "energy efficiency" grounds.

The FSRU Toscana LNG regasfication platform off the coast of Italy (Photo: OLT Offshore LNG Toscana)

Germany's main export credit agency has just introduced this month new policies restricting support for fossil fuel projects. However, it allows for financing the development of new gas fields and related transport facilities until 2025 when justified by "national security and in compliance with the Paris Agreement targets".

Investment in new coal, oil and gas production is regarded as incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a large number of climate scientists.

"Germany has a vast amount of fossil fuel transactions pending approval", says Oil Change International's Pusic. "The success of the new policy will be judged on the decisions made on those projects".

GLASGOW FINANCIAL ALLIANCE FOR NET ZERO (GFANZ)

WHAT: Commit to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest by aligning their portfolios and investment practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: Over 650 institutions across the financial sector, including banks, insurers, asset owners, asset managers, financial service providers, and investment consultants. Gfanz members represent 40% of global private financial assets. They are grouped together under eight independent net-zero financial alliances focused on specific branches of finance.

HOW IT IS GOING: It is not easy to gauge the progress of a wide-ranging initiative with loosely defined targets and a constellation of constituent parts.

GFANZ says it has made progress over the last two years by raising the ambition of financial institutions and by providing tools and guidance to turn commitments into action.

"Two years ago, not a single bank had set a science-based 2030 target. Now nearly all global, systemically important banks have voluntarily and independently set 2030 targets for oil and gas", a GFANZ spokesperson said.

Above all, the mere fact that the alliance still exists at all is a first - albeit limited - marker of success, after an especially tumultuous year.

The prospect of ending up in legal hot waters in the US, where Republicans have driven an anti-climate investment backlash, has dampened the enthusiasm of many leading signatories. The result is that parts of the alliance have been hemorrhaging members, while other components have resorted to watering down their requirements to assuage concerns.

Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, launched GFANZ at Cop26. Photo: World Economic Forum/Valeriano Di Domenico

Troubles started brewing in mid-2022 when a group of leading US banks threatened to pull out over fears of being sued because of having decarbonisation policies imposed by external parties. That's after US Republican politicians had accused financial institutions of breaching antitrust rules by grouping together in a climate cartel that limits opportunities for investors.

A month later, in October 2022, Gfanz dropped a key requirement for its members to sign up to the UN Race to Zero initiative - a verification body for corporate and financial sector pledges - which had been seen as a way to prevent greenwashing.

GFANZ told Climate Home that the alliances are still working with Race to Zero and "continue to note" its advice and guidance.

Heading for the door

Those US banks eventually ended up staying in but, despite the less stringent criteria, other influential members began heading for the door in droves soon after.

Vanguard, one of the world's biggest asset managers, quit the Net Zero Asset Managers' initiative - part of Gfanz - saying it wanted to "provide clarity to investors" and "speak independently on matters of importance" to them.

But it's the insurers' coalition, known as NZIA, that has suffered the biggest - nearly fatal - wounds. The group has lost nearly two-thirds of its members since the start of the year, with leading firms like Allianz, Zurich, Munich Re and Lloyd's of London throwing in the towel.

Again a major driver for the mass exit was a letter written in May by 23 Republican attorney generals accusing signatories of advancing "an activists climate agenda" with "serious detrimental effects on the residents" of their states. The spark for this was the alliance's initial obligation to its members to set emission reduction targets by the end of July.

Staring at the real prospect of shutting down, the insurers' alliance again watered down its requirements, becoming effectively toothless.

To triple renewable energy, the Global South needs finance

"NZIA member companies have no obligation to set or publish targets", wrote the UN Environment Programme (Unep) - convener of the initiative -  in a clarification letter. "Each company who chooses to be a member of the NZIA unilaterally and independently decides on the steps on its path towards net zero."

Meanwhile, GFANZ says its members have submitted over 300 interim targets "representing clear progress in implementing commitments" to divert finance in line with net zero goals.

But while plans have been announced, many GFANZ members are also being accused of not putting their money where their mouth is. 161 members of the coalition have collectively invested hundreds of billions of dollars into the expansion of the coal, oil and gas industries since they joined the group, according to research by campaigning group Reclaim Finance.

A GFANZ spokesperson said "it’s clear a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure the world is deploying capital consistent with a 1.5C pathway".

"GFANZ is helping to support financial institutions to each set their own sectoral targets and develop transition plans and release guidance on their plan for a managed phaseout of fossil fuels," they added.

The article was amended on 6/11 to add comments from GFANZ received after publication

The post Forests, methane, finance: Where are the Cop26 pledges now? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his international reputation on improving Brazil’s environmental standing, had been pushing for the region to unite behind a common policy of ending deforestation by 2030 – one he has already adopted.

Instead, the joint declaration issued on Tuesday in the Brazilian city of Belem created an alliance for combating forest destruction, with countries left to pursue their own individual deforestation goals.

The document also leaves out any mentions to halting fossil fuel contracts in the Amazon rainforest, a proposal that was championed by the Colombian President Gustavo Petro but ultimately failed to make it into the final text.

The Brazilian coalition of climate NGOs, Climate Observatory, said the declaration fell short of expectations, adding the agreement “fails the rainforest and the planet”.

Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas

Slow action

The failure of the eight Amazon countries to agree on a pact to protect their own forests points to the larger, global difficulties at forging an agreement to combat climate change. Many scientists say policymakers are acting too slowly to head off catastrophic global warming.

Lula and other national leaders left Tuesday’s meeting without commenting on the declaration. Presidents from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said in a press briefing that the issue of deforestation “in no way whatsoever will divide the region” and cited “an understanding about deforestation” in the declaration, without elaborating.

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

This week’s summit brought together the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) for the first time in 14 years, with plans to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.

Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO coalition Climate Observatory, said the summit’s declaration is a “first step” but added it still lacks “concrete responses to the situation we’re dealing with”.

“The planet is melting, we are breaking temperature records every day. It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries cannot put in a statement, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero and that exploring for oil in the middle of the forest is not a good idea,” said Astrini.

Oil in the Amazon?

Tensions emerged in the lead up to the summit around diverging positions on deforestation and oil development.

Fellow Amazon countries also rebuffed Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro’s ongoing campaign to end new oil development in the Amazon. In his speech on Tuesday, Petro likened the left’s desire to keep drilling for oil to the right-wing denial of climate science.

He said the idea of making a gradual “energy transition” away from fossil fuels was a way to delay the work needed to stop climate change.

G20 climate talks fail to deliver emission cuts despite leadership pleas

Civil society organisations accused the Brazilian government of opposing a mention to fossil fuels in the final text, adding the country wanted to “bury” any mentions of a fossil fuel phase out in the region.

Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country’s northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest.

“What we are discussing in Brazil today is of an extensive and large area – in my vision perhaps the last frontier of oil and gas before … the energy transition,” Brazil’s Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told reporters after Petro’s speech.

Silveira said they should conduct research into what oil is there in order to make a decision on the issue.

Illegal mining

Beyond deforestation, the summit also did not fix a deadline on ending illegal gold mining, although leaders agreed to cooperate on the issue and to better combat cross-border environmental crime.

The final joint statement, called the Belem Declaration, strongly asserted indigenous rights and protections, while also agreeing to cooperate on water management, health, common negotiating positions at climate summits, and sustainable development.

As Reuters previously reported, the declaration additionally established a science body to meet annually and produce authoritative reports on science related to the Amazon rainforest, akin to the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.

The post Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Medco had initially planted a vast timber plantation to produce wood chips for exports. Then, in 2017, Indonesia injected Medco with $4.5 million to build a biomass plant in the area and committed the state-owned electricity company to buy the energy it generated. In 2021, the government gave the plant an extra $9 million. 

The company said it needs to almost double the size of its plantation to meet the demands of the power plant, and that it would continue to use wood harvested from the forest as it is cleared. 

Ultimately, the most affected were local villagers depending on the forest. The project has made it harder for Marind people, hunter-gatherers indigenous people to the lowlands of Papua, to find food to eat. 

This story is the result of a new Climate Home News investigation in collaboration with The Gecko Project and Project Multatuli, both publications based in Indonesia. 

This week’s news:

• “Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia
• FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations
• Amazon gateway city Belém will host Cop30 climate talks
• Comment: Climate movement must switch on to UAE threat

Our reporter Joe Lo is in Paris covering key UN plastics treaty negotiations. Check out our coverage:

• Row over veto powers holds up Paris plastic treaty talks
• Comment: How a local victory against petrochemicals can spur global action on plastics

Forest protection has been on our radar recently, as allegations surged that forest logging companies were using a sustainability certification scheme called the FSC to brand themselves as sustainable while continuing to clear forests. 

At its assembly last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) agreed to give their stamp of approval to companies that have cut down trees between 1994 and 2020 if they restore part of the forests and compensate communities.  

These companies include two Indonesian pulp and paper giants, Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), which had cleared vast areas of the tropical rainforest for decades. 

But environmental groups accused both companies of sourcing wood from suppliers which continue to cut down intact forests. One of the suppliers, they found, cut down an area equivalent to 20,000 football pitches. 

FSC told Climate Home News it “will not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities”. “The FSC should prepare itself not to be fooled,” one campaigner responded. 

The post “Green” funds destroy Indonesia’s forests – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

At its assembly last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) agreed to give their stamp of approval to companies that have cut down trees between 1994 and 2020 if they restore part of the forests and compensate communities. The move was backed by logging companies and green campaigners.

The programme will officially start in July, but preparatory work has already begun with companies interested in regaining the valuable certification, which opens loggers up to more customers. These companies include two Indonesian pulp and paper giants which had cleared vast areas of the tropical rainforest for decades.

Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) now say they have turned a new leaf and have now eliminated deforestation in their supply chains.

But environmental groups doubt their commitment and accuse both companies of sourcing wood from suppliers which continue to cut down intact forests. April and APP refute the accusations.

World Bank body delays vote on controversial loan to Brazilian dairy firm

Any evidence of deforestation since 2020 should immediately disqualify the companies from obtaining certification.

Grant Rosoman, a campaigner at Greenpeace and former FSC board member, says the certification body needs to first look at evidence on the ground before allowing companies to proceed with the scheme.

“If the FSC finds any companies associated with them have continued deforestation over the last two or three years that should be an immediate stop to the process”, he added. “The big danger is that this could become a marketing operation”.

FSC told Climate Home News it “will not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities”.

Coveted green symbol

From books to toilet paper, millions of goods across the world boast the FSC’s tick-tree symbol. For the consumer its presence should guarantee the product originates from sustainable and ethical sources.

For companies seeking the certification body’s recognition the symbol is a business opportunity. It opens up wider access to markets as many governments and major retailers, especially in Western countries, require the use of FSC-certified products.

Governments fall short in UN’s East Africa drought appeal

As the rule-setter and enforcer, the FSC plays the crucial role of upholding the integrity of the system. At its general assembly last year its members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a historical change: it moved from 1994 to 2020 the cut-off date by which companies need to have stopped clearing forests in order to get a certification.

Crucially, however, this would only apply if companies restored the same amount of forests that had been cut in their concessions during the period, and provided remedy for the social harm done in the process.

Problem companies engaged

The FSC said this change would “provide a route by which millions of hectares of forests can be restored and then become FSC certified and managed in a responsible manner”.

In March the FSC announced that that it was “engaged in a dialogue” with April and APP to plan their involvement in the remedy process.

UN advises against offsets for carbon removal technologies

Part of large South-east Asian conglomerates selling products in hundreds of countries, both APP and April used to hold FSC certifications. But they lost them, respectively in 2007 and 2013, when the FSC concluded they had been destroying pristine rainforests.

Since then, both companies have vowed to reform themselves. April committed in 2015 to eliminating deforestation from its supply chain and to protecting forests and peatlands. APP similarly pledged to halt all natural forest clearance.

Deforestation allegations

But separate investigations from campaigners and media have repeatedly accused the two companies of breaking their promises.

In the latest instance, last week a coalition of environmental groups accused April of receiving “significant volumes of wood” from two suppliers with evidence of deforestation. In particular, the report points the finger at Adindo Hutani Lestari, an April supplier located in north-eastern Borneo.

The investigation detected over 10,500 hectares of natural forest loss in its concession area since 2016. That’s roughly the equivalent of 20,000 football pitches. In the last month alone, over a hundred hectares of trees have been cut down in the area, according to Nusantara Atlas, which tracks deforestation using satellite images.

Grant Rosoman says this evidence “throws into question” April’s ability to be part of the FSC remedy scheme. “It’s very easy to make a commitment but delivering it on the ground is another story,” he says. “The FSC should not waste its time and do a preliminary screening to see if there is even a basis for moving forward”.

‘Baseless claims’

In a statement published on its website, April said: “claims made in the report related to April were baseless”. The company added that, based on its own analysis, no deforestation occurred in areas controlled by its supplier Adindo Hutani Lestari.

APP has faced similar accusations of backsliding on its commitments. Last year a report by a group of campaigners claimed two timber suppliers controlled by APP destroyed natural habitats in a protected reserve to grow acacia trees for pulpwood.

Over 220 hectares of forest have been cleared over the last 12 months in the concession areas of those two companies, according to Nusantara Atlas.

APP did not reply to our request for comment. But, in a statement published last year in response to the report, it said deforestation does not take place on any of its supplier concessions. It also said no natural forests were turned into pulpwood cultivations in the areas controlled by the two suppliers.

Loophole risks

FSC told Climate Home News evidence of the progress in implementing remedy work “must be present and verified” before companies can apply for a new certification.

It also said it would “not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities, considered as serious violations, within its corporate group”.

Environmentalists worry the narrow focus only on operations directly controlled by companies seeking association could be exploited as a loophole.

That’s because – they claim – companies like April and APP hide their direct links to third-party suppliers through complicated corporate structures stretching into secretive offshore countries.

Timer Manurung from the Indonesian environmental group Auriga says the FSC must take into consideration any deforestation in the groups’ supply chains or this could be an escape route.  “The FSC should prepare itself not to be fooled”, she added.

A previous version of the story included maps from deforested areas, but these were removed due to deforestation happening before the images were taken.

The post FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Destruction of native vegetation rose by a quarter to 10,689 square kilometers (4,127 square miles) – an area larger than Lebanon. The data from space research agency Inpe is for the 12 months through to July 2022, compared with the same period the previous year.

The Cerrado, the world’s most species-rich savanna, has given way to Brazil’s expanding agricultural frontier for decades. Roughly half of the savanna’s vegetation has already been destroyed, with much of it converted to farms and ranches.

When far-right president Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, deforestation in the Cerrado was at its lowest point for decades. It increased in every year of his time in office. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest rose too.

Deforestation in the Cerrado has risen in Bolsonaro’s time in power, although it remains lower than previous decades. (Photo: INPE)

Bolsonaro will be replaced by left-winger Lula Ignacio da Silva in January, who has promised to combat deforestation and reduce it to zero in the Amazon rainforest.

Trade levers

The European Union recently agreed on a law to prohibit companies from selling agricultural products linked to deforestation, which would apply to the Amazon rainforest but excluded much of the Cerrado.

Asked about rising Cerrado destruction, EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said protections could be expanded.

“We have a review clause in just one year, we will have a look at it,” he said in an interview at the UN’s Cop15 nature summit in Montreal. “If we see patterns shifting to other ecosystems, we will be able to react relatively quickly.”

Governments split on ditching nature-harming subsidies in Montreal

Countries at Cop15 aim to strike a deal to protect areas rich in biodiversity like the Cerrado. But with the summit set to end on 19 December, negotiators still disagree on some 200 points, according to conference documents.

“What we eat and how we produce our food are the main drivers of this large-scale obliteration,” said Jean-Francois Timmers, a policy expert for environmental advocates WWF.

“We need Cop15 negotiators to prioritise ending deforestation and conversion in areas where the yearly rate of ecosystem losses prove alarming, like the Cerrado.”

The post Destruction of Brazil’s Cerrado savanna soars for third year in a row appeared first on Climate Home News.

The programme aimed to reverse deforestation by paying Haitians to plant trees and by teaching them skills like beekeeping to diversify their income so they are less pressured to chop down trees to make charcoal, which is used for cooking.

Haiti lost 9% of its tree cover in the last 20 years with trees destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and chopped down to be turned into charcoal or to create space for farming.

As well as worsening climate change, this deforestation makes Haitians more vulnerable to the floods and landslides which global heating has made more frequent. Trees suck up rain water and hold the soil together.

To try and reverse this, USAID launched a reforestation programme in 2017, aiming to plant four million trees. The US aid agency outsourced the project to a company called Chemonics, which is headquartered near the White House and is known in the development industry as a ‘Bingo’ or big international non-governmental organisation.

On its website, Chemonics talks about the project in glowing terms. It says it “takes a holistic, community-based approach” and “will cultivate trained and empowered local communities and authorities”.

But a May 2021 report authored by consultants from Social Impact Inc found a host of problems, including that the project’s environmental and social benefits are unlikely to continue when the funding runs out.

The report found that trees planted on private property which contribute to people’s income, like fruit trees, “are likely to be protected”. But “trees planted on public land where animals roam freely are not likely to survive”.

Jean Wiener, a Haitian environmentalist who planted trees for the USAID-funded programme, told Climate Home News that wild, feral or grazing cows and goats “are going around and pretty much mowing the country”.

Wiener said Haiti has laws that state animals should be fenced in but these are not enforced. Instead, farmers let their animals roam to graze which is easier than fencing them in and bringing them food. Theft is discouraged by violent vigilante reprisals, he said. The USAID programme aimed to enable farmers to produce hay for their livestock to stop them roaming.

But the audit report found that “most resilience activities are not likely to be sustainable, given the short project timeline, lack of resources among farmers, and many project delays”. “Pursuing new and unproven techniques is a lot to expect from people who are already food insecure and cannot take the risk of a potential lost harvest, even if there is the possibility of increased income using new techniques,” it added.

Wiener said that international donors needed to provide “longer term commitments” than five years so that organisations can “build their capacities and grow their results over the long term”. But, he said, “I know that there are political cycles and that is a major hindrance.”

The project created several management plans for different areas with committees made up of local community members to oversee them. The report found these plans “may have some small benefits to the communities” but “the committees are unlikely to continue to function without support”.

Without an entity financing the committees’ activities, organising meetings, and paying travel and per diem costs, “the committee members themselves stated that they would not be able to continue to do anything after the project ends,” the report added.

Asked if the trees will survive, a USAID official speaking on condition of anonymity, told Climate Home: “That’s our hope. We realise that these kinds of programmes where we want to build sustainability into institutions take a long time and we do have to be realistic about what is the capacity of the Haitian government.”

A “lesson learned” is to include local government, NGOs and the private sector early on in the programme’s design, they said.

African climate diplomats reject African Union’s pro-gas stance for Cop27

One key issue was that USAID paid local tree-planting groups only when they had achieved a certain milestone. The report said this “may not be a feasible approach in a resource-poor place like these targeted regions of Haiti”.

Despite becoming more common, Wiener said the practice “can be a serious issue” for organisations that don’t have a lot of resources to invest upfront.

The USAID official agreed paying on part-delivery “isn’t appropriate in all cases”. “Perhaps, in a project like this, where we are giving grants to very small local-based organisations, it might not be the best method,” they said.

UN, IMF disagree on who should foot the bill of the energy crisis

Other shortcomings identified in the report include a perception that it was “too long and difficult” for Haitian NGOs to obtain grants, equipment was delivered late or not at all, private companies didn’t engage with the scheme and not enough trees had been planted.

Wiener’s organisation, the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity (FoProBim), has worked on similar projects before but USAID, he explained, “does have very strict and very strong processes in place for approving grants”.  In contrast, the Haitian grantees lacked the structures to provide the necessary information required in the accounting processes.

Delays with delivery of material were so common, it suggested a “systemic issue with project procurement procedures,” the report found.

The USAID official accepted this “was a problem” and told Climate Home the report had been useful for “course corrections”.

India approves climate plan with increased ambition, clarifying energy goals

The official added that during the project Haiti had experienced a string of difficult situations including Covid-19, currency fluctuations, insecurity, fuel shortages and the assassination of the president. This all “impacted the programme,” they said. “It was complicated”.

Currency fluctuations scuppered a deal with an exporter of ackee fruit which was going to pay farmers to grow the crop. A cruise company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, was going to pay farmers for eco-tourism until the pandemic hit their revenues.

The USAID official said that reforestation would continue to be a priority of the agency’s work in Haiti and that the project had achieved “a number of successes” including the planting of 4.5m trees – 500,000 above target.

Building the capacity of civil society would become a priority, they said, and USAID will focus on “smaller rather than bigger” both in terms of the amount of money the agency gives out per grant and on the geographical area it covers.

The post US-funded trees ‘not likely to survive’ in Haiti when project ends appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to India’s latest State of the Forest report, India’s overall forest cover increased by 1,540 square kilometres between 2019 and 2021, while its tree cover increased by 721 sq km. But plantations, orchards and urban green areas are misleadingly counted as forest, while mature forests are being cleared for industrial use.

In 2019, the government changed the methodology for the first time to include trees outside the forest area, both on public lands or private land, Kanchi Kolhi, a researcher at the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research, told Climate Home News. An area of land over one hectare with as little as 10% canopy density is included in the tally.

“It gives a skewed picture of how much land is actually under forests. By this definition, palm oil plantations will be designated as forest cover when it comes to showing compliance with domestic forest policy and international climate commitments,” Kolhi said.

This allows the government to claim that it is making progress towards achieving its 2030 forestry targets, which are critical to its long-term climate strategy.

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The government has set a 2030 target of having 33% of its land under tree cover, as part of its National Mission for a Green India, and has pledged to restore 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030. In its 2030 climate plan, India committed to creating a carbon sink to sequester an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2, through increasing tree and forest cover.

With the latest survey the government “can show an increase in forest growth and carbon stocks, and [efforts] to reduce deforestation,” Souparna Lahiri, climate policy advisor at the Global Forest Coalition, told Climate Home News. 

“But it hides the continuing deforestation that is happening due to mining and industrial projects,” Lahiri said, adding that the ministry has given environmental clearance for forests to be cleared for development purposes.

Between 2008 and 2019, 253,179 hectares of forest land were cleared for non-forestry purposes, such as the construction of roads or industrial projects, a government official told Indiaspend. “That is an average of 46,000 hectares of forest being cleared each year,” said Lahiri. “If deforestation is happening, then what is this reality of increasing forest cover? It doesn’t match up.”

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The government can use the claim of increased forest growth to pitch for funding from the UN and other international donors, under the scheme known as Redd+, Rajkamal Goswami, research associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), told Climate Home News.

“The government is looking to leverage the increase in forest cover in the form of payments under Redd+ or increase their net emissions reductions,” he said. 

“[The] methodology is a wicked mix of historical obsession of forestry with growing trees and casting the net wide to access climate adaptation or carbon offset funds,” said Kohli. “It allows the government to make a pitch for Redd+ and other climate adaptation funds by showcasing a commitment to forest conservation and increasing carbon stocks.”

From 2000-2015, India was the largest recipient of international development aid for forestry, securing 23% of funds from sources including Japan, EU and multilateral development banks.

Donors including France and the UK are earmarking an increased share of their budgets for “nature-based solutions” that both absorb carbon and support wildlife.

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“A true reflection of the state of India’s forests will need to be a multidisciplinary exercise which acknowledges threats, records data and assesses its ecological status,” said Kohli. 

“I am very sceptical that things will change for the better soon,” said Goswami. For the government to improve its forest monitoring “intense pressure” is needed, “from the public, scientists and international forest, climate, and carbon governing bodies to make the data public and open to peer-review,” he said. 

The ministry of forestry and environment did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

The post India falsely claims forestry progress in ‘skewed’ report, experts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2014, more than 200 governments, companies, civil society and indigenous organisations signed up to the New York Declaration on Forests, promising to halve tropical deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030.

A progress report on the declaration found that a majority of forest nations have not embedded those goals in their latest climate pledges to the UN.

The report analysed the climate plans of the 32 countries with the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions through three activities: curbing deforestation, improving forest management and restoring or planting new forests. Twelve of the 32 had signed up to the NY declaration. Just 10, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, set explicit targets for forest protection.

“We found that they cover approximately half of the [combined mitigation] potential with their ambition. If we take out India, which has a very ambitious target for tree planting, it’s only 16%,” Franziska Haupt, lead author of the report and managing partner at Climate Focus, told Climate Home News. India has pledged to increase its forest cover by 95 million hectares by 2030. 

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There have been some successful policies, such as moratoria on timber exports and palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Laos, but much bolder reforms are needed to prevent further forest loss, the report says.

“It is clear that all these positive steps have not been able to curb the powerful drivers of unsustainable land use,” said Haupt. In several countries, such as Brazil and Peru, the government has rolled back environmental safeguards and monitoring in recent years, leading to an increase in deforestation, she added.

Land use change, including deforestation and degradation, accounts for around 10-12% of global emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Around 12.2 million hectares of tropical forests were lost in 2020, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year, according to data from the University of Maryland and Global Forest Watch.

“Forests have not been recognised for their potential. They offer an essential climate solution, we cannot miss them. That has not really arrived in mainstream policymaking,” said Haupt. 

Between 2001-2020, forests removed up to 7.35 gigatonnes of CO2 a year from the atmosphere, according to the report. Forests managed by indigenous communities in Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are net carbon sinks and can play a key role in helping these countries meet their climate goals, it says.

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One major obstacle to ramping up global forest protection is the lack of finance, said Haupt. 

Since 2010, countries have spent an average of $2.4 billion a year on national and international forest and climate goals. That is between 0.5%-5% of what is needed to protect and restore forests, estimated to be as high as $460 billion per year. Around a quarter of the 32 countries analysed say that their forest targets can only be met if they have access to international finance. 

“Forests offer the third highest mitigation potential, after the industry and energy sectors, yet they receive only a fraction of climate finance,” Haupt told Climate Home. “In 2017 and 2018 the land use sector – including forests and agriculture – received only 21 billion annually in public and private climate finance. The energy sector received 16 times as much.”

“When it comes to protecting forests, there is a yawning gap between where governments are and where they need to be. We won’t tackle climate change without looking after forests and the people who depend on them,” said Allison Hoare, senior research fellow on forest governance at Chatham House.

“We have the solutions to tackle deforestation, but they are still not being implemented at scale. Land use decisions are often made by the elite who prioritise short-term economic interests,” said Hoare, adding that forest-dependent communities must be included in consultation processes.

The post Countries failing to protect forests, 7 years after New York declaration appeared first on Climate Home News.

Gabon became the first African country to receive results-based payments for curbing deforestation under the Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi). 

Norway awarded the country $17 million due to lower emissions from forest loss in 2016 and 2017, compared to the 2006-2015 baseline. But data by Global Forest Watch shows that loss of tree cover actually increased and reached its third highest level since 2011 during this period. 

Joe Eisen, director of Rainforest UK, described it as “payment for non-performance.” “This payment risks being as much a PR exercise as it is for actual and verifiable reductions in deforestation,” he said.

Cafi said its assessment was based on a reduction in selective logging, which does not show up in the satellite images Global Forest Watch uses. The money is intended to support further forest protection efforts.

Meanwhile two projects in Colombia aimed at reducing deforestation have issued millions more carbon credits than the true volume of emissions reductions, an investigation by NGO Carbon Market Watch revealed. These “hot air” carbon credits were sold to a Colombian fossil fuel company, have cost the government an estimated $25 million in tax revenue to date and undermine its climate goal, the report warned.

The problem could be much bigger and “detrimental for Colombia to meet its climate commitments if the issue is not fixed”, a Colombian government insider told Climate Home News. 

This week’s news…

• China’s biggest bank is ditching Zimbabwe coal plant, campaigners say
• ‘Hot air’ carbon offset scheme undermines Colombia’s climate goal, experts warn
• UK government opens registration for Cop26 participants to apply for vaccines
• Canadian minister Catherine McKenna to quit politics and focus on climate change
• Norway pays Gabon $17m for forest protection despite deforestation spike
• India’s biggest oil refiner to invest $10bn in clean energy ‘gigafactories’
• Mega oil project in Russia’s far north threatens Arctic indigenous communities

…and comment

• Shell court ruling is a wake-up call for governments to end fossil fuel support – Harro van Asselt and Gita Parihar
• Canada’s next climate plan must finally address its blind spot: oil and gas emissions – Eddy Perez

Jabs for Glasgow

After months of uncertainty, the UK government has announced that it will roll out a vaccination programme for all Cop26 participants ahead of the climate talks in November.

The UN Climate Change online registration portal opened early this week to allow attendees to apply for a vaccine by 23 July, which will be provided by the UK and administered in participants’ home countries. 

Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma encouraged all potential delegates to take up the offer. “Success at Glasgow requires representatives from every part of the world physically sitting around the same table,” he said. 

But serious logistical challenges remain. It is unclear how delegates from all around the world will be able to attend if quarantine rules and border closures stay in place. 

The post Flawed forest protection – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Campaigners warn Indonesia’s vulnerability to climate change is increasing and a government rollback of environmental regulations is worsening the situation.

Cyclone Seroja made landfall on 5 April, bringing torrential rain and triggering cold lava floods – flows of volcanic debris – in East Nusa Tenggara province, east Indonesia. More than 22,000 people have been displaced and at least 2,000 homes have been damaged.

On Friday, BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati warned that a second cyclone, named Odette, could hit the islands of Sumatra and Bali this week.

“People are advised to remain cautious of heavy winds and rains that could happen in some areas and be mindful of threats of floods, landslides and flash floods,” Karnawati said.

Seroja is the strongest tropical cyclone to have hit Indonesian land since 2008, according to the country’s meteorological and climate agency BMKG.

The tropical storm is the latest natural disaster to strike the country, which has been battered by a high number of floods and landslide events since the start of the year. In January alone, 197 flood disasters were recorded, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.

In a press conference reported by the Jakarta Post, Karnawati warned Indonesia should prepare for more intense cyclones as climate change pushed the average sea temperature around the country from 26C to 30C in recent years.

“It is something we need to realise together that global warming must be mitigated. Otherwise, these tropical cyclones will become a regular occurrence,” she said.

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Survivors displaced by the cyclone have been moved to crowded rescue shelters where there is a high risk of Covid-19 transmission. 

Indonesia’s disaster agency chief Doni Monardo said families were receiving 500,000 rupiah ($35) so they are able to rent accommodation rather than stay in the evacuation shelters.  “We must avoid crowds inside the tents,” he said.

Fransisca Fitri, country director of YAPPIKA-ActionAid, which has been delivering aid on the ground, said climate change was making the disasters more frequent and severe. 

“Forest and land fires, floods and landslides, are devastating agricultural land and changing habitats, water quality and quantity, and coastal ecosystems,” Fitri told Climate Home News. 

Residents are fleeing to refugee camp after flash flooding destroyed their villages in East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. (Photo: Bengkel APPek)

And these impacts, which directly threaten vulnerable communities, risk being worsened by a government roll back of environmental protection, campaigners say.

In November, the government passed a law on job creation that weakened environmental regulations in favour of business development.

The legislation removed an article in Indonesia’s forestry law mandating that at least 30% of each island and areas of land that drain rain waters into streams and rivers should be maintained as forest. The law also makes it easier for mining companies to operate within forest areas as they are no longer required to obtain official permits. 

South Africa sets out to tighten 2030 emissions target

Environmentalists opposed the law on the grounds that it could lead to a rise in deforestation and promotes mining. Forest clearance can intensify flooding as it dislodges the soil and increases the area of surface run-off, they warned.

“High rates of deforestation are exacerbating flash floods and landslides. Between 2018-2020, we lost an area of forest almost as large as the capital Jakarta,” Fitri told Climate Home News in an email.

“Where ActionAid is responding to Cyclone Seroja in Lembata, flooding was worsened because natural forest defences have been cut down to make way for a tourist route to Ile Ape Volcano.” 

Fitri said the government’s decision to prioritise investment in mining “will have a huge impact on forest communities, especially indigenous people, and their access to natural resources, and increase Indonesia’s vulnerability to climate disasters”.

After the legislation was passed, a group of 36 global investors, with a combined $4.1 trillion in assets, wrote a letter to the Indonesian government expressing concerns the new law would damage the environment. 

Situation after storm cyclone seroja last night

Pray for sumba island pic.twitter.com/YXCf1kYZQy

— 4M4TEUR (@ub_x4be) April 6, 2021

“This law has weakened environmental safeguards. [It] prioritises economic growth over the environment,” Adila Isfandiari, climate and energy researcher at Greenpeace Indonesia, told Climate Home News. 

Isfandiari said the law along with the increase in extreme weather events “will become a burden for building climate resilience and adaptation”. 

“If we do not have any resilience, this will severely impact the Indonesian economy, as we will bear a significant number of financial losses due to climate disaster,” she said.

UK pledges to make scaling up adaptation finance a priority at G7 summit

Indonesia is the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter. Deforestation for palm oil production and peatland wildfires are major contributors to its emissions. 

Climate Action Tracker ranks Indonesia’s climate plan as “highly insufficient.” Indonesia plans to install 27 GW of coal power by 2028 and is one of only five countries in the world that constructed new coal plants last year. 

Since the start of the pandemic, the government has spent around $6.78 billion on supporting fossil fuels and just $240 million on clean energy, according to the Energy Policy Tracker. 

Indonesia is not expected to increase its 2030 emissions cuts ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, in November, Isfandiari said. 

A draft plan circulated earlier this year shows the government intends to maintain the current goal of reducing emissions by 29% below a business-as-usual baseline by 2030. 

UK foreign minister Dominic Raab met with president Joko Widodo this week. The statement following the meeting promised climate cooperation but did not specify whether Indonesia would strengthen its target. Widodo is among 40 world leaders invited to attend US president Joe Biden’s climate summit on 22 April. 

“The increasing climate disasters are a clear message to the government that we need a more serious and ambitious commitment,” said Isfandiari.

The post Cyclone Seroja kills 160 people, exposes Indonesia’s climate vulnerability appeared first on Climate Home News.

The environmentalists are seeking a court order on the government to reduce deforestation by 60% in 2021, in line with the national policy on climate change. If this target is missed, campaigners say deforestation should stop completely for a year.

In 2019, the Brazilian government abandoned its main anti-deforestation plan, known as PPCDAm. In the same year, president Jair Bolsonaro’s first full year in office, there was a 34% increase in deforestation.

The NGOs bringing the case argue that the scrapping of PPCDAm breached the Brazilian constitution. Article 225  states “all have the right to an ecologically balanced environment” and says the government has a duty to “defend and preserve it for present and future generations”.

Bolsonaro shifts blame for unprecedented Brazilian wetland fires

They also argue deforestation breaches Brazil’s international commitments. Greenpeace Brazil’s climate and justice co-ordinator Fabiana Alves said: “Even under a totally unambitious contribution to the international Paris Agreement, Brazil is now lacking public policy, budget and staffing to guarantee the application of our national laws. We need to stop this free fall.”

Caio Borges is the coordinator of the Instituto Clima e Sociedade’s legal programme. He told Climate Home he is aware of six ongoing legal cases against the government’s deforestation policies in the last six months. Four of these are in the Supreme Court and two are in lower courts. “They complement each other in many aspects and have some overlaps,” he said.

In this case, Borges said he expects the court to rule “that there is a systemic failure by the government to fulfill its constitutional duties and obligations on the protection of the right to a healthy environment and that a major risk posed by such omission is the exacerbation of climate change impacts on vulnerable groups, the protected biomes and biodiversity”.

What the Supreme Court will order the government to do though is an open question, Borges said. “If a systematic violation of constitutionally protected rights is found, then the court could step in to correct the state failure, ordering things such as the development of action plans to curb deforestation, compulsory allocation of resources to equip the agencies and to replenish climate funds.”

Landless Brazilians are invading more and more protected areas of the Amazon

Caroline Prolo, head of the environmental law practice at the Brazilian law firm Stocche Forbes, said that this was the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to address alleged violations of Brazil’s national climate change policy which incorporates its legally binding commitments to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“If successful,” she said, “it will open an avenue for other claims of climate inaction by the federal government. If the Supreme Court recognizes that the UNFCCC´s principles are transposed and may give rise to concrete obligations under Brazilian domestic law, this could help building a legal argument around the existence of a fundamental human right for a stable climate system within Brazilian law, which could in turn make the basis for many other climate litigation cases in the country.”

The court case has been formally lodged by six opposition political parties, with the backing of 10 NGOs including Greenpeace, the Climate Observatory and the indigenous peoples’ organisation APIB. A decision on precautionary measures is expected in 2021, but the final ruling could take several years to emerge.

Environmentalists urge UN to condemn Brazil’s spying at climate talks

Climate litigation is becoming increasingly common across the world. The London-based Grantham Institute logs 412 climate lawsuits in its database, not including the US.

Norway’s Supreme Court is deliberating on calls for the Norwegian government to stop Arctic oil licenses under both the national constitution and the Paris Agreement. In April 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled in favour of 25 young people and ordered the government to ensure the protection of the Amazon from deforestation to protect present and future generations.

The post Bolsonaro’s attack on the Amazon breaches Brazil’s constitution, climate lawyers argue appeared first on Climate Home News.

Meanwhile a government bill to restart the economy would axe several environmental protections, raising fears of further deforestation.

Forest loss in Indonesia rose 50% in the first 20 weeks of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, according to data from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) laboratory at the University of Maryland – which operates a global warning system for forest loss – and analysed by Greenpeace.

Analysis of the same data by WWF Germany found that in March alone, forest clearance in Indonesia was up 130% compared to the three-year average for March 2017 to 2019 with an estimated 130,000 hectares razed – the greatest recorded loss of any country that month.

It is the starkest example of a global trend that saw forest loss alerts rise significantly since the start of the pandemic across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Campaigners told Climate Home News the absence of on-the-ground monitoring allowed illegal tree cutting to go unchecked.

“The reduced presence and capacity of law enforcement on the ground means there is more space for illegal activities,” said Oyvind Eggen, executive director at Rainforest Foundation Norway.

“Deforestation increase could be one of the most long-term impacts of the Covid-19 crisis as governments all over the world are thinking about the short term.”

Green shift urged to revive Brazil’s economy and shield Amazon forests

In 2010, Norway pledged up to $1 billion to help Indonesia reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, with payment based on results. As deforestation rates fell in 2017, Indonesia is set to receive its first payment under the deal between the two country this year.

The latest figures released by the Indonesian government show deforestation has been largely stable over the last two years – increasing 5% during that period.

Eggen told CHN he was worried about the picture painted by the latest data. “Are we going back to an environmental catastrophe that was about to be halted? The satellite data doesn’t lie,” he said.

More data and observations from the ground will be needed to determine who is responsible for the destruction, said Eggen. Travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus have created a gap in the records.

In recent months, civil society groups monitoring forest loss have been unable to travel to the Indonesian archipelago’s remote forest areas, Kiki Taufik, Greenpeace’s head Indonesia forest campaign, told CHN.

But “the palm oil and paper sector have been running business as usual,” he said. The Indonesia Palm Oil Association said workers’ movement in and out of the plantations were restricted but there were no plans to reduce activities, Reuters reported in April.

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Indonesia is the world’s top palm oil producer and is heavily dependent on exports. Palm oil plantations have expanded from 3.6 million hectares in 2008 to 16.8 million in 2019, according to the Forest People’s Programme.

Clearing primary forests and peatlands for plantations or logging is banned under Indonesian law and a moratorium on new oil palm plantations has been extended to 2021.

A lack of transparent government data makes it difficult to attribute the deforestation spike to illegal activities or the granting of new permits in spite of the moratorium, Taufik said.

Angus MacInnes, project officer at the UK-based Forest People’s Programme, told CHN law enforcement was “often complicit in the conversion of forests to industrial concessions”, citing cases of alleged intimidation and violence against indigenous activists during the pandemic.

Indonesia’s forestry ministry did not respond to CHN’s request for comment.

On the ground, lowland forests have been particularly vulnerable to illegal encroachment, Rudi Syaf, executive director at Indonesian forest conservation NGO KKI Warsi, told CHN in an email.

Informed by local intelligence, Syaf said there had been a significant increase in illegal logging and forest conversion into palm oil and coffee plantations during the pandemic compared to last year.

Some communities suffering from the economic fallout of Covid-19 were turning to illegal activities including gold mining and logging to survive, he said, as traditional activities such as rubber farming were no longer sufficient to support livelihoods.

Amazon faces ‘perfect storm’ of forest clearance, coronavirus and wildfire

As the fire season gets underway in Indonesia, Taufik, of Greenpeace, questioned whether the government had been able to take fire prevention measures this year. At the end of July, 64,000 hectares had already burnt, he said.

Fires in Indonesia’s forests and carbon-rich peatland cause haze, clouds of smoke including PM 2.5 pollution, which has been linked to a higher death rate from Covid-19. According to the World Health Organisation, Covid-19 cases are on the rise across the country.

While this year’s fire season is forecast to be milder than last year’s blaze, based on weather conditions and potential fuel levels, the stakes are higher. Taufik said the government needed to do more to restore peatland or face a double health crisis of toxic haze and Covid-19.

However the government is concerned with rebooting economic development and creating jobs, by pushing a bill that would revise 79 laws and weaken environmental regulations.

The proposed omnibus bill would scrap the obligation to carry out environmental and social impact assessments for new business licenses, remove a requirement for all regions to maintain a minimum of 30% of their territory as forest area, and eliminate a strict liability rule that compels companies to protect their land from fires.

Indigenous rights and forest campaigners fear it will sacrifice the rainforest and its people to facilitate business.

Analysis by Indonesian forest protection NGO Madani found that, if approved, the bill could see five provinces lose of all of their natural forests to deforestation. That would breach the country’s climate commitment in the forestry sector.

“Environmental damage will cause disasters that will ultimately destroy the Indonesian economy entirely,” Syaf, of Warsi, warned.

The post Forest destruction spiked in Indonesia during coronavirus lockdown appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the afternoon, hitmen swept through the land in question, known as Linha (road) 15, killing everyone they found. Some of the bodies bore signs of torture.

The worst land-related slaughter Brazil has seen in 21 years reflects a chronic ambiguity around land rights. On this lawless frontier, far from the gaze of the authorities, forest clearance and conflict go hand in hand.

The rampage happened in a remote region, accessible only by an unpaved road. The closest city, Colniza, is a 7-hour-drive in the dry season; when it rains, it can take days. Communication here is so hard that the police were not notified of the crime until almost 24 hours later.

On 26 April, Climate Home was the first and so far the only media to visit the crime scene. The journey involved an hour’s flight in a rented aeroplane followed by a three hour drive in a 4×4 vehicle.

Around 120 families live in a rural community called Taquarussu do Norte, a smattering of wooden houses with water wells and bathrooms in the backyard and no electricity. Several of them are the offspring of settlers who colonised the neighbouring state of Rondônia in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, they have found their own land to farm. Known as posseiros, or squatters, they have no legal claim and take their chances with the inconsistent law enforcement.

Fearing more attacks, most inhabitants left the region after last month’s violence, especially women and children. In the area where the slaughter took place, dogs roamed inside the houses in search of food and their deceased owners.

Last week, state police arrested two men they suspect of carrying out the murders on the orders of a timber merchant, who is still at large. Squatters, however, said they had a good relationship with loggers (all of them illegal) and blamed unnamed rival farmers for the attack.

The victims

Sebastião de Souza, 57

Pastor of the Assembly of God Church in Guatá, about 140 km north of Taquarussu. He was one of the squatters of the area subject of dispute, known as Linha (road) 15. Previously in 2014, his home at the site was burned down. He was found with a machete buried in the back of his neck.

Fábio dos Santos, 37
A father of four and member of de Souza’s congregation, dos Santos worked mainly as a bricklayer. Pastor de Souza hired him to clear the land – the day rate for labourers is about $17 in the region. He lived in Guatá and had no land.

Ezequias de Oliveira, 26
A squatter in Taquarussu, de Oliveira’s lot is outside the disputed area. He was onsite working as a day laborer and also belonged to the Assembly of God.

Edison Antunes, 32
Another squatter who was working in Linha 15 as day laborer. He was the deacon of the local Assembly of God and left four children.

Aldo Carlini, 50
Also working as day laborer, Carlini had a lot in a neighbouring area.

Samuel da Cunha, 23
A newcomer from the neighbouring state of Rondônia, da Cunha was also working as a day laborer when he was killed. His lot was outside the disputed area.

Valmir do Nascimento, 55
Found with his hands tied behind his back, do Nascimento was one of the three squatters killed who had a lot in the area under dispute. He left two sons.

Izaul dos Santos, 50
A squatter in Linha 15, last year dos Santos paid $34,000 for 200 hectares. He was pending trial for murder. His son and daughter-in-law were two of the four people who were in the area during the slaughter and escaped with their lives.

Francisco da Silva, 56
One of the five squatters who were there as day labourers. In 2015, Ibama (the environmental protection agency) fined da Silva $36,000 for the illegal deforestation of 22 hectares, but he never paid it.

Everything in Taquarussu runs informally. Despite the fact they have occupied some 20,000 hectares since the early 2000s and that selling and buying lots are common, none of the families has land titles. As one squatter who asked to remain anonymous put it, “the only document is our presence here”.

The two government agencies in charge of land regulation of that area disagree about who own the land. Incra (the Brazilian Federal Agrarian Reform Agency) said it belonged to Mato Grosso state. Intermat, the state land management agency, said it had belonged to a private owner since 1984, but could not name the owner.

This imprecision is no exception. Official figures gathered by Imazon, an non-profit research institution, show that there are about 160,000 land claims pending regularization.

Moreover, there are 71.3 million hectares of public vacant lands in the Amazon, an area twice the size of Germany. These are vulnerable to illegal logging and land-grabbing, according to data gathered by another independent research institute, Ipam Amazônia.

“Land regularization in the Amazon is an essential requirement for conflict reduction, curtailment of deforestation and implementation of more sustainable policies in the region,” says an Imazon report published last month.

Under Brazilian law, 80% of any rural property in the Amazon must be preserved as primary vegetation. Prior authorisation from federal or state environment agencies is needed to cut any forest. In practice, squatters flout these rules with impunity.

Cláudio Gonzaga, a prosecutor in Cotriguaçu, an Amazon town not far from Colniza, said politicians and local merchants were typically the ones to lead and finance land-grabbing of these areas, taking advantage of the infamously slow Brazilian judicial system and feeble law enforcement.

The invasion process, described by Gonzaga, includes a topographical survey for land division, illegal logging in order to finance the whole process and eventually the use of cleared land for crops or ranching. By the time the authorities catch up, tens or hundreds of acres of forest may have been destroyed.

Besides feeding violent conflict, the legal uncertainty is a major impediment in fighting deforestation, according to Evandro Selva, the regional head of Ibama, Brazil’s environmental protection agency.

“In most cases, our effectiveness depends on land regulation agencies,” said Selva, who led a raid on Taquarussu in 2015, in a phone interview. One of the squatters who died in the slaughter was fined for deforesting 22 hectares.

“During the inspection, the farmer-squatters argued: ‘How can we get a deforestation authorisation if we don’t have the land titles?'”

The post Worst land-related killings in decades expose Amazon’s lawless frontier appeared first on Climate Home News.

Just four days after the Brazilian meat exporter was embroiled in a corruption probe, Ibama, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, embargoed two of its processing facilities for buying tens of thousands of cattle from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon. 

As part of an operation code-named ‘Cold Meat’, on 21 March, Ibama raided JBS meatpackers in Redenção and Santana do Araguaia, in the state of Pará.

Ibama identified 59,000 cattle sourced from 507 sq km under embargo due to illegal deforestation in the same region. About 90% of the animals had gone to the two JBS plants. The rest went to 13 other smaller meatpackers.

Cattle ranching is the biggest cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. In 2014, about 65% of the deforested area was converted into pasture, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. 

Climate Home joined the Ibama raid on JBS’ Redenção plant. Without giving notice, the agents entered the facilities aboard pick-up trucks. Minutes later, inside the main office, they notified the local managers that the meatpacker was under administrative embargo, meaning the meatpackers must clear the provenance of all cattle purchases with Ibama before making new purchases.

Ibama said all of the meatpackers sanctioned last week had failed to comply with a disciplinary process started in 2009. The companies had agreed with the attorney general to cease buying cattle from rural properties in areas under embargo for illegal deforestation.

In response to the new Ibama sanctions, JBS denied any wrongdoing. In a statement, the São Paulo-based company said independent audits resulted in environmental compliance rates of more than 99.9%. 

Satellite photography of the Brazilian Amazon shows large swathes of pasture cut into the rainforest (Photo: Nasa)

JBS said it should not be held responsible for the control and movement of cattle raised by its producers as it does not have access to the ‘animal transit guide’, a state government-issued document.

According to Ibama, it is common ploy to transport cattle from embargoed to non-embargoed areas before they are sold to a meatpacker, hiding the origin.

It is not the first time JBS has allegedly disrespected its agreement with the government. In March 2015, NGO Repórter Brazil revealed that JBS acquired cattle from a family considered by federal police the “biggest Amazon deforester of all time”. After the story broke, the company blocked new purchases.

In 2012, British supermarket giant Tesco cancelled its contract with JBS after concerns about deforestation were raised by Greenpeace. Last week, Greenpeace suspended ongoing negotiations with JBS.

Since the sanctions were issued, Ibama has experienced resistance from Brazil’s public institutions. In a preliminary ruling – which raised eyebrows among environmentalists – federal judge Heitor Gomes freed the company from complying with Ibama’s embargo. Gomes said JBS should not be penalised as the cattle sourced from deforested areas was just a small fraction of its overall purchases.

This followed criticisms levelled at Ibama by Brazil’s minister of environment José Sarney Filho – who oversees the agency.

In an apologetic video message to Pará’s cattle ranchers, Sarney said he did not know about the Cold Meat operation beforehand and that it happened in an “inopportune moment”.

He said Ibama should have postponed the raid because of a federal police investigation into allegations that JBS employees bribed health inspectors to ignore tainted meat. The scandal has caused JBS to suspend production at 33 of its 36 Brazilian plants.

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But André Trigueiro, an environmental journalist told CBN Radio that the two scandals had nothing to do with one another.

“If one has the evidence and the crime, one has to inform the population. Why should one wait?” he said. “Each ministry has to take care of its own agenda, and the ministry of environment should protect areas that, by law, are forbidden to cattle-raising.”

Sarney’s comments have thrown Ibama into uncertainty. Last week’s raid was considered just the first step of major strategy against deforestation. In Pará alone, there are 7,170 sq km of pasture under embargo because of continuing illegal deforestation. Most have cattle on it, according to Ibama.

Redenção, in the state of Pará. (Screengrab: Google Maps)

During 2016, 38% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon occurred in Pará. As a whole, deforestation has increased 29% over the previous year, according to satellite imagery.

It is a highly profitable and rarely punished crime. “Part of the deforestation involves grabbing public lands, that is, somebody cleans a public area and becomes a squatter. As the government rarely retrieves these areas, they become owners and make a profit stealing public property”, says Paulo Barreto a senior researcher at Imazon, a non-profit institution based in Belém, Pará’s capital.

Amazon dispatch: 

In an article published two weeks ago, Climate Home wrote about the new minister of Justice Osmar Serraglio, who openly opposes the demarcation of new indigenous lands, despite being one of his cabinet’s constitutional attributions.

Last Friday, Serraglio and president Michel Temer signed a decree cutting 347 appointed jobs in Brazil’s Bureau of Indigenous Affairs (Funai). The biggest cuts were in the department in charge of assessing the impact on indigenous populations of big projects, such as highways, hydroelectric plants and mining operations.

The post Troubled meatpacker JBS sanctioned over Amazon deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Amazon rainforest from above (Pic: David Evers/Flickr)

By Ed King

“Love can save the world” is the sort of statement you expect to hear at 5am at the Glastonbury Festival stone circle, not from an ex-banker at a Royal Society event.

With his double-breasted pinstripe suite and felt fedora, James Cameron, formerly head of Climate Change Capital and now chair of the Overseas Development Institute, doesn’t look a festival type.

And his pitch to a grouping of financiers and climate experts last week wasn’t to hug each other, play Elbow’s One day like this on repeat or take mind-bending drugs.

Instead he wanted to promote “landscapes”, the latest buzzword deforestation campaigners and development banks are using to describe efforts to protect the natural environment.

They want communities, investors and governments to think big and move away from piecemeal efforts to save a patch of forest or restore a field.

And they hope it will unlock the millions needed to replant forests and regenerate agricultural lands scarred by years of neglect and abuse.

“There’s a reason why landscape is good. You can visualise a landscape,” Cameron says.

“You can look and imagine it changing. That’s critical. Thinking about a home makes you think about what is valuable.”

Critical challenge

Landscapes are being hit like never before, say experts.

Over a quarter of the planet’s agricultural lands are now severely degraded, according to the Global Commission on Economy and Climate, a body chaired by ex-Mexico president Felipe Calderon.

Huge demand for commodities like beef, palm oil and soya is driving the agri-boom, which frequently ignores how ecosystems like forests regulate and store water and protect against soil erosion.

Deforestation and degradation of lands account for 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, wiping out areas that previously acted as vast carbon stores.

Aside from climate considerations, agriculture accounts on average for 20% of GDP in developing countries, which rises to 34% in sub-Saharan Africa. Land degradation threatens that productivity.

And as the world population grows, so demand for food and areas to graze livestock are set to soar, placing further pressure on virgin forest.

Action

In 2011, countries committed to restore 150 million hectares by 2020, while last December a Latin American coalition of governments said they would replant 20 million hectares with trees.

What’s vital, says Jane Wilkinson, director at the Venice-based Climate Policy Initiative and former UN climate negotiator for Australia, is that these efforts aim for significant regional impacts.

Talking about landscapes moves away from what often seem like tree counting initiatives, epitomised by the UN-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme.

“Landscapes allows us to talk about a whole bunch of issues in a more integrated way than say REDD did,” she says.

“When we’re talking about a landscape approach we’re actually talking about quite a complex set of relationships in respect of a particular place.”

This means developing land projects that deliver across environmental, social, financial and political indicators, adds Wilkinson.

“It’s emblematic of moving away from a project by project focus and doing things at scale.”

Finance

These efforts need millions of dollars to grow, more money than governments or civil society can provide, which is where supporters of the landscapes concept hope it will be a catalyst.

Peter Holmgren, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) argues it “resonates” with the finance community, offering the potential for investments on scale.

The cash is there, David Pitt-Watson a financial advisor to the UN environment body and former fund manager tells the London event, but the opportunities are not presenting themselves or packaged in the right way.

“The problem is not so much a lack of money but where to invest it.”

It’s not a view everyone at landscape ground zero shares. Daniel Gad, a commercial farmer based in Ethiopia, says there are a huge number of “credible and bankable” projects, with a market of 250 million people in his region for basic agricultural products.

But banks are not recognising that potential, and farmers in Africa are often denied finance or offered cash at exorbitant rates, he says.

Many are heading towards cities seeking a better life, abandoning farms or leaving them in the hands of older generations who could often not maintain the lands.

Funding fears

Some investors still have a “phobia” against land investments, according to Abyd Karmali, head of climate finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Many were burned after the world’s carbon markets slumped and previous incarnations of REDD failed. He suggests an “interesting portfolio reallocation” towards greener products taking place across the world could see this change.

Also speaking at the event, Sean Kidney, head of the Climate Bonds initiative, predicts it would take three years to “lay the foundations” for a market around landscapes.

The world is “awash with capital” for the right projects, he adds.

That’s progress of sorts, but Cameron – who recently took a punt and invested in a farm in Tanzania – argues many in the financial world still don’t appreciate the true value of soil, water, trees.

For him it comes back to the language of landscapes and his holy trilogy of “love, reason and power” that are needed to raise awareness.

Finding language that allows the public and investors to make a rational connection between problems and how they could be affected is essential to enable change, he says.

“Too little of that has happened when we talk about degrees of warming… love of place is very important as much of the climate change debate requires us to think generationally.”

The post Why love of landscapes is central to climate challenge appeared first on Climate Home News.

A palm oil mill near Sepang KLIA (Pic: Marufish/Flickr)

By Ed King

The luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel chain has been targeted by an international campaign to slow the rate of deforestation in Indonesia.

Its sister company Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), which owns palm oil plantations the size of Singapore, stands accused of accelerating rates of rainforest destruction across the country.

The Forest Heroes campaign group says AAL has cut down 14,000 hectares of rainforest since 2007, and cleared 27,000 of carbon-rich peatland since 2009.

According to Forest Heroes, AAL plans to open a new palm oil mill in Aceh, Indonesia, risking thousands of hectares of rainforest, a charge the company denies.

Playing on the Mandarin Oriental celebrity “I’m a fan” slogan, campaigners have launched a “She’s not a fan” website to highlight the links the chain has to the destruction of habitats home to endangered elephants and tigers.

“Staying at the Mandarin Oriental sends profits to one of the most environmentally destructive corporations on the planet,” said Deborah Lapidus, director of the campaign.

“Mandarin Oriental’s chairman Ben Keswick needs to stop his company’s destruction of forests and elephant habitat.”

Mandarin and Astra are owned by the Jardine Matheson conglomerate, one of the world’s largest companies, registered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Protestors in London outside the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park, one of the chain’s top hotels (Pic: Forest Heroes)

According to the company’s annual accounts AAL generates around 3% of Jardine Matheson’s annual income. In 2014 its production of palm oil soared 21.1%.

In statement sent to RTCC Jardine Matheson said it believed AAL’s sustainability practices were “among the best in the industry” and said it was a supporter of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP) initiative to curb deforestation.Palm oil is used in a huge variety of goods from lipstick, pizza dough to chocolate and detergent.

Leading producers in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia expect to produce nearly 62 million tonnes in 2015, a 4.3% rise on 2014, catering for rising demand in the EU, US, China and India.

Producers are frequently accused of clearing virgin forest, draining peat bogs and driving off local communities in their search for more land.

Globally deforestation and peat fires accounts for nearly 12% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Indonesia’s government has imposed a moratorium on forest clearances, a move supported by companies such as Asia Pulp and Paper, which was previously one of the worst forest destroyers.

Along with 27 other countries Indonesia also backed a 2014 pledge signed at UN Headquarters to halve forest loss by 2020 and end it by 2030.

Glenn Hurowitz, a forest expert at the Washington DC based Climate Advisors told RTCC there had been a “revolution” in breaking the links between agriculture and forest loss.

“In the last 18 months the overwhelming majority of palm oil has been covered by no deforestation policies,” he said.

But despite progress from the likes of Unilever and APP in signing up and implementing more stringent guidelines for palm oil, he said Indonesian efforts to protect their forests were at risk.

Specifically, he said lobbyists inside the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) were successfully obstructing efforts to reform.

“In Indonesia the president has taken substantial action to protect forests… both APP and largest palm companies have announced and are implementing them,” he said.

“But we have been told that this company [AAL] is using influence amid palm oil association to undermine the new president’s efforts to conserve forests.”

The post Mandarin Oriental hotel chain linked to Indonesia forest destruction appeared first on Climate Home News.

A palm oil mill in Malaysia (Flickr/Marufish)

By Megan Darby

Global demand for palm oil, an ingredient in a whole range of foods and cosmetics, is a major driver of tropical deforestation.

That is what scientific studies and green groups on the ground find. To their credit, some consumer goods companies are cracking down on forest clearance in their supply chains.

But the Malaysian Palm Oil Council would prefer to convince you it is no problem at all.

It is offering prizes worth US$15,000 for essays on the topic: “Oil palm is not the driver of deforestation.”

(Photo: Malaysian Palm Oil Council/ www.mpoc.org.my)

Another US$15,000 is up for grabs on a health theme: “Fats including palm oil consumption are no longer associated with coronary heart disease.”

Nothing to see here, then.

And the industry marketing body is quite clear that “only entries responding to the topic will be considered”.

Due to “popular and overwhelming interest”, it has extended the deadline to 30 May.

It has got David Dellatore of the Sumatran Orangutan Society riled.

He argues on the Mongabay website this is “wasteful propaganda” that diverts resources from finding solutions to deforestation.

It’s hard to disagree.

Report: Palm oil lobby lashes out at EU complaints over illegal logging

The post Is this the most blatant invitation to greenwash ever? appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN peacekeepers on patrol in the Congo – war has raged since 1997 (Pic: Sylvain Liechti/UN photos)

By Alex Pashley

Criminal groups are stripping up to $1.3 billion in natural resources a year from the Democratic Republic of Congo, fuelling ceaseless violence as civil war nears a third decade.

Profits from trafficked goods like gold, timber, charcoal and ivory fund at least 25 armed groups, according to a United Nations Environment Programme report published on Thursday.

“This income represents the basic subsistence cost for at least 8,000 fighters a year, and enables defeated or disarmed groups to continuously resurface and destabilise the region,” the report said.

Holding over half of Africa’s tropical forests, years of political instability have driven deforestation and devastated wildlife including endangered gorillas and rhinos.

Last year researchers said the loss of Congo’s rainforests could lead to the region warming 3C above pre industrial levels by 2050.

Report: Tropical deforestation could cause 0.7C temperature rise
Report: UN hopes Congo deal can save Africa’s rainforests

At civil war since 1997, unrest has squandered the resource wealth of a country that ranks 186 out of 187 on the Human Development Index.

“Wildlife and forest crime is serious and calls for an equally serious response,” Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP executive director said. “[E]nviromental crime robs countries of revenues that could have been spent on sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.”

The UN’s 20,000-strong peacekeeping mission helped Congolese soldiers force the surrender of M-23 rebels in November 2013.

The report  called to strengthen the rule of law and boost intelligence gathering across supply routes to track illegal operations.

UN peacekeepers patrol Congo’s Beni region in an APC (Pic: UN photos//Sylvain Liechti)

Martin Kobler, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of MONUSCO, the UN’s regional security force, said,  “These resources lost to criminal gangs and fuelling the conflict could have been used to build schools, roads, hospitals and a future for he Congolese people.”

Congo holds five world heritage sites owing to the rich biodiversity of its forests. All are on UNESCO’s ‘danger list’, however.

In the eastern DRC, loggers have cut down an estimated 61,500 hectares of forest a year since 2001, driving the felling of hardwoods and charcoal production.

The UN estimates between $58-176 million of charcoal, or 293,000 tons are produced a year.

Between 10-30% of the overall illegal trade goes to transnational organized criminal networks based outside the eastern DRC, the report, compiled by a range of experts from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and locals NGOs said.

The post UN: Gold, timber and ivory plunder stokes Congo conflict appeared first on Climate Home News.

Forest cleared for agriculture in Acre, Brazil
(Pic: CIFOR/Kate Evans)

By Megan Darby

Only a handful of companies, investors and governments are acting to halt slashing and burning of rainforests, despite growing awareness of the problem.

That is the picture revealed by the Forest 500, an index of key players in supply chains that drive more than half of tropical deforestation: soya, palm oil, beef, leather, timber, pulp and paper.

While some consumer brands are making good on promises to phase out deforestation, they are outnumbered by firms with no forest policies at all.

“Our goal with the Forest 500 is to provide precise and actionable information to measure the progress of society to achieve zero deforestation,” said Mario Rautner of the Global Canopy Programme, which compiled the index. “There was good news and bad news.”

The GCP scrutinised the policies and performance of 250 companies, 150 investors, 50 governments and 50 other “powerbrokers”.

Members of the Consumer Goods Forum, an industry association that is aiming for net zero deforestation by 2020, scored 80% higher than average among companies.

Mixed messages

Danone, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Kao Corp achieved the maximum five out of five, as did HSBC bank on the investor side.

None of the 30 Chinese companies listed, on the other hand, score more than one. These include the country’s biggest supermarket group and the state construction engineering firm.

Pizza chain Dominoes and clothing retailer Gap were among the western brands showing little in the way of strategy to protect forests.

For national governments, the scores are less wide-ranging. Colombia, Brazil and Peru lead the pack with four out of five, while the lowest-ranked Madagascar, Nigeria and Angola get two points each.

Deforestation and land degradation is estimated to be behind 10-15% of greenhouse gas emissions, making a substantial contribution to climate change.

At a summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon last September, 27 countries committed to halve natural forest loss by 2020 and end it by 2030.

“There is no other climate change strategy in the short term which would be as effective as preventing deforestation,” said Rautner. “There is this emerging consensus that we really have to tackle these problems by 2020.”

With “good momentum” behind efforts to manage forests more sustainably, he added “it is not as daunting perhaps for companies and investors” to follow.

The post “Forest 500” index reveals deforestation heroes and villains appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: epSos.de/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

A global gold rush has led to a surge in deforestation near protected areas in South America, researchers have warned.

Gold mining destroyed around 1,680 square kilometres of tropical forest in South America between 2001 and 2013, according to a study published today in Environmental Research Letters.

Lead author Nora Álvarez-Berríos said: “Although the loss of forest due to mining is smaller in extent compared to deforestation caused by other land uses, such as agriculture or grazing areas, deforestation due to mining is occurring in some of the most biologically diverse regions in the tropics.

“For example, in the Madre de Dios Region in Perú, one hectare of forest can hold up to 300 species of trees.”

UN statistics show that deforestation affected 13 million hectares of land every year between 2000 and 2010.

The rate of deforestation due to gold mining boomed in particular following the global economic crisis in 2007, the researchers from the University of Puerto Rico showed.

Before the crash, around 377km2 was destroyed between 2001 and 2006. Between 2007 and 2013, it increased to 1,303km2.

An increase in demand – driven by greater consumption of items such as jewellery in India and China – was accompanied by a leap in price. The value of gold also rose from around $250 per ounce in 2000 to $1,300 in 2013.

This made it possible to mine previously unprofitable areas, such as the deposits beneath tropical forests, says the study.

Ecological damage

After crosschecking maps of all South American tropical biome below 1,000m, the researchers found that, over the 13 year period, 89% of the forest loss occurred in just four areas: the moist forest regions of Guiana, the Southwest Amazon and Tapajós-Xingú, and the Magdalena Valley-Urabá.

The footprint of the mining on these regions – including the removal of vegetation and the building of roads and railways – can lead to serious impacts on the environment, according to the study.

Long term effects include the failure of vegetation to regrow, changing rainfall patterns, and permanent loss of biodiversity. The destruction of forests, which store and absorb carbon, also releases carbon dioxide into the air, contributing to global warming.

While there was little evidence of deforestation inside protected areas, around a third of the mining occurred within a 10km buffer zone around these zones. This puts conservation areas at risk of harmful impacts from chemical pollutants filtering out from mining activity.

“To decrease the amount of deforestation that is occurring as a result of gold mining in the tropical forests, it is important that awareness is raised among gold consumers to understand the environmental and social impacts of buying gold jewellery or investing in gold,” said Álvarez-Berríos.

“It is important to also encourage more responsible ways of extracting gold by helping miners to extract in a more efficient way to reduce deeper encroachment into the forests.”

The post Gold rush causes rise in South American deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: CIFOR/Flickr)

By Jan Rocha

In an eloquent, hard-hitting scientific assessment report entitled The Future Climate of Amazonia, Dr Antonio Donato Nobre, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), traces the climatic potential of the world’s greatest remaining rainforest.

He looks at its critical functions for human society, its destruction through deforestation and fire, and he discusses what needs to be done “to stop the runaway train that the climate has become since human occupation in forest areas”.

The report talks of the Achilles’ heel of Amazonia − the danger that the invincible hero will fall – and warns that its future climate has already arrived. Approximately 20% of Brazil’s Amazon forest has been clear cut, while forest degradation has disturbed the remaining forest to varying degrees − directly affecting an additional 20% or so of the original area.

Forest degradation

Dr Nobre says there are clear indications that a reduction of approximately 40% of the rainforest may trigger a large-scale transition to a savanna landscape over time. “There is no doubt,” he says, “that deforestation, forest degradation and associated impacts have already affected the climate both near and far from the Amazon.”

He spells out the sheer scale of the devastation: the total deforested area is greater than the size of two Germanys or two Japans. It is equal to 184 million football fields – which means that, over the last 40 years, the equivalent of 12,635 football fields have been deforested per day.

Dr Nobre is critical of the Brazilian government’s recent claims that deforestation is falling.

He says: “There is no reason whatsoever to celebrate the relatively lower rates of clear-cutting in recent years, especially since − after the adoption of the new Forest Code (2011), with its wide amnesty for those who deforested − a distinct tendency towards further increases in the annual rates has already been observed.”

So concerned is Dr Nobre about what is happening that he believes only a virtual war effort can save the rainforest. His battle plan – with ignorance the first enemy to overcome − has five steps:

1. Popularising forest science: On the basis that knowledge is power, scientific facts about the role of the forest in creating a friendly climate, and the effect of deforestation in leading to an inhospitable climate, must become common knowledge.

2. Zero deforestation: The harm deforestation does to human beings and the economic losses it causes should be compared with that of tobacco, Dr Nobre argues. When Brazil introduced a new Forest code that scaled back protection, the consequences of changed land use on the climate were never discussed by the politicians. While economic growth and market demand create pressures that leads to deforestation, planning weaknesses foster the invasion and occupation of forested areas − and all these loopholes must be sealed urgently.

3. An end to fires, smoke and soot: Using fire as a tool for clearing land is a deeply ingrained habit that must be stopped. The fewer sources there are of smoke and soot, the less damage will be done to the formation of clouds and rain, resulting in less damage to the green-ocean rainforest.

4. Recover and regenerate forest: Stopping deforestation is not enough to reverse threatening climate trends. “We must regenerate, as widely as possible, all that has been changed and destroyed,” Dr Nobre says. Reforestation on such a scale implies a reversal of land use in vast areas that are now occupied − difficult in the current scenario − and land zoning technologies will be needed.

5. Governments and society need to wake up: In 2008, when the global financial bubble burst, governments around the world took just 15 days to decide to use trillions of dollars of public funds to save private banks and avoid what threatened to become a collapse of the financial system. The climate crisis has the potential to be immeasurably worse than any financial crash, yet still there is procrastination − despite the abundance of scientific evidence and of viable, creative and appealing solutions.

Unavoidable reality

In a final warning, Dr Nobre’s report predicts that climate chaos “has the potential to be immeasurably more damaging than World War II. What is unthinkable today may become an unavoidable reality sooner than expected.

“China, with all its serious environmental problems, has already understood this and has become the country with the most ongoing reforestation activities.

“Restoring native forests is the best bet we can make against climate chaos, and is the only true insurance policy we can buy.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

* The Future Climate of Amazonia: Scientific Assessment Report by Dr Antonio Donato Nobre, CCST Earth System Science Centre, Ministry of Science and Technology/National Institute for Space Research.

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Ergilia Rengifo, Julia Pérez, Adelina Santillàn and Lita Rojas are in Lima to demand justice for their murdered husbands
(Pic: Facebook/If not us then who?)

By Megan Darby in Lima

Edwin Chota, Jorge Rios, Francisco Pinedo, and Leoncio Quinticima were travelling to visit their kinsmen in Brazil early September when they were ambushed and killed.

Leaders of the Ashéninka people of Saweto, they were known for defending the Amazon rainforest. Illegal loggers are believed to be responsible for their murders.

Deforestation is on the rise in Peru, accounting for some 40% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As Peru hosts international climate talks, the widows of these four men are in Lima to demand justice and state protection.

“Our community is aware of global concerns about climate change and agree with the need for solutions to protect the world’s forests,” says Ergilia Rengifo, widow of Rios.

But the Saweto people’s efforts to save their own lands from deforestation have not been supported by the Peruvian government, she says.

The widows want the state to recognise their title to the land their husbands died for – rights their fellow Ashéninka across the border in Brazil won in 1992.

Three months after the tragedy, all they have are promises. Back home, a 6-8 day canoe ride from regional capital Pucallpa, their people are still under threat.

Our Fight from Handcrafted Films on Vimeo.

Two of the women nurse young babies as they brief journalists at a hotel in Lima.

They are not welcome in the UN climate conference centre, an infant-free zone 45 minutes away by bus.

In that temporary village, a government official insists they are speeding up the process to give the Ashéninka their title – an US$80 million programme due to start next year.

“We are awfully sorry for what happened in Saweto,” says Gabriel Quijandria, deputy minister of strategic development.

Two suspects have been arrested and are under investigation. The widows are not satisfied; they say the murderers were part of a wider criminal network that is going unpunished.

Illegal trade

A 2012 World Bank report estimated up to 80% of Peru’s timber exports were harvested illegally.

According to Global Witness, there have been 57 assassinations of land defenders in Peru since 2002.

A study published in Carbon Management found that across the Amazon, 20% of forest is under threat.

It also found indigenous lands cover one third of the carbon locked in the forest

“We have never been under so much pressure, as this study demonstrates,” said Edwin Vásquez, co-author and president of indigenous people’s network COICA.

“Yet we now have evidence that where there are strong rights, there are standing forests.”

International recognition of indigenous rights is “essential” to secure the forests’ contribution to global climate stability, added co-author Richard Chase Smith.

Forest destruction

Quijandria says the government has initiatives to halt the rise in deforestation.

Last year 145,000 hectares of forest was destroyed, environment official Gustavo Suarez de Freitas revealed earlier in the week. The figure was 80,000 hectares in 2001.

When trees are burned or rot, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

In September, Germany and Norway announced funds to help protect Peru’s forests – and the carbon stored in them.

Welcoming the support, Peru’s president Ollanta Humala said it would go towards placing the country on a path to sustainability.

“We have a lot of work to do to protect Peruvian forests, to formalise the rights of Peruvian indigenous peoples,” he said.

For Rengifo’s husband this will come too late, but she hopes that her story will inspire delegates at the Lima climate conference to take forest protection initiatives more seriously.

“We ask that the governments and other groups participating in COP20 listen to our demands, and realise that the people of Saweto can do much to help, but we need their support.”

The post Widows of murdered Peruvian forest defenders demand justice appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: mariusz kluzniak/Flickr

By Paul Brown

Preserving forests is a vital step in preventing climate change, but people who defend them against illegal logging and land grabs are being murdered in increasing numbers.

And one of the worst recent examples is in Peru, the country hosting the United Nations climate change conference that opens in the capital, Lima, on December 1.

Four indigenous leaders from the Ashéninka people from the Peruvian Amazon − including Edwin Chota, a prominent anti-logging campaigner − were killed attempting to defend their lands in the Ucayali region in September.

The killings were highlighted yesterday in a report, titled Peru’s Deadly Environment, by the independent environmental investigation agency, Global Witness.

The report calls into question “the commitments of Peru to protect its carbon-rich forests and the people who live in them, in light of unfettered illegal logging, disregard for indigenous land claims, and new laws that favour industrial exploitation over environmental protection”.

Tragic reminders

Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness, said: “The murders of Edwin Chota and his colleagues are tragic reminders of a paradox at work in the climate negotiations. While Peru’s government chairs negotiations on how to solve our climate crisis, it is failing to protect the people on the frontline of environmental protection.

“Environmental defenders embody the resolve we need to halt global warming. The message is clear: if you want to save the environment, then stop people killing environmental defenders.”

The report follows a wider Global Witness investigation of the escalating number of people killed trying to defend the environment. Between 2002 and 2013, it says, 908 campaigners were killed in 35 countries. Brazil was the worst offender, with 448 killings, Honduras second with 109, and the Philippines with 67.

The recent killings in Peru makes it the fourth most dangerous place to be a defender of the environment, with 57 people killed − 60% of them in the last four years. This is mostly in disputes over land rights, mining and logging. Over 20 million hectares of land claims of indigenous communities have not been processed.

Edwin Chota had received numerous death threats for his resistance to the loggers who were gutting his community’s forests, but his appeals to the authorities were ignored. There was speculation that there was collusion between the loggers and the authorities.

Before he died, Chota sent local police photographs of the illegal loggers and the sites they were exploiting. It is these loggers who have now charged with his murder.

In an attempt to make it worthwhile for Peru to leave the country’s forests standing, Norway and Germany have offered a $300 million partnership deal to support Peru’s efforts at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the country’s Amazon region.

Ironically, the deal was announced in September − the same time as the four activists were murdered.

The money was to cover the period up to 2020, and Peru would get the cash from Norway if it recognised indigenous people’s land claims, and so preserved the forest. At the same time, Germany would continue its extensive support for Peru on climate and forest issues.

At the time of the deal, the President of the Peru, Ollanta Humala, said: “There is growing evidence that economic growth and environmental protection can be combined. The Letter of Intent with Norway is a major step forward in realising the vision of deforestation-free development, and we are firmly committed to implement its provisions faithfully. We do this because it is in the self-interest of Peru.

“Our indigenous peoples’ groups have traditionally been the best guardians of our forests. By embarking on this path of deforestation-free development, we hope also to reach out to our indigenous peoples and move together towards a more harmonious future.”

Weak government

All three countries accepted that there were serious problems in implementing the agreement because of weak government and pressure from miners, loggers and small farmers. There are 68 million hectares of forest, with 350,000 indigenous people living in it − including several uncontacted tribes.

Despite the president’s words, Peru had already invoked a new law in July 2014 that grants extended land use rights to investors for the expansion of large-scale agriculture, mining, logging and infrastructure projects.

At an award ceremony in New York yesterday, the four dead activists were honoured as Diana Rios Rengifo, daughter of one of the murdered men, Jorge Rios, accepted an environmental award from the Alexander Soros Foundation on behalf of her father and their Ashéninka community.

“They may have killed my father and his friends, but I am still here,” she said. “And I will continue to fight for the rights to our territories and for the rights of the other indigenous peoples of Peru.”

David Salisbury, associate professor of geography at the University of Richmond in the US, has spent time with Edwin Chota’s community. He says: “Peru’s credibility as a forest protector hinges upon providing land and resource rights to the country’s indigenous and rural populations.

“The government should recognise there are people in the forests, and give them rights to them. How can you maintain standing forest, and mitigate climate change, if the defenders of the forest are being assassinated?”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

The post Activist murders raise doubts over Peru’s deforestation goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: CIFOR/Flickr

By Jan Rocha

In the Amazon, everything is big – the trees, the rivers, the snakes, and the statistics that measure everything in numbers of football fields or areas the size of entire countries.

Now one of the biggest towers in the world – taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Chrysler Building in Chicago − is about to rise above the rainforest.

The purpose of the 325-metre (1,066 feet) Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) is to gather vital information on how climate change is affecting the Amazon ecosystem and other humid tropical areas, using climate models.

The research project is being run by Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonia Research (INPA), and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany. As one of the project directors, Paulo Ataxo, of the University of São Paulo, explains: “The tower will help us answer innumerable questions related to global climate change.”

Jointly financed by the Brazilian and German governments, the ATTO – which has taken seven years to plan and build − is located 100 miles from the city of Manaus. The steel girders had to be transported 4,000 km by road and river from the factory in southern Brazil, and finally up a dirt track into the heart of the forest.

Monitoring network

The ATTO, adding to a network of smaller observation towers already in the area, will be able to monitor − without direct human influence − changes in air masses over an area of hundreds of miles.

It is expected to be in operation for at least 20 years, measuring the wind, humidity, carbon absorption, cloud formation and meteorological patterns in the soil, tree tops, and the air above, adding to the growing body of research showing how vital it is to stop deforestation.

Philip Fearnside, INPA research professor who has been studying the rainforest for over 40 years, says that the loss of natural tree cover is influencing the delicate environmental equilibrium of the region, and of the rest of the country. He says: “Among other services, the forest recycles water, which is critical for the rains in São Paulo, stores carbon, avoiding the worsening of global warming, and maintains biodiversity.”

A recent study by Brazilian, Canadian and German scientists from São Paulo Universities UNESP and USP, Toronto University, and the Hemholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany concluded that the deforestation of tropical forests emits at least 20% more CO2 than previously thought.

The study, published in the Nature Communications magazine, used remote sensoring, the ecology of the countryside, and modelling of the forest dynamic to develop a new approach that included the previously uncalculated loss of biomass on the edges of forest fragments.

The Brazilian government claims it is reducing deforestation. But, according to Environment Ministry figures, the vast area known as Amazônia Legal, which covers the whole of the Amazon basin, has already lost almost a fifth (18.2%) of its total area of 5 million sq km  − that is, around 900,000 sq km.

Another recent study −  a three-year Amazalert research project begun in 2011 by 14 European and South American institutes, including the Universities of Leeds and Edinburgh and the UK Met Office − has concluded that if present policies continue, the future will be chaotic.

Amazalert project looked at the impacts of deforestation and climate change on the Amazon up to 2050.

Human impacts

While there is a constant stream of research on the climate and vegetation of the rainforest, to which ATTO will be contributing, there is much less research and information about the role of human beings and society in the Amazon.

Amazalert found that violence and unplanned growth in the towns on the edges of the Amazon region are also threatening its integrity.

Among Brazil’s 50 towns and cities with the highest murder rates per 100,000 inhabitants, 12 are located in the so-called Arc of Deforestation, which runs around the southern and eastern borders of the rainforest. The report says that violence in these towns has reached the “level of civil war”.

For Amazalert collaborator Andrea Coelho, researcher at the Institute for the Economic, Social and Environmental Development of Pará state (IDESP), the problem is that large-scale mining projects, the paving of roads, and the construction of hydroelectric dams attract lots of people, for whom there is no infrastructure.

When the projects are finished, the workers stay on and become goldminers, extractivists, or land-grabbers. Many are living in miserable conditions, and so criminality erupts.

The huge Belo Monte dam, being built on the Xingu river, is an example. In 2007, there were four cases of drug trafficking in surrounding areas. Last year, there were 238.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

The post Giant tower to monitor climate change in the Amazon appeared first on Climate Home News.

Forest cleared for agriculture in Acre, Brazil
(Pic: CIFOR/Kate Evans)

By Megan Darby

Even the staunchest advocates of the UN’s forest protection programme admit that “carbon cowboys” damaged its credibility.

The idea of REDD+, which stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, was to pay communities to protect forests and lock in carbon, but some unscrupulous operators were caught conning indigenous people and buyers alike.

Meanwhile, deforestation continued apace, causing somewhere between 11% and 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who you talk to.

Now, there are two certification schemes and project developers are keen to show they can help people and the environment, if they can only raise the money.

At a London meeting of participants in the REDD+ scheme on Wednesday, there were more sellers of forest carbon credits than buyers.

But there are plans to extend the market to ordinary consumers as well as corporations and governments, through an initiative called Stand for Trees.

Due to launch by Valentine’s Day 2015 and backed by US Aid, it will allow people to buy forest carbon credits on their smartphones.

Optimism

Greg Barker, climate envoy to the UK prime minister, told delegates he was more optimistic about REDD+ now than two years ago.

“Progress on REDD+ so far has been too slow. That money is taking too long to flow and not enough incentives are in place for this to work,” he said.

“But there is now a real push to make this work and learn the lessons of the last few years. This is no time to back away from this programme.”

The UK government has already contributed more than half a billion pounds to the scheme.

It backed the New York declaration on forests, which aims to halve deforestation rates by 2020 and eliminate the problem by 2030.

As well as storing carbon, trees help to filter water, prevent landslides, soak up floods, protect coastlines from storm surges and improve air quality.

Market failure

Last month’s seminal New Climate Economy report estimated the global value of all these “ecosystem services” at US$16.2 trillion in 2011.

“The current markets don’t reflect anything close to that true value,” said Barker. “Due to that market failure, deforestation continues at an alarming pace.”

An area of forest the size of western Europe disappeared last year.

Pressure on the land is increasing as demand for commodities such as palm oil, meat and timber grows.

In an aside, Barker promoted the meat-free Mondays campaign, noting that a lot of forest gets cleared for cattle ranching.

REDD+ aims to create a market for carbon credits to protect forests.

As a voluntary market with limited activity, it has yet to establish a universal price for those credits.

A tonne of forest carbon can be worth anything between US$3 and $18, according to one delegate.

Beyond carbon

Increasingly, project developers are aiming to do more than just preserve carbon.

Most of the schemes are in developing countries, where logging or oil palm farming is a tempting economic opportunity.

To succeed, REDD+ projects need to offer local people job opportunities in more sustainable sectors.

Almir Narayamagoya Surui, chief of the Paiter Surui in Brazil, has a leading role in one such project.

The Surui Forest Carbon Project is expected to prevent 242,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. It is certified by the Verified Carbon Standard.

It also has Gold status under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard, which checks the project is boosting biodiversity and reducing poverty.

“We have a very close relationship with the forest,” Almir told delegates, through an interpreter. “The most important part of our community is living with the forest and our community knows really well how the forest works.”

Private partnership

The project has involved working with the likes of Brazilian cosmetics company Natura, which bought some of the first carbon offsets.

As the relationship with business developed, it opened up new lines of trade in sustainable forest products.

“It just shows how much this can benefit everyone,” said Almir.

He was critical of the Brazilian government, which is seen as cooling on forest protection.

Brazil’s deforestation rate increased in 2013 for the first time in a decade.

Destructive trend

The latest data from Brazilian NGO Imazon suggests the destructive trend is continuing into 2014.

In August, Imazon reported 437 square kilometres of forest were razed, 136% more than the same month in 2013.

At New York’s climate summit last month, president Dilma Rousseff highlighted a 79% reduction in deforestation over the past decade.

“Brazil does not announce promises; in Brazil we show results,” she said.

But the country did not sign up to the New York declaration on forests. Environment minister Izabella Teixeira told AP Brazil had not been consulted.

“In my country, I can see that many politicians think the environment is a barrier to the development of the economy,” said Almir.

“We understand that the environment is just as important as other sectors of the economy.”

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Tashka Yawanawa speaking at TEDGlobal 2014, South, in Rio de Janeiro
(Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED)

By Fabíola Ortiz in Rio de Janeiro

Tashka Yawanawa was born and grew up by the Gregorio river in the Brazilian state of Acre, in the heart of the Amazon. He belongs to the Yawanawa indigenous people, located near the border of Peru and Bolivia.

He learned how to speak Portuguese and live like a “white person” in the urban centres. After studying in Rio de Janeiro he went for a five years experience in the United States and got in contact with environmentalists and indigenous alliances worldwide.

At the age of 25, he went back to his tribe in Acre and became the youngest chief in the Yawanawa history. The son of a former leader, Tashka took to himself the mission to revitalize Yawanawa traditional culture but not only that, he put into practice what he had learned in the past years about sustainable development so as to help his people build and change their own future.

Tashka is now 41 and a polyglot – apart from his indigenous mother tongue, he speaks fluent Portuguese, Spanish and English. He is often seen on the stages of international conferences and as an important speaker at the United Nations biodiversity meetings.

Last week he was in Rio de Janeiro at one of the largest conferences in the world, TEDGlobal 2014. He was the only indigenous speaker at the conference, for which the slogan was “Ideas Worth Spreading”.

“I’ve participated in many conferences around the world related to indigenous, environmental and climate change issues. I had no idea that TED was so huge and had such a repercussion. It helped me to give visibility to the struggle of indigenous people to an audience of environmentalists and business people”, said Tashka.

After a week full of meetings in Rio de Janeiro, Tashka Yawanawa tells RTCC what he wants for the future of his people, and the important role indigenous play in preserving the forest and helping the climate. He is critical of the Brazilian government’s decision not to sign the New York Declaration on Forests during the climate summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon last month.

“Global village”

“Every human being has the responsibility of taking care of the planet. We all live in a global village,” he says. But the indigenous people who depend on natural resources to their survival are more vulnerable to the effects of climate changes.

“The forest for the Yawanawa people is a source of life, it is a place where our ancestors rest. It is our pharmacy cause all of our medicines are taken from there. It is also our supermarket where our food comes from. Forest represents peace and it is a home physically and spiritually speaking.”

The Yawa people was almost extinguished and in the 1980’s there were less than 300 individuals left. These people like many other indigenous groups were exposed since the first European settlers and the first contacts with the outside civilization was characterized by widespread diseases and conflicts. They were nearly all wiped out on the 20^th century due to the rubber tappers and the expansion of the extractive industries. Now, they are a population of 800 spread in eight villages in a territory of 200,000 hectares in the tropical forest.

Tashka’s daily life is very busy. He splits his time between Rio Branco, the capital of the state, and his tribe Mutum 10 hours away by road and boat, with frequent international trips for conferences.

“My father had a vision that I should prepare myself to work in favour of my people. I’ve always faced this as a challenge and a mission. I’ve been travelling the world but I don’t take my feet off my tribe. I admire my father for his wisdom,” says Tashka.

Culture, spirituality and economy

Since he returned to Brazil, Tashka decided to empower his community by rescuing their language and spirituality, while making money from sustainable use of natural resources. The leader focused on building business partnerships like the one with the cosmetics company Aveda in which the indigenous supply urucum – a local fruit with a natural pigment – while the money paid by the company is addressed to capacity-building programs chosen by the tribe. This international partnership has been going on over the last twenty years.

Tashka has no problem with using new technologies to preserve old traditions. It used to be a dilemma for his people, but not any more. They take advantage of hi-tech devices for example to record storytelling and old tales from Yawanawa history. “We cannot run away from technology, it’s part of everyone’s daily life in the 21^st century.”

But there is one thing that technology is not able to control: the weather conditions and the effects caused by climate changes. “The most affected ones are the indigenous, when the rains are delayed or whether there’s drought in the forest, it changes the harvest, hunting and fishing.”

For a long time the indigenous people have preserved natural resources for no pay, says Tashka, comparing to the discussion that rich countries should help the ones that have forests in their territory.

He wasn’t surprised to see Brazil refusing to sign the UN pledge to eliminate deforestation by 2030. “I’ve been joining international meetings and there are some countries like Brazil that don’t want to compromise. It makes me sad to think that Brazil, which holds a huge portion of tropical rainforest with a tremendous biodiversity, doesn’t want to commit itself.”

In indigenous lands, no deforestation

It is well known that indigenous lands like the Yawanawa territory in Acre are strong instruments to guarantee the conservation of the forests, says Tasso Azevedo, forestry and climate change consultant.

He is the founder of the Brazilian NGO Imaflora (Institute of Forest and Agriculture Management and Certification) and former director of the National Forest Program at the Ministry of Environment in Brazil.

Azevedo was also at TEDGlobal last week. He was one of the key people behind Brazil’s national plan to combat deforestation in the Amazon, which resulted in a more than 75 percent decline in deforestation. And he designed the Amazon Fund, the biggest global fund for the forest conservation, financing sustainable initiatives in the Amazon region through the UN’s REDD mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). That is why he won the Bright Award 2013 promoted by the Stanford University to reward individuals who contribute significantly to global environmental action.

“In terms of forestry conservation, indigenous lands in Latin America clearly show lower deforestation rates. In the ranking of protected areas in Brazil, the indigenous territories come first and then Conservation Unities,” he tells RTCC.

The UN estimates deforestation is responsible for nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, released when trees are burned or rot down. Protecting trees locks in that carbon.

Brazil has significantly reduced its deforestation rates. A decade ago the devastation reached 27,000 km2 a year; now it is 6,000 km2.

Since 2005, when the national plan to combat deforestation was launched, the country has prevented 3 billion tons of CO2 emissions. Today, Brazil’s emissions are nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2.

“It is considered the biggest effort in reducing emissions worldwide”, says Azevedo.

But Brazil still has the biggest deforestation problem in the world, he adds, with two football fields worth of Amazon rainforest disappearing every minute.

And there are signs the government has become less interested in protecting its forests in the last few years. Significantly, it refused to sign a UN declaration at the climate summit in New York.

“Brazil didn’t make any effort and didn’t think the climate summit could be relevant but then they noticed they were mistaken. There are many other countries much more proactive than Brazil and we should be leading the international discussions on climate,” says Azevedo.

“Our national plan against climate change should have been revised in 2011 and until now nothing has been done. The previous commitment to zero deforestation by 2015 is not being put into practice. Brazil used to be a global reference but it’s losing its place.”

The post Brazilian tribesman takes his forest message global appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Daniel Peckham/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Mangroves are being destroyed up to five times faster than forests, making them one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world.

By destroying these aquatic forests, humanity is depriving itself of a wide range of economic and social benefits, according to a new UN report launched yesterday in Athens.

Mangrove losses make up nearly one-fifth of the emissions from deforestation, resulting in damage worth US$ 6-42 billion every year, say researchers in The Importance of Mangroves: A Call to Action.

They add that the changing climate could kill off a further 10-15% by 2100. Currently, there are 152,000 square kilometres of mangrove cover around the world.

Achim Steiner, head of the UN environment programme, said that mangroves provide up to $57,000 per hectare in economic benefits every year.

“Add to that their superior ability to store carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and it becomes clear that their continued destruction makes neither ecological nor economic sense,” he said.

Disasters

Around a quarter of the world’s original mangrove cover has been damaged by pollution or destroyed to make way for farms, fish farms and coastal development.

This hurts the 100 million people in 123 countries who depend on mangrove forests for fishing and forest products, as well as protection against extreme weather events such as tropical storms and tsunamis.

Pic: UNEP

Jurgenne Primavera, the chief mangrove scientific advisor to the Zoological Society of London, highlights in the report the role played by mangroves in preventing even worse impacts when Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines last year, killing over 6,000 people.

“This disaster served as a wake-up-call to the world, highlighting the vulnerability of coastal countries to the impacts of climate change,” she says.

“It also highlighted the important role that mangroves can play as nature’s ‘bioshields’, serving as a natural buffer which can reduce the wave energy and height of storm surges and thus protect vulnerable coastal communities.”

Livelihoods

More than 90% of the world’s mangroves are located in developing countries.

The connection between livelihoods and mangrove forests is particularly strong in south east Asia, where it is estimated that 30% of caught fish depend on this ecosystem. That rises to almost 100% for certain species, including some prawns.

Yet by 2050, it is estimated that south east Asia will have lost 35% of the mangrove cover it had in 2000, resulting in losses of over $2 billion a year.

As well as supporting people and animals, mangrove forests also directly combat climate change.

They act as a natural storage system for carbon that would otherwise enter the atmosphere, sequestering about 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The report suggests that protecting these carbon reservoirs should therefore be seen as a sensible and cost-effective measure to help mitigate climate change.

It recommends specifically including mangroves in the post-2015 sustainable development goals. Private sector investments and the UN’s forest preservation scheme, REDD+ can also help, it says.

Pic: UNEP

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Marina Silva could become the first black woman to lead Brazil
(Pic: Agencia Brasil)

By Fabíola Ortiz in Rio de Janeiro

Born to a poor family of rubber tappers and raised in the middle of the Amazon jungle, Marina Silva breaks the mould for Brazilian politicians.

The 56-year-old activist and former environment minister has overcome battles with tropical diseases and health problems from mercury poisoning to enter the presidential race.

And when 200 million people go to the polls on 5 October, Silva could become the first black woman to lead Brazil. The latest polls put her neck and neck with incumbent Dilma Rousseff.

So what would a Silva victory mean for climate protection?

“Silva is the main political symbol of sustainability in Brazil,” economist Jose Eli da Veiga tells RTCC.

“There will hardly be other candidates comparable to her. But from an electoral point of view, most voters identify themselves with her life story rather than with her discussion of sustainability.”

Amazon warrior

Silva is known for her struggles to protect the rainforest from illegal logging. She was named a Champion of the Earth by the UN’s environment body in 2007 and was described by the Guardian as one of 50 people who can save the planet.

She won 20 million votes from Brazilians in the last 2010 presidential elections. Now the green and socialist Marina Silva is back, thanks to a mix of luck and enthusiasm.

She came to prominence after the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) candidate Eduardo Campos died in a tragic plane crash on 13 August.

In a surge of popularity named the “Marina phenomenon”, Silva has come to pose a serious threat to Rousseff’s leadership, with some polls putting the challenger ahead.

Marina Silva (L) is up against current president Dilma Rousseff (R)
(Pic: Flickr/José Serra)

If elected, Silva has made clear protecting the Amazon will continue to be high priority.

At a press conference on 17 September, she said: “I won’t outsource my mandate.”

Sustainability is a policy that “integrates economy and ecology”, Silva added. “We will implement a policy of sustainable forestry for public forests. We shall work hard in the water resources management as well as combating deforestation and supporting sustainable production activities.”

She has a track record of taking on powerful vested interests as environment minister under president Lula da Silva, who ruled from 2002 to 2010.

Silva imprisoned more than 700 people for environmental crimes and slashed the rate of deforestation in half. This meant clashing with the big agricultural businesses responsible for 20% of Brazil’s GDP.

For congressman Alfredo Sirkis, chair of Brazil’s climate change commission, Silva is the “greenest” of the presidential candidates.

He tells RTCC: “There is no doubt she will be a president concerned with environmental, climate and sustainable development issues. She is certainly the only candidate who knows more about these problems and has a more focused will in dealing with these subjects.”

In his opinion, Silva will try to implement sustainable development policies throughout government.

“It won’t be easier at first because we have quite a complicate economic situation at this time,” says Sirkis, but she will represent “an important step forward”.

Sirkis expects Silva to intensify discussions with the agricultural sector and raise taxes on activities that harm the environment.

But it will not all be fighting, he says. “There are points of convergence in low carbon agriculture, which is an important area for dialogue. The best policy of climate change mitigation is a low carbon agriculture. It is where Brazil can really cut much more emissions.”

What are her chances?

Supporters of Silva say voters will identify with her poor rural upbringing and resistance to “predatory development”.

She is associated with the union leader and forest champion Chico Mendes, who was murdered in 1988 after taking on landowners.

Rogerio Rocco, a lawyer and environmental consultant, says: “She resisted the mercury contamination caused by gold mining in the forest. And her name represents the opposition to large estates of soybean and genetically modified crops as well as cattle raising.”

He recalls that as environment minister, Silva used to clash with Rousseff, who was responsible for mining and energy at the time.

Rousseff defended nuclear power, hydropower dams in the Amazon and coal-fired power stations against Silva’s campaigns.

However, critics accuse Silva of changing her positions and question her competence.

“There’s no assurance she will be able to rule properly,” says João Feres from the Institute of Social and Political Studies. “She has been attacked for her inconsistencies. Before she was in favour of gay marriage, then she changed. And she is now being supported by the right-wing military sector and neoliberal economists.”

She has stopped saying agribusiness is an environmental problem, he adds, which could alienate her traditional supporters. And she has chosen as vice president Beto Albuquerque, a man with financial links to the agribusiness, alcoholic drinks and arms sectors.

On the other hand, her historic opposition to infrastructure projects may put off voters who are more concerned about economic development than green issues.

“The green issue is not an important agenda for Brazil, this can be rather frustrating”, says Feres.

In her defence, da Veiga says Silva’s position has not changed since 2010.

“We have been speaking about sustainable development for over 30 years but there are still people who insist on in isolating environment as a different matter. The idea of sustainable development integrates many dimensions and one is environmental,” he says.

“If Silva is elected, the number of companies and businesses willing to become sustainable and acquire a green certificate will multiply from one day to another. There will be a stimulus for people to join the debate.”

The post Marina Silva, the Amazon champion who could lead Brazil appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: World Bank Photo Collection

By Megan Darby

Norway is set to offer around US$300 million to protect forests in a deal to be signed at next week’s New York climate summit.

That was revealed by Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru’s environment minister and president of the December climate talks in Lima, in a media briefing on Thursday.

Ban Ki-moon’s gathering of world leaders is not due to have any formal outcomes. But Pulgar-Vidal said: “In a non-formal way, we think and hope that the summit can catalyse action.”

The promised funding may help to guard against threats to Peru’s Amazon rainforest from mining interests.

In July, the Peruvian government slashed its environmental regulation to boost the mining industry.

Pulgar-Vidal voted against the move, describing it as a major setback for the country’s climate ambition, but was unable to block it.

The UN estimates that deforestation is responsible for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Trees release their carbon stocks as they are burned or left to rot.

Its flagship REDD programme aims to tackle the issue by paying developing countries to keep forests intact.

Norway is one of the biggest contributors to forest protection measures.

Between 2008 and 2013, the country set aside US$3.3 billion for efforts to prevent deforestation in developing countries.

However, a review by its own government warned that the flagship UN and World Bank forest programmes were inefficient and bureaucratic.

Climate policy analyst Bard Lahn wrote for RTCC that Norwegian politicians see international climate finance as an easier way to meet the country’s obligations than proposing emissions cuts at home.

Norway holds Europe’s largest oil and natural gas reserves. According to US data, in 2013 it was the world’s third largest gas exporter in 2013, accounting for 52% of export revenues.

The post Norway to pledge US$300m for forest protection appeared first on Climate Home News.

Source: Flickr/ben britten

By Claudia Stickler and Joy Hyvarinen

If REDD+ is to succeed as part of the global response to climate change and if it is to work for countries and communities it needs to be tackled in the context of rural development.

Under the UN climate treaty REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions by protecting forests in developing countries and providing finance to make it possible. Tropical deforestation and degradation is estimated to be responsible for roughly 15% of global emissions.

Making REDD+ work on the ground is challenging. Careful monitoring is crucial to make sure people do not profit from emission reductions that never happened or that someone else – for example indigenous peoples – achieved. Inappropriate REDD+ projects could undermine local people’s rights.

Lack of funding to help countries, subnational governments and communities make the transition to low-emission rural development a problem.

In general, despite a proliferation of initiatives, REDD+ funding has been slow to reach its target. And many of the broader socio-economic factors (land tenure, market access and conditions) that drive deforestation depend on actors and conditions beyond the domain of REDD+ projects.

In many places, agricultural frontier expansion is driving tropical deforestation and forest degradation. This in turn drives degradation of other ecosystem services on which communities depend, such as water, fish, game and soil resources.

An important challenge is to increase agricultural and livestock production on lands that have already been cleared of forests, but are below their productive potential.

Implementing REDD+ on the ground means taking into account other factors, which can vary widely from place to place. They include rural development needs, livelihoods, services, agricultural practices, cultural and political circumstances, commodity markets and global trade.

There is growing recognition that REDD+ should not and cannot be treated in isolation. It should instead be part of a sustainable land-use strategy that considers a range of benefits (including non-carbon benefits), sectors and actors.

For REDD+ to succeed, a new model is needed for low emissions rural development in the tropics.

Sustainable Tropics Alliance

The Sustainable Tropics Alliance is a growing network of experienced NGOs working in regions that are critical to climate change. These regions contain valuable carbon stocks (in the form of forests) and local populations which are vulnerable to climate change.

Through the Sustainable Tropics Alliance, grassroots organisations share their experiences and collectively design strategies. They play a critical role in shaping climate-related policy at state and national levels.

By bringing together the knowledge and experience of its member organizations, the Alliance is learning what rural communities in different countries need and how REDD+ can be made to work for them.

In Peru, the Alliance focuses on the Pachitea River basin (one of the Amazon’s headwaters). Here agriculture, cattle ranching, mining, illegal logging, overfishing, and uncontrolled pesticide use affect the entire watershed. The Alliance is engaging sub-national governments in the development of a low emissions rural development plan.

In Kenya, clearing of the country’s montane forest for agriculture and firewood has led to water scarcity. This hurts key economic sectors such as energy, water, agriculture, livestock and tourism.

The Alliance focuses on supporting rural communities to develop through low-emissions economic pathways. This involves conserving and restoring forests, securing food production and improving livelihoods.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the Alliance is getting government and palm oil companies to commit to reducing deforestation for oil palm plantations across the province of Central Kalimantan.

A founding premise of the Sustainable Tropics Alliance is that civil society organisations are critical actors when it comes to achieving change.

They can provide consistency when government administrations change, help governments carry out responsibilities and build bridges and alliances among various stakeholders.

A new model

The Sustainable Tropics Alliance is developing common approaches to achieve low emissions rural development (LED-R) strategies that are tailored to each region’s political, cultural and ecological circumstances.

The emerging LED-R model focuses on regional or jurisdictional scales. It aims to address the complex problems in a way that achieves or maintains climate stability both at global and local levels.

And it does so by increasing the capacity of local actors and institutions. They can adapt to climate change, increase sustainability and ensure fair access to natural resources, while increasing agricultural and economic productivity, job creation and incomes.

The Sustainable Tropics Alliance has identified five principal components of this new model: (1) human well-being; (2) equitable social systems; (3) sustainable economic development; (4) manageable climate; and (5) healthy ecosystems.

Moving ahead

REDD+ could play an important role in enhancing pre-2020 ambition of nations as part of a deal in Paris in 2015 and also as part of the future climate change agreement. Deciding how will be part of the negotiations in the UNFCCC’s ad hoc working group on the Durban platform for enhanced action (ADP).

REDD+ initiatives and commitments are also part of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s climate summit on 23 September.

Approaching REDD+ in a more holistic way has implications for the design of the future climate agreement. However, there is no need to wait. Jurisdictions and countries can begin implementing low emissions rural development strategies, including REDD+, now.

Tools that they can use include Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). These bring together public policies, private sector engagement and investment, and formal recognition of land rights of indigenous peoples and forest-based communities.

Well-designed NAMAs can address the drivers of deforestation and degradation and create positive incentives for LED-R.

Claudia Stickler is a scientist at the Earth Innovation Institute

Joy Hyvarinen is executive director of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development

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(Pic: Matt Zimmerman/Flickr)

By Alex Kirby 

A report by the US non-governmental organisation, Forest Trends, says 49% of all recent tropical deforestation is the result of illegal clearing for commercial agriculture.

It says that most was driven by foreign demand for agricultural products, including palm oil, beef, soya and wood products – and  the impact on forest-dependent people and on biodiversity is “devastating”.

The report, funded by the UK Department for International Development, estimates that the illegal conversion of tropical forests for commercial agriculture produces 1.47 gigatonnes (1,470,000,000 tonnes) of carbon a year − equivalent to 25% of the European Union’s annual fossil fuel-based emissions.

NASA said in 2012 that tropical deforestation had accounted for about 10% of human carbon emissions from 2000 to 2005.

Household products 

“This is the first report to show the outsize role that illegal activities play in the production of hundreds of food and household products consumed worldwide,” said Michael Jenkins, the president of Forest Trends.

The report’s author is Sam Lawson, founding director of the investigative research organisation, Earthsight. He said that the equivalent of “five football fields of tropical forest are being destroyed every minute to supply these export commodities. There is hardly a product on supermarket shelves that is not potentially tainted.”

He said the report’s figures were obtained using conservative estimates based on documented violations of significant impact.

The study says that 90% of Brazil’s deforestation between 2000 and 2012 was illegal, and was caused mainly by a failure to conserve a percentage of natural forests in large-scale cattle and soya plantations, as required by Brazilian law.

Much of the deforestation, the study acknowledges, happened before 2004, when the Brazilian government implemented an action plan to reduce deforestation.

Around 80% of deforestation in Indonesia was illegal − mostly for large-scale plantations producing palm oil and timber, 75% of which is exported. Brazil and Indonesia produce the highest level of agricultural commodities destined for global markets − many of them winding up in cosmetics or household goods (palm oil), animal feed (soya), and packaging (wood products).

Illegal deforestation is widespread across Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

In Papua-New Guinea, millions of hectares of forest have been illegally licensed for deforestation in recent year, and a recent parliamentary inquiry in the country found that 90% of these licences were issued by corrupt or fraudulent means.

In Tanzania, forests have been illegally razed to make way for jatropha, a plant commonly used to produce biofuels.

Flouting the law 

“All over the tropics, companies are bribing officials to obtain permits, trampling the legal or customary rights of indigenous peoples and other forest-dwelling communities, clearing more forest than they are allowed, and causing pollution and environmental devastation by flouting the law,” Lawson said.

The report says the international trade in agricultural commodities produced on land illegally converted from tropical forest is worth an estimated US$61 billion annually. The EU, China, India, Russia and the US are among the largest buyers of these goods.

The problem is spreading. The study says that in the Congo Basin, for example, two of the three largest new oil palm projects have been found to be operating illegally. One of these, in the Republic of Congo, is set to double the country’s deforestation rate.

“The current unfettered access to international markets for commodities from illegally-cleared land is undermining the efforts of tropical countries to enforce their own laws,” Lawson said. “Consumer countries have a responsibility to help halt this trade.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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Jonathon Porritt is working with the oil palm sector on a sustainability plan
(Pic: Flickr/TEDxExeter/Benjamin J Borley)

By Megan Darby

The palm oil industry has a “really, really bad legacy”, Jonathon Porritt admits. It has become synonymous with rainforest destruction.

It also produces a major commodity used in thousands of food and cosmetics brands.

The UK environmentalist tells RTCC it can be grown sustainably, like any other crop – and defends his decision to head up an industry-backed study that will allow some forests to be cleared for palm oil plantations.

“The palm oil industry was not set up on a sustainable basis. The level of deforestation was dreadful, everybody knows that,” says Porritt.

But he says the industry has “moved a long way” to address the issue in the last ten years.

An oil palm plantation. The industry has a “really bad legacy”, says Porritt
(Pic: Flickr/Wakx)

And palm oil is much more productive than the alternatives, he points out, so any switch to different crops would likely result in more land use. “There is a quite basic lack of logic here.”

Palm fruit produces five times more oil than rapeseed and ten times more than soya for the same area of land, according to industry data analysts Oil World.

Porritt is co-chairing a study, with Australian soil scientist John Raison, to identify which forests are most worth protecting.

These are the areas that store a lot of carbon, which would be released into the atmosphere if destroyed, worsening climate change.

Implicit in this approach is the understanding that forests with lower carbon stocks may be cleared to grow oil palms.

This is anathema to some green campaigners, who insist on zero deforestation.

Glenn Hurowitz, chairman of Forest Heroes, labelled Porritt “an apologist for companies engaged in egregious deforestation” in an interview with the Times.

Tony Juniper, a green campaigner who has worked with Porritt in the past, rejected the idea forests must be sacrificed to economic growth.

Palm oil is used in thousands of food and cosmetic products
(Pic: flickr/onevillage initiative)

Backed by major palm oil buyers and producers including Unilever and Sime Darby, Porritt’s study follows on from the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto.

Signatories promised not to develop peat land or “high carbon stock” forests – once the latter category has been defined by Porritt’s study.

A further pledge from leading multinationals to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 is expected at the forthcoming UN climate leaders’ summit in New York on September 23.

Some of these companies are among the many commercial donors to Porritt’s sustainable development charity Forum for the Future.

This does not mean he is selling out, he insists. “Is it a sell-out to work with companies producing wheat? Is it a sell-out to work with companies working in horticulture?

“Palm oil is an important ingredient in thousands of products around the world. Just like any other crop in the world, you can either do it sustainably or you can do it unsustainably.”

Those who go down a sustainable path should be rewarded, he adds, and the unsustainable companies put out of business.

UN efforts to protect rainforests have been slow to deliver results

The UN estimates land clearances are responsible for up to 20% of world carbon emissions and is promoting initiatives to pay developing countries to preserve their forests.

However, its flagship programme to prevent deforestation, REDD, has made little headway.

A study commissioned by one of REDD’s leading donors, the Norwegian government, found the process was bureaucratic and inefficient.

The scheme has been held back by a lack of funds and concerns about indigenous people’s rights and poor governance in recipient countries.

The western world is guilty of “hypocrisy” in telling poor countries not to cut down forests but failing to come up with the funds to help, Porritt says.

“REDD has an opportunity to develop alternative financing mechanisms that could have a real impact. But at the moment there is not a lot to show for it.”

Forest Trends this week reported that 49% of tropical deforestation is the result of illegal clearance for agriculture, including palm oil plantations.

The NGO estimated this illegal activity, driven by global demand for commodities, produced 1.47 gigatonnes of carbon a year. That is equivalent to 25% of the EU’s emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The post Jonathon Porritt: I have not sold out to the palm oil sector appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: mariusz kluzniak/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Forest protection efforts could “stagnate or decline” unless governments back UN-led efforts to stop loggers, farmers and mining companies.

That’s the message from associations representing over 160 international companies and members of civil society, who have released a declaration demanding more political support for deforestation efforts.

In a statement released on Tuesday they say the UN-backed Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Land Degradation (REDD+) programme is the most effective tool for governments who want to cut their emissions by preserving forests, but warn it needs financial backing.

Two things are critical, it says: “policy signals which clearly outline the intention to create a regulated market for REDD+ as part of a broader climate change agreement; and interim incentives to stimulate financing for REDD+ activities during the critical 2015 – 2020 period.”

REDD+ works by enabling rich nations to effectively reduce their own emissions by paying for forests to be maintained in other countries. Deforestation is one of the largest causes of climate change, as it releases carbon stored in trees into the atmosphere.

Report: Scale of Amazon rainforest carbon loss revealed

While the UN is working to incorporate REDD+ into its climate treaty, set to be signed off in Paris 2015, more work needs to be done and quickly if the opportunities to preserve forests are to be maximised.

Without these, investment in forests through REDD is likely to “stagnate or decline”, says the statement.

Signatories include the Environmental Defense Fund, Global Canopy Programme, the International Emissions Trading Association, Climate Markets and Investment Association (CMIA).

Rachel Mountain, from the Global Canopy Programme, told RTCC that she hoped progress would be made at the UN’s forthcoming conference in Lima, Peru – a country that is over 50% in the Amazon Basin.

“I think it’s very poignant that it’s in Lima,” she said. “I think there’s a great focus and a real opportunity to outline what progress can be made and taken forward into a Paris agreement.”

Report: Lima can deliver on forests says environment minister

REDD+ initiatives have so far resulted in 22 million toones of CO2 being reduced annually, while preserving 14 million hectares of threatened forests.

But the message of the Declaration contrasts with the Margarita Declaration, issued yesterday by 130 civil society groups in Venezuela, which claimed the market-based scheme to preserve forests was “dangerous and unethical”.

VIDEO: Josefina Brana-Varela, WWF Forest Initiative

The post Rainforest protection could “stagnate or decline” without support appeared first on Climate Home News.

Forest rich nations say they deserve payment to protect their natural resources, since they perform valuable services for the planet

By Megan Darby

Logging, burning and developing plantations in the Amazon rainforest is releasing 54 million tonnes of carbon a year, Brazilian and British scientists have found.

The impact of wildfires, selective logging and the encroachment of pastures and plantations on the rainforest is harder to monitor than that of wholesale deforestation, they said.

This study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, shows such degradation could account for up to 40% of the carbon loss caused by deforestation in the region.

The researchers said efforts to conserve forests, such as the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) programme (see factbox below), will “remain limited in their success” unless they address these problems.

“The impacts of timber extraction, burning and fragmentation have received little notice because all the efforts have been focused on preventing further deforestation,” said lead author Erika Berenguer, from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

“This attitude has resulted in tremendous progress in conserving the Brazilian Amazon, whose deforestation rate fell more than 70% over the past 10 years.”

Since 2004, Brazil has seen a 70% decline in deforestation, which scientists calculate amounted to a 1.5% drop in global carbon emissions in 2013, although critics point out clear-felling increased by 28% in the same year.

The study, which is the largest of its kind to date, comes as policymakers meet in Lima to develop a global strategy to protect forests.

The policy board for UN-REDD, which is a core part of REDD+, is considering its five-year strategy. This will include its contribution to critical climate talks in Paris next year.

Speaking to RTCC before the meeting started on Tuesday, Tim Christophersen of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said the strategy needed a “complete upgrade” to take into account developments since 2008.

“Now the challenges are quite different,” said Christophersen. “They are about quickly making sure we have the capacity in place, that we have the finance and the solutions to get a strong agreement adopted in Paris next year.”

The board will also consider submissions from Mongolia, Argentina and the Ivory Coast to set up national plans. If successful, they will bring the number of active programmes to 21. UN-REDD has 53 partner countries.

The post Scale of Amazon rainforest carbon loss revealed appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: World Bank Photo Collection

By Sophie Yeo

Forests in Indonesia are disappearing faster than in the Amazon in Brazil, a study has found.

Brazil is well known for its struggles to beat deforestation, but the situation is worse in Indonesia, found the researchers writing in Nature Climate Change, with severe consequences for global warming.

Forests store carbon in their trees and peatlands, absorbing CO2 from the air.

Deforestation a significant contributor to heating up the planet – the UN’s climate science  IPCC report estimating that land use change, primary deforestation, is responsible for around 10% of human emissions.

Indonesia cleared around 0.84 mega hectares (mega = million) of primary forest in 2012, compared to 0.46 Mha in Brazil, the study found.

The country is the world’s largest supplier of palm oil. Plantations cover about 8 million hectares of land and form a key part of the country’s economy.

Severe forest fires linked to palm oil production last year were blamed for a pall of smoke hanging over Malaysia and Singapore last year.

Almost all of the deforestation chronicled in this latest study occurred on land already been degraded by loggers.

This is a particular threat because these fragile lands are still effective at sequestering carbon, as well as a rich source of biodiversity.

“Even though the forest is already degraded at some point we have to support the forest so it can have its own cycle to get it back to the full quality of the forest,” Belinda Arunarwati Margono, a scientist at Maryland University and the paper’s lead author told RTCC.

“If it’s not maintained it’s going to be gone.”

Getting worse

The rate of Indonesia’s forest loss is speeding up, despite a moratorium on new clearing permits imposed by the government in 2011.

Year on year, deforestation increased by an average of 47,6000 ha of primary forest loss. This is more than any other tropical country, the study found.

Around 40% of the losses occurred within land where clearing is restricted or prohibited.

The continued deforestation casts doubt on whether the moratorium – which was extended for a further two years in 2013 – is the most effective way to manage clearing and logging, the study suggests.

“Although Indonesia recently implemented an implicit deforestation moratorium, beginning in May 2011, it seems that the moratorium has not had its intended effect,” write the authors in the study.

“In fact, the first full year of this study within the moratorium period, 2012, experienced the highest rates of both lowland and wetland primary forest cover loss.”

They suggest the possibility that the moratorium could have been a driver of the increased deforestation in this year.

“Most likely stopping the logging will be a long process. It takes time to bring everybody to this issue and increase governance within Indonesia itself,” said Margono, who worked for seven years for Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry.

The purpose of the study was to provide the information to “to help the government to do a better job,” she said.

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