Oil companies and banks will profit from UN forest protection scheme

Redd scheme designed to prevent deforestation but critics call it 'privatisation' of natural resources

• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 19.58 GMT
• Article history



An aerial view of trees at a forest on Sumatra, Indonesia where millions are being spent to fight deforestation. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters Some of the world's largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme, according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.

 

The group's new report – launched on the first day of the global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, where 193 countries hope to thrash out a new agreement – is the first major assessment of the several hundred, large-scale Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) pilot schemes. It shows that banks, airlines, charitable foundations, carbon traders, conservation groups, gas companies and palm plantation companies have also scrambled into forestry protection.

 

While forestry is billed as one issue where significant progress could be made at the talks, over the weekend David Cameron, Chris Huhne, the climate change secretary, and the government's chief scientists all played down the prospect of a global deal to cut carbon emissions.

 

"British ministers are going to Mexico this week with an approach that is both realistic and optimistic," the prime minister wrote in the Observer .

 

"Realistic, because we don't expect a global deal to be struck in Cancun, but optimistic too, because we are viewing this as a stepping stone to future agreement." Huhne, who will attend the second week of the talks, was more blunt: "No one expects a binding deal on climate change in Cancun." But he said deforestation and longer-term climate finance were areas where progress could be made.

 

The Redd scheme is central to slowing, or halting, deforestation, which causes huge releases of carbon dioxide. But critics say that the scheme amounts to privatisation of natural resources. FoE's report shows, for example that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell has linked with Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Clinton Foundation to invest in the Rimba Rey project, 100,000ha of peat swamp in Indonesia.

 

The project is expecting to prevent 75m tonnes of carbon being emitted over 30 years, which could earn the three groups $750m at a modest carbon price of $10 a tonne. It also says that an investment of little more than $10m by the bank Merrill Lynch, the conservation group Flora and Fauna International and an Australian carbon trading company could generate more than $430m, over 30 years, from a project to protect 750,000ha of forest in Aceh province, Indonesia.

 

The "Redd rush" is limited to voluntary carbon offsets for now but is expected to become a stampede if the 193 countries meeting this week reach an outline forestry protection agreement that would allow governments to offset national emissions against forest conservation. It could result in eventual cash flows of $30bn a year from rich countries – who need to offset emissions – to poor countries, where most of the world's endangered forests are. But the report's authors say great social risks attached to the schemes must be addressed. "There are significant risks that Redd will lead to the privatisation of the world's forests, transferring them out of the hands of indigenous peoples and local communities and into the hands of bankers and carbon traders," they say.

 

Many of the world's greatest stretches of forests are the traditional home of indigenous peoples, and millions of others may be dependent on access to forests, say the authors, who urge that ownership of land and carbon rights must be resolved. "Many Redd-related disputes are now unfolding. Respect for indigenous peoples' rights seems to be a missing element," says the report. "A Redd race is under way. Redd is emerging as a mechanism that has the potential to exacerbate inequality, reaping huge rewards for corporate investors whilst bringing considerably fewer benefits or even serious disadvantages to forest dependent communities. It could become a dangerous distraction from the business of implementing real climate change cuts." One major concern is that the weak legal definitions of "forest" and "degraded land" would let the powerful logging and palm companies carry on business as usual by persuading governments to redefine what constitutes a forests.

 

Greenpeace claimed last week that Indonesia planned to class large areas of its remaining natural forests as "degraded land" in order to cut them down and receive $1bn of climate aid for replanting them with palm trees and biofuel crops.

 

However some observers, including Lord Stern, say the Redd schemes offer the best opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They say thatmore technologically sophisticated options, such as carbon capture and storage, could take several years to come into large-scale operation, and they are more expensive. A spokesperson for Shell said the company could not yet comment on the Friends of the Earth report.

 
• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
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UN agency predicts global food crisis as prices soar

By Barry Mason

A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report published this month warns that food price increases are “dangerously close” to crisis level. The bill for global imports of food may exceed $1 trillion this year. This level of food costs was last reached in 2008 when prices peaked mainly as a result of speculation and led to riots in different parts of the world.

The FAO’s measure of food prices, the broad global index, is now at 197 points, very close to the peak of just over 200, increasing by 5 percent in the last month alone.

Stocks of some staple crops are set to fall―stocks of barley will shrink by 35 percent, maize by 12 percent and wheat by 10 percent, according to FAO estimates. The US Federal Reserve Board's deliberate policy of devaluing the dollar is also boosting prices, as most commodities, including food, are priced in dollars.

The recently announced round of quantitative easing (QE) by the US will only exacerbate this. A Guardian article November 6, “US under fire for fuelling surge in food prices”, explained “the $600bn of QE announced by the Federal Reserve would hurt consumers by pushing up prices of soy, wheat and other staple foods … Commodities are considered a safe haven when the dollar is falling. There is also an incentive for producers to seek higher prices to offset the falling value of the dollar.”

Last year, the number of people in the world without sufficient food reached one billion (one in six of the world population). Whilst this year the figure has now fallen somewhat to 925 million, the Millennium Development Goal target to halve the number of the world’s hungry by 2015 is clearly not going to be achieved.

In some areas of the world, the figures are much bleaker. According to Oxfam, in sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 a third of the population suffered hunger with five countries experiencing staggering levels of hunger of 45 percent and higher. FAO figures show that a child dies of hunger every six seconds. On top of those officially going hungry, the FAO assert that around two billion people―a third of the world’s population―live on diets lacking essential vitamins and minerals. This stunts mental and physical growth, putting them at long-term risk.

The FAO report notes that, as a result of lower harvests in key producing countries, reserve stocks will have to be used and this will lead to a further restriction in supplies next year. Whilst this may lead to more planting by farmers to take advantage of good prices for their produce, the FAO caution: “Cereals, however may not be the only crops farmers will be trying to produce more of, as rising prices have also made other commodities attractive to grow, from soybeans to sugar and cotton … consumers may have little choice but to pay higher prices for their food … the international community must remain vigilant against further supply shocks in 2011 and be prepared.”

The FAO continue: “Sharp increases in international quotations for grains, sugars and products in the oilseed complex in recent months are already a cause for concern … many of these commodities constitute major feedstock ingredients for the livestock or biofuel sectors … global competition for securing foodstuffs is set to intensify.”

Another pressure on food prices is climate change. The FAO notes that “adverse weather effects are undoubtedly a primary driver of wheat production shortfalls and with climate change, may increasingly be so.” Current food crises in the Sahel region of West Africa and in the Horn of Africa are in part produced by erratic changes in weather patterns thought by experts to be related to climate change.

Another factor affecting food production, and hence prices, is the return of some plant diseases once thought to have been conquered, such as a fungal disease that affects wheat, known as wheat stem rust. Scientists in the 1950s and 1960s were able through plant-breeding experiments to produce wheat varieties resistant to the disease. However, a new strain of the rust called UG99 was discovered in wheat in Uganda in 1999.

UG99 has now spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran, and there is a danger of its spreading to the huge wheat-growing areas of south Asia. Quoted in a recent Financial Times report on global food supplies, Ronnie Coffman, director of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at the University of Cornell, explained the threat it poses: “It can be absolutely devastating if environmental conditions are right. You can count the number of people who could die from this in millions.”

The FAO note, “Most global commercial cultivars are susceptible to UG99 … in addition, new, highly aggressive races of stripe rust are devastating wheat crops in several regions.”

Speculation in food by big financial operators has also had a significant impact on food prices. “There is no doubt that speculative activities have brought into the market a great deal of volatility,” the FAO state, but downplay the affects of speculators in pushing food prices to the recent record levels.

However, a recent report by the World Development Movement (WDM), “Betting on Hunger”, indicts food speculators for recent food price spikes. “In 2007-8, there was a huge rise in food prices fuelled by financial speculation … the price of wheat shot up dramatically by 80 percent and maize by 90 percent.”

The WDM report notes, “Following the Wall Street crash in the 1930s, regulations were introduced by the US government to limit speculation on food. But these regulations were weakened in the 1990s and early 2000s through aggressive lobbying by bankers to permit rampant betting on the price of staple foods. Additionally, new complicated contracts were created to allow more ways to make money from betting on food.”

The FAO predicts that in the next decade food prices will be higher and more volatile than in the decade leading up to 2008.

Hungarian toxic sludge spill threatens Eastern Europe

Top news: Rescue workers are struggling to contain the damage from a toxic sludge spill that killed at least four people and injured hundreds more.

An estimated 185 million gallons of toxic waste spilled after a reservoir burst at an aluminum refining plant, sweeping cars off the roads, damaging bridges and buildings, and forcing the evacuation of several towns. At least 7,000 residents of Western Hungary have been effected.

The sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into aluminum. It is extremely alkaline, causing it to burn through clothes and skin, and can be lethal if ingested. Beyond the immediate damage to the region, EU authorities are worried that if the sludge reaches the Danube river, the spill could become in international ecological disaster.

One of Europe's main waterways, the Danube flows through Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Moldova before emptying into the Black Sea. Emergency workers are pouring thousands of tons of plaster into the now affected Marcal river to prevent the sludge from flowing into the Danube, just 45 miles away.  

Nobels: Three scientists are sharing this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in linking carbon atoms to create complex molecules.

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U.S. oil spill waters contain carcinogens: report

Absorbent booms collect oil from the Kalamazoo river after an oil pipeline, owned by Enbridge Energy Partners, leaked an estimated 820,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo river in Western Michigan, near Marshall July 31, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook

By Joshua Schneyer

NEW YORK | Thu Sep 30, 2010 7:09pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - University researchers said on Thursday they recently found alarming levels of cancer-causing toxins in an area of the Gulf of Mexico affected by BP's oil spill, raising the specter of long-lasting health concerns.
Oregon State University (OSU) researchers found sharply heightened levels of chemicals including carcinogens in the waters off the coast of Louisiana in August, the last sampling date, even after BP successfully capped its runaway Gulf well in mid-July.
Near Grand Isle, Louisiana, the team discovered that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) -- which include carcinogens and chemicals that pose various risks to human health -- remained at levels 40 times higher than before the area was affected by the oil spill.
The compounds may enter the food chain through organisms like plankton or fish, a researcher said.
"In a natural environment a 40-fold increase is huge," said Oregon State toxicologist Kim Anderson, who led the research. "We don't usually see that at other contamination sites."
The PAH chemicals, which are often linked to oil spills, are most concentrated in the area near the Louisiana Coast, but levels have also jumped 2 to 3 fold in other spill-affected areas off Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, Anderson said.
As of last month, PAH levels remained near those discovered while the oil spill was still flowing heavily, Anderson said. The team will continue to sample for chemicals in months to come.
Although BP has sealed its well, experts are still cataloging the environmental and health hazards left in the wake of the spill. Scores of research teams, including Anderson's, are working with Federal Superfund grants to measure how the spill affected the environment.
Also on Thursday, Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva told Reuters he would press for a congressional investigation into whether estimates of the oil spill volume and its related environmental risks were misrepresented in a federal report from early August.
BP's ill-fated Macondo well spilled a total of up to 4.9 million barrels before it was capped, the report said. But it also suggested that most of the oil had been dispersed naturally or removed by clean-up efforts at the time.
Grijalva, who chairs a subcommittee that oversees some wetlands damaged by the spill, said it was unclear whether the Federal report was peer-reviewed and whether its estimates remain accurate.
"I don't want to let BP off the hook, and my suspicion is that the numbers may be wrong and that the oil is still a danger," Grijalva said in an interview.
BP representatives were not immediately available for comment.
(Editing by David Gregorio)



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