NEWS
RELEASE
Thursday 4 December 2003
COP9: EU
governments must say NO to fake carbon credits
EU
governments should blacklist carbon sinks projects, as they do nothing
to help global warming and they provide subsidies for unsustainable and unwanted
plantation projects, says a new report[1]
released today by FERN and SinksWatch at the Milan climate conference where
final rules on carbon sinks are being negotiated.
The EU,
previously anti-sinks, is increasingly moving towards their use to meet its
Kyoto targets, and a number of EU governments are already investing in the
first sinks project of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The new report
also calls on the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden – investors in
the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) – to withdraw their support for the
Plantar monoculture tree plantation project immediately.
Forest
Fraud: Say no to fake carbon credits tracks the failure of governments
to provide environmental and social safeguards for sinks projects in the CDM,
and shows how the plantation industry is planning to use CDM money to continue
with unsustainable, business-as-usual practices – despite ecological damage and
protests from affected communities.
“Carbon
sinks projects undermine global efforts to address climate change and divert
resources from real measures to tackle climate change,” said the report’s
author Jutta Kill. “These huge plantations suck the life out of fertile lands
and cause major social problems for local communities They are a fake solution
to global warming that will subsidise the plantations industry and create
thousands of hectares of ‘green desert’.”
The report
focuses on the Plantar project in Brazil, a 23,000 hectare eucalyptus
plantation project that is the first project to seek registration under the
CDM, despite widespread and vocal opposition from Brazilian communities,
workers, NGOs and academics. The report shows that the project is not
sustainable, causes ecological harm, brings no permanent benefit to the climate
and is based on dubious baseline projections.
Further
information:
Milan: Jutta
Kill (FERN and SinksWatch): +39 339 155 4924 jutta@fern.org
Brussels: Jessica
Wenban-Smith (FERN): +32 (0)2 733 0814 jess@fern.org
Available
for interviews at COP9
- Jutta Kill, author of Forest
Fraud: Say no to fake carbon credits, FERN’s climate change campaigner
and SinksWatch campaigner.
T: +39 339 155 4924. - Ben Pearson, contributing author to Forest
Fraud: Say no to fake carbon credits, co-ordinator of CDM Watch.
T: +62 811 399 168. - Geraldo Armando Martinez and Eliseu
Jose de Oliveira, who represent trade unions of plantation and
charcoal workers in the plantations owned or managed by Plantar are
members of the ‘Alert Against the Green Desert Movement’ in Brazil.
Contactable via Jutta Kill.
Photographs
(high and low resolution digital images)
- Plantar’s eucalyptus plantations in Minas
Gerais, Brazil
- Dried up swamp forest next to plantations
On the
internet (www.fern.org and www.sinkswatch.org)
- Ten facts about carbon sinks:
fake credit cards for fake credits
- Forest Fraud: Say no to fake carbon credits