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Accra Caucus Press Release: Leading Southern NGOs Slam Durban Proposal to Create New Forest Carbon Market

8 December 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE: Durban, South Africa (UNFCCC) 

Recent collapses in carbon markets and widespread opposition from forest peoples and non-governmental organisations have not stopped governments gathered in Durban from trying to build momentum for the creation of a new forest carbon market as part of the response to deforestation and climate change.

The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, a coalition of around 100 civil society and indigenous peoples organisations from 38 countries, called on governments in Durban to reject forest carbon trading after a new draft decision [1] related to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) specifically included “market-based” sources of financing, which opens the door for as forest carbon market allowing developed countries to ‘offset’ emissions reductions.

“By selling carbon offsets from our forests, we would be abandoning the solution to the climate crisis”, said Cecile Ndjebet, President of the African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests. “Developed countries have the historical responsibility for climate change and trading carbon forest offsets would shift the burden to developing countries, and would prolong the heavily-polluting industries that created the problem”.

At the same time, existing carbon markets are in a state of crisis. The carbon price in Europe is at its lowest in almost 3 years [2], and credits traded in the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol have fallen to an all time low [3], unable to cover basic project costs. “We’ve seen financial markets crash in recent years, and a forest carbon market would also be volatile and liable to boom and bust, still rich governments insist this is the best way to finance forests” said Nat Dyer of Rainforest Foundation UK “Forest carbon markets are an extremely inefficient way to get money to where it’s really needed. The largest part is captured by carbon traders and by expensive external consultants.”

“Any decision in Durban that opens the door to the use of offset trading to fund forests would be a disaster for the climate, the forests and the people who depend on them,” said Belen Paez of Fundacion Pachamama in Ecuador. “Agreeing to fund forests from carbon trading gives the illusion there is money being offered for forest protection, when what is really needed is from predictable and sustainable investment to combat the drivers of deforestation.”

Contacts in Durban:

Kate Dooley, FERN, Brussels: +27 (0) 714115194, kate@fern.org

Monica Lopez Baltodano, Centro Humboldt, Nicaragua: +27 (0) 820097621, milenio@humboldt.org.ni

Cecile Ndjebet, REFACOF, Cameroon: refacofsecretariat@gmail.com

Yuyan Indradi, Greenpeace Indonesia: yindradi@greenpeace.org

Notes to editors:

1. Work of the AWG-LCA Contact Group, Agenda item 3.2.3. Version 2 December 2011, @ 09.35

2. European Union carbon permits (EUAs) fell more than 3 percent early on Thursday December 7^th, trading at 7.09 euros a tonne. 

3. Prices for UN Certified Emission Reductions, or CERs,for December delivery settled at 5.03 euros ($6.52) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange on December 6 2011, the second-lowest closing price since they began trading in 2008. CER credits have lost 80 percent from their peak of 25 euros in July 2008 and down about 56 percent this year.

Posted By Angela Strader at 11:35am on December 08, 2011

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