Carbon trading and human rights

SinksWatch tell us (Word Doc 222k) that a new report from the World Rainforest Movement, A Funny Place to Store Carbon (pdf 772k) outlines:

"...human rights abuses at Mount Elgon National Park in east
Uganda, where the Dutch FACE Foundation has been planting carbon
'offset' trees since 1994. The report exposes how villagers living along
the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, have been barred
from their land and have seen their livestock confiscated by armed park
rangers guarding the 'carbon trees' inside the National Park."

The table of contents of the 104 page report give you some idea of what to expect from its substance but chapters 1, 3 and 7 are well worth a read.

"CONTENTS

1. Ticking the right boxes or offsetting responsibility? .................... 7
Box: FACE: The facts .......................................................................................... 9
Box: The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)...................................................... 12
2. Mount Elgon......................................................................................... 21
The peoples living in and around Mount Elgon ................................................ 23
The Bagisu ......................................................................................................... 23
The Sabiny ......................................................................................................... 24
3. A chronology of conflicts at Mount Elgon ....................................... 27
Box: The British in Uganda................................................................................. 28
Box: International support for evictions ............................................................. 33
Mount Elgon is declared a national park ............................................................ 37
Evictions from the Kapkwata Softwood Plantation ............................................ 40
Land rights, shootings, killings .......................................................................... 41
A new boundary and more evictions .................................................................. 42
Parliamentary committee on natural resources ................................................... 44
More conflict ...................................................................................................... 46
Boundary disputes, another survey and the Benet sue UWA ........................... 47
Illegal logging and yet more conflicts ................................................................ 49
4. The UWA-FACE project ..................................................................... 59
Is the FACE project additional? .......................................................................... 59
UWA’s version of events at Mount Elgon ......................................................... 62
The UWA-FACE project and the boundary of the national park ....................... 64
Benefits to local people from carbon sales? ....................................................... 67
Notes from a visit to Mount Elgon ..................................................................... 68
5. IUCN and NORAD.............................................................................. 73
IUCN and the Katoomba Group ......................................................................... 78
Box: Carbon forestry in Uganda ......................................................................... 79
6. Forest Stewardship Council Certification ........................................ 83
Does the project comply with FSC standards?................................................... 83
SGS’s visits to Mount Elgon .............................................................................. 93
Certifying the trees or certifying the park management? .................................... 94
7. “We just want our land back” ............................................................ 99"

Over 50 people have reportedly been killed in and around the boundaries of the disputed region. We cannot tackle pollution and climate change through carbon trading schemes designed to allow the affluent to go on polluting at increasing rates. It's smoke and mirrors. It may ease our conscience to think that we've paid to have some trees planted in Africa to aborb carbon emissions equivalent to those pumped into the atmosphere by our latest holiday flight. Yet any "solution" to this massive global systemic mess based on the assumption that we can continue to pollute at exponentially increasing rates is doomed to fail. And as this report points out, the immediate implications for indigenous peoples in and around the areas chosen for these carbon-offsetting plantations can be life threatening in ways that us comfortably off Westerners would prefer not to think about.

Thanks to my colleague, Ray Ison, for the link.