Four REDD projects in Portel, Brazil: Profits for intermediaries, offsets for Big Polluters, and land conflicts for communities
Four REDD projects in Portel, Brazil: Profits for intermediaries, offsets for Big Polluters, and land conflicts for communities
There are four REDD projects in the municipality of Portel in the state of Pará, Brazil covering a total area of more than 700,000 hectares. A recent report by the World Rainforest Movement takes a critical look at these projects.
The projects are the following:
REDD RMDLT Portel-Pará: run by the RMDLT Property Group Ltd, covering 194,403 hectares, started in 2008.
Pacajai REDD+ Project: run by ADPML, covering 148,975 hectares, started in 2009.
Rio Anapu-Pacajá REDD: run by Brazil AgFor LLC, covering 165,707 hectares, started in 2016.
Ribeirinho REDD+: run by Friends of the Riverine, Union of Rural Producers of Portel, and 1252 riverine families, covering 205,000 hectares, started in 2017. The Ribeirinho REDD+ project is listed as “under development” on the database of standard setting organisation Verra.
The REDD RMDLT Portel-Pará project has sold more than 7 million carbon credits. The Pacajai REDD+ Project has sold more than 10 million carbon credits. (This project was previously called the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project. The project name changed not long after REDD-Monitor wrote about the project in December 2020.) The Rio Anapu-Pacajá REDD has sold more than 6 million carbon credits. The Ribeirinho REDD+ project has not yet sold any carbon credits.
WRM calls carbon credits “pollution credits”.
Among the Big Polluters buying carbon credits from the Portel projects are the following: Boeing: Delta Airlines; Air France: Amazon; Repsol; Samsung; Toshiba; Kingston; Takeda; Kering; Aldi; and Liverpool Football Club. Intermediaries such as Stand for Trees, ClimatePartner, Allcot, EcoAct, and Offsetters Clean Technology have also bought carbon credits from the Portel projects.
The four REDD project form an almost continuous area as WRM’s map shows - based on coordinates obtained from Verra’s database:
The documents for the first two projects were prepared by US-based Ecosystem Services LLC. Much of the project description for project 2 is cut and pasted from project 1. Kanaka Management Services has also been involved with these two projects.
Kanaka Managements Services is the company behind an extraordinary REDD project in Oro Province in Papua New Guinea, and an even more extraordinary REDD project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Another Indian consulting firm, 4K Earth Science Private Ltd, is involved in projects 3 and 4.
Michael Greene
An American businessman called Michael Edward Greene appears in all four projects as a project proponent. He is mentioned as a project proponent in projects 1 and 2, representing his company Brazil Agfor LLC. And the company Brazil Agfor LLC is the project proponent of project 3.
Greene is not mentioned directly in the project 4 documents, but participates through the company Amigos dos Ribeirinhos (Friends of the Riverine).
Back in 2011, Michael Greene featured in a Dutch TV programme. Keuringsdienst van Waarde, a Dutch TV consumer programme, did a two-part programme about carbon offsetting. The programme wanted to buy some forest in Brazil to offset the emissions of its viewers and Greene helped them to buy a plot of land covering 43 hectares.
None of the projects mentions who owns the land covered by each project. WRM notes that there is a lack of transparency about the financial accounting of each project. People living in the project areas have no information about how many carbon credits have been sold, or to whom, or about how much has been invested in Portel.
WRM writes that the Ribeirinho REDD+ project supposedly has 1,252 families as proponents of the project, in addition to Michael Greene’s company Amigos dos Ribeirinhos and the Union of Rural Producers of Portel.
The project states that it intends to build 60 new schools and 30 mini-health clinics. WRM suggests that these proposals could be “an attempt to increase the endorsement of ribeirinho families who have not yet joined the REDD projects”.
In 2022, Greene told the Financial Times that he sold carbon credits to EcoAct, a climate consulting firm and intermediary, for US$2.75. EcoAct offered carbon credits from forestry projects in Peru, Brazil, Kenya, and the UK for £15 to £25 each.
The REDD baseline problem
WRM highlights the baseline problem in all REDD projects: “The story presented on deforestation: the worse it is for forests, the better it is for investors.”
The project documents anticipate a more than 50% increase deforestation over the 30 to 40 year project periods. Deforestation will spread from the south along the Transamazonian Highway, BR-230, and another road called PA-167. Deforestation would also advance along rivers where people live.
The reference area chosen to support the argument about what would happen in the absence of the REDD project is an area that includes the Transamazonian Highway and its surroundings, where large-scale deforestation is ongoing.
According to the project documents, deforestation starts with logging companies, followed by “squatters” moving in along the banks of the river (ribeirinhos, in Portuguese) and other small farmers who clear forest to plant crops. They are followed by cattle ranchers who clear large areas of forest.
The project developers’ solution is to remove “invaders” and to employ eco-guards to patrol the forest. The ribeirinhos are to be allowed to continue their current land use on a small part of the project area - along the banks of rivers and streams. The REDD projects will help the ribeirinhos to legalise their land ownership on an individual basis. This, according to the project developers, will create a barrier to “invaders” such as logging companies.
Villagers would be hired to carry out forest patrols. But a 2020 report on project 1 proposes building 20 towers with cameras at the entrances to all the secondary rivers in the area. Each of the 40 metre-high towers would cost US$200,000. The surveillance cameras, in addition to monitoring potential “invaders” would also monitor the ribeirinhos. The report even states that, “the aim of the structure is to create a big brother atmosphere in the region”.
When WRM spoke to local community members, they asked, “Why haven’t the REDD projects been designed within the large area to the south of the project areas?”
WRM produced a map to illustrate this point:
Several of the Portel projects feature in a 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study looked at REDD projects in Brazil and found that they had overstated the carbon emission reductions by exaggerating the baseline deforestation rate.
WRM asks, “What is the contribution of a mechanism that intends to reduce emissions from deforestation (REDD), if the mechanism is not being implemented in areas where deforestation is in fact advancing the most?”
The communities
One of the supposed benefits for communities living inside the REDD project areas is an “improved” cooking stove. “The WRM team heard from dozens of women and men about the uselessness of these stoves,” WRM writes.
Some didn’t use the stove. Others had thrown them out. The irony is that the REDD projects give out “improved” cooking stoves supposedly to reduce the emissions of the ribeirinhos while selling carbon credits to Big Polluters to allow them to continue polluting.
The REDD projects also offer training courses on alternatives to shifting cultivation. The alternatives include beekeeping, agroforestry systems, and growing black pepper. WRM notes that the alternatives were proposed as fixed formulas in a top-down manner.
Project developers proposed registering people living in the project areas in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR). The CAR has been mandatory since Brazil’s 2012 Forest Code came into force. Its function is to integrate environmental information from properties into a federal database for monitoring, environmental planning, and preventing deforestation.
According to a report by Kanaka Management Services the CAR area in the Portel REDD projects initially consisted on one hectare per family, which WRM describes as “a derisory size for the Amazonian context”. This area was subsequently increased to 100 hectares.
WRM writes,
“Even so, for a basically extractivist population like ribeirinho communities, 100 hectares still may not be sufficient to realise their extractivist way of life, today and in the future. Possibly without knowing, by accepting the CAR, the families are agreeing to the implicit condition that from now on, they need to keep their survival activities restricted to the area of their CAR, without permission to enter the rest of the REDD project areas.”
Even worse, project proponents present the CAR registration as if it were a process to obtain a land title. “Legally, the CAR is not a property land title,” WRM notes. The law states that the CAR “will not be considered title for purposes of recognition of the rights of ownership or possession”.
Felipe Sabrina, a journalist with The Intercept in Brazil, wrote an article about the REDD projects in Portel. Greene sent him more than 1,000 CARs registered in the names of Ribeirinhos from one of his REDD projects, as proof of his commitment to “paying for 2,217 families to obtain their land rights”.
And on its website, ClimatePartner states that,
“The idea of this project [REDD RMDLT Portel-Pará] is to continue to preserve the rainforest and to officially provide the ‘Ribeirinhos’, the Amazon residents, with the corresponding land rights.”
Land conflicts
There are three Agro-Extractivist Settlement Projects (PEAEX) covering a total of 257,000 hectares that the State of Pará is implementing in the municipality of Portel. In these areas, CAR registration is carried out through the Land Institute of Pará (ITERPA).
“These settlement projects are the result of a struggle by these communities to secure their territories,” WRM writes. “These are long processes, given that they usually face opposition from local political interests, including loggers, large landowners and agribusiness in general—whose possibilities to expand their activities are reduced.”
Michael Greene claims in the documentation for the Ribeirinho REDD+ project that the Workers’ Union is financed by illegal loggers. According to Greene, the Workers’ Union uses false pretexts to create new settlements, so that “illegal loggers become the president of massive areas that are now community titles”.
WRM describes this as a “falsehood” and adds that,
“[T]he name of one of the settlements pays tribute to Sister Dorothy Stang, who joined the struggle of the forest populations and peoples. Her support of the struggle of the ribeirinho communities and rural workers contributed to the creation of agro-extractivist settlements as an alternative to the deforestation caused by loggers and large land owners across the Brazilian Amazon. Sister Dorothy was murdered because she was seen as a threat to these groups, just like many other workers’ leaders who have been killed when they began to organize their communities and demand their rights.”
Under the settlement projects, the Ribeirinhos have organised collective CAR registration with each family getting more than double the area under the REDD projects.
The Intercept journalist Sabrina spoke to a villager who lived in the Joana Peres 2 settlement. He told Sabrina that it was difficult to deal with the employees of Greene’s projects who were carrying out individual CAR registration for the collective lands of the settlement.
The villager told The Intercept that,
“They even threatened us, because they were riding with a former police officer on the boat they hired. We could see that he was armed. I even went on the boat twice to ask them not to do [the individual CAR]. In the area where I live, they didn't, I didn't let them. But they got mad at us, they said I was against the social work that was going to help everyone.”
WRM found that more than 80% of the 257,000 hectares of public land allocated to settlements is covered by REDD projects.
There are 15 rural property registrations overlapping with one of the settlements, “Deus é Fiel”. Four of these are in the name of Jonas Akila Morioka. Michael Greene and Morioka are shareholders in the company Telheiros Serviços de Apoio. This company controls Cruzeiro Engenharia Florestal, which is owned by Greene and Morioka. Cruzeiro Engenharia Florestal holds two land registrations within the settlement project. Moriokoa is the director of Megatown Trading which has three property registrations. Greene owns Brasflor Preservação Ambiental which has one property registration. Floyd Promoção e Representação Ltd has one land registration and its managing partner is Zaqueu Hideaki Alencar Morioka son of Jonas Morioka. Zaqueu is one of the project proponents of the Pacajai REDD+ Project.
WRM writes that,
“This small sample shows that people linked to the REDD projects claim to own the vast majority of the land in dispute, either directly or through companies in which they are involved. It also points to the possible strategy they use - Michael Greene in particular - of not appearing as the owner, but registering land in the name of companies in which they participate in one way or another.”
Jonas Morioka has set up a website which states that he owns no more than 110,000 hectares. WRM notes that in the National Rural Cadastre System, 58 properties with a total area of 174,000 hectares are in Morioka’s name. That is excluding the properties held by companies in which Morioka has a stake. Morioka is named in a Pará court report as a land grabber.
Felipe Sabrina, the journalist with The Intercept, attempted to interview Michael Greene. Sabrina writes that “the businessman's responses were always of distrust and suspicion that I was being paid or used by a competitor of his to harm him”.
In response to Sabrina’s first email contact, Greene wrote,
“If The Intercept is contacting me, it means that the people who are trying to cut down the forest in Portel, destroy the culture of the people and take away land rights from the riverside population are having great success. They must have fed him a bunch of lies . . . .
“I am respected by Greenpeace even though [the NGO] is against REDD. They never attacked me, because they know that if I stop, [the municipality of] Portel is basically finished.”
Sabrina emailed 24 questions to Greene, who responded to only four of them. Green failed to explain the points raised in WRM’s report.
This is a great example of how "Leaders" in a community (even if self-appointed) attempt to consolidate enough power to govern (control all development). Same things happen in any human social context. As per usual, "democracy" resides in the hands of he who can (and is willing to) talk over everyone else.