Human Rights Watch report on Southern Cardamom REDD project in Cambodia

“Conservation strategies that sideline and punish Indigenous peoples to address the global environmental crisis are unacceptable, and counterproductive.”

Human Rights Watch has published its report on the Southern Cardamom REDD project in Cambodia. Based on two years of research and titled, “Carbon Offsetting’s Casualties: Violations of Chong Indigenous People’s Rights in Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project,” the report exposes serious problems with the project. Problems that Verra and its auditors have completely failed to address.

Human Rights Watch found that the project operated for 31 months without consulting the Indigenous Chong people who live there.

Project activities during those 31 months included “crucial decisions on the management of more than half a million hectares of land, such as incorporating eight Indigenous Chong villages into a national park”, Human Rights Watch states in the report.

This failure to carry out a process of free, prior and informed consent has had major impacts on the livelihoods of the Indigenous people. The Chong face forced evictions and criminal charges for farming and collecting forest products from their traditional territories.

June 2023: Verra suspends the project

The REDD project is carried out by the Cambodian Ministry of Environment and Wildlife Alliance, a US conservation organisation. In June 2023, Verra stopped issuing carbon credits from the project after receiving a letter from Human Rights Watch.

Verra is carrying out a review of the project and has declined to comment about the project while the review is ongoing. But Verra told Human Rights Watch that it did “not contact any project stakeholders or community members directly” for its review.

Human Rights Watch writes that,

Human Rights Watch interviewed Chong Indigenous families who described being forcibly evicted by MOE [Ministry of Environment] rangers, gendarmes, and WA [Wildlife Alliance] staff from farmland they customarily relied on. In some cases, community members were arrested and detained for months without trial following the eviction, according to judicial records. Further, some Indigenous community members described being arrested and mistreated by patrols composed of MOE rangers, gendarmes, and WA staff while they collected sustainable forest products in the REDD+ conservation area. In two Chong villages, residents described WA staff and MOE rangers conducting arbitrary home searches to apparently deter collection of sustainable forest products.

A Chong villager told Human Rights Watch that Wildlife Alliance “have no concern with our Indigenous identity. They’ve never asked us for permission because from their perspective they already have an agreement with the government.”

Two Chong men said that in 2018 and 2021, while they were collecting resin, Ministry of Environment rangers, gendarmes, and Wildlife Alliance staff arrested them. “When they first rushed into the camp they hit me in the back with their gun,” one of the men said. “They destroyed everything I had with me – even the clothes on my back.”

Six Chong families told Human Rights Watch that they had been forcibly evicted from land they had customarily farmed. Three people were arrested and detained without trail for several months. “We didn’t ask for help or complain after it happened,” one man said. “We’re just normal villagers, we don’t dare.”

The failure of Verra’s auditing system

Human Rights Watch explains the conflicts of interest inherent in the Verra system:

Verra earns revenue based on the number of projects it certifies and the number of credits it issues for each of these projects. Further, the auditors that examine whether projects meet Verra’s standards are paid by the project developers who are being examined. Every aspect of what is described as an independent verification process is ultimately conducted by financially self-interested parties in the regulatory vacuum of the voluntary carbon market.

Human Rights Watch notes that Chong villagers had repeatedly told the auditing firms that carried out assessments about their problems with the REDD project.

Villagers told Human Rights Watch they had told auditing firms that “they did not understand what the project does, how its boundaries would impact their farmland, or how they stood to benefit from the project”.

SCS Global Services

SCS Global Services carried out the validation audit in 2018. SCS Global Services was hired by Wildlife Works Carbon. Mike Korchinsky, CEO of Wildlife Works Carbon told Human Rights Watch that Wildlife Works Carbon was a “Technical Advisor and produced the technical documentation” for the project and “provided some training [to Wildlife Alliance] and some financial support”.

The training included “how you conduct free, prior and informed consent for a project”, according to Korchinsky. But Human Rights Watch’s research found that the project did not carry out a process of free, prior and informed consent with the Indigenous people living in the project area.

SCS Global Services told Human Rights Watch that even though the project started in January 2015, and free, prior and informed consent meetings only began in August 2017, this was “in conformance” with Verra’s standards.

Human Rights Watch points out that SCS Global Services’ interpretation is neither consistent with Verra’s standards, “nor with the requirements of international human rights standards on the right to FPIC”.

Aster Global Environmental Solutions

In August 2021, six years after the project started, the auditing firm Aster Global Environmental Solutions found that “several communities reported high numbers of persons with no knowledge of the REDD+ project”.

Villagers that did know about the project did not know “the definition of REDD+, its implementation, how REDD+ benefits and funds will be shared to the community, boundary demarcation between REDD+ and their farmlands, and the grievance box and its purpose”.

Aster Global opened a finding about free, prior and informed consent and another finding about the fact that some villages did not know where the boundary of the project was. Both findings were closed following responses from the project’s staff. Aster Global sided with the project developers and against the villagers.

In April 2023, Human Rights Watch sent a 17-page letter to Aster Global with an overview of its findings about the Southern Cardamom REDD project, and a series of detailed questions for Aster Global. Janice McMahon, president of Aster Global replied but did not answer a single question. Instead McMahon explained that the questions were outside the scope of the company’s role as “verifiers in the Verra programs”.

In a press release, Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report, says,

“Conservation strategies that sideline and punish Indigenous peoples to address the global environmental crisis are unacceptable, and counterproductive. The Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project should be revised to ensure the Chong people’s effective participation in key decisions, titling of Indigenous communal land, and benefit-sharing agreements with the Chong that acknowledge they own the carbon stored in their territories. . . .

“Verra’s inaction for years in the face of the multiple red flags seriously calls into question its oversight and accountability mechanisms. These findings raise concerns about whether other carbon offsetting projects across the globe that were approved by Verra are causing harm to the very communities that most depend on forests for their livelihoods.”