“It destroys everything,” says Indigenous leader about the REDD+ Baka Rokarire project in Colombia
Local leaders say they wish they'd never heard of Baka Rokarire.
The REDD+ Baka Rokarire project covers an area of more than 715,000 hectares in the department of Vaupés, in Colombia. The project developer is a public-private forest management company called Masbosques.
Libia Rincó is Masbosques’ community manager for the REDD project. On the company’s website, he says, “This has been a great experience for me, getting to know part of my territory and being able to help the communities while respecting their uses and customs.”
But Indigenous leader Fabio Valencia, who lives in the project area recently told David Salazar, a journalist with Agence France Presse, that the project is destroying his people. Valensia said that the project is even worse for the community than the pollution from mining or oil extraction.
Salazar writes,
It has threatened the very fiber of the community, he claimed, fraudulently wresting control from the region’s Indigenous leadership and driving a wedge between locals who support the project, with its quick cash injection, and those against it.
“This contaminates spiritually, physically, it destroys everything . . . in this territory, for money,” Valencia said.
Local leaders told Salazar they wish they’d never heard of Baka Rokarire.
The legal case against the REDD project
On 15 July 2022, the Pirá Paraná Indigenous Council and the Association of Indigenous Traditional Authorities of river Pirá Paraná (ACAIPI) filed a tutela action arguing that the project is “seriously violating our fundamental rights to cultural integrity, self-determination, self-government and territory”.
Anyone in Colombia has the right to file a tutela action under the country’s 1991 Constitution, if they feel their constitutional rights have been violated or threatened.
The Pirá Paraná Indigenous communities’ tutela action is against Masbosques, the consulting firm Soluciones Proambientales S.A.S., the auditor Ruby Canyon Environmental, the certifying company Cercarbono, and the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) which is part of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
Ruby Canyon Environmental’s auditors did not actually bother to visit the Pirá Paraná communities when they carried out their audit.
Research by journalist Andrés Bermúdez Liévano reveals that Soluciones Proambiente is both the consultant that produced the project design document and the financier of the project. As such it can pocket 40% of the money generated by sales of carbon offsets (minus operating costs).
No free, prior and informed consent
The Indigenous plaintiffs argue that the companies deliberately ignored and excluded Indigenous authorities in the project area. They argue that Masbosques negotiated the REDD project with a community member who did not have the authority to make such decisions. Jhon Fredy Benjamín Londoño had been removed from his position as head of ACAIPI two weeks before he signed the REDD contract with Masbosques.
Nevertheless, Ruby Canyon Environmental’s report, dated February 2022, lists Londoño as ACAIPA’s current legal representative - 11 months after he’d been replaced.
Masbosques told AFP that the contract was valid and legal and claimed that the company was the victim of a “smear campaign”.
Wilmer Garcia is an Indigenous leader in the Pirá Paraná territory. He told AFP that he was never consulted on the deal. “The company (Masbosques) . . . invaded this territory,” he said. “It did not recognise that there are already environmental and traditional authorities here.”
Another traditional leader, Roberto Marin, pointed out that the REDD project was not agreed in the “maloka”, the ceremonial house that is the place for meetings and shamanic rituals. “It must be recognized that we exist here, people, human beings with rights,” he told AFP.
Wilmer Gómez, a member of the Pirá Paraná Indigenous Council told El Tiempo that,
“The territory of Pirá Paraná is fractured by the implementation of the project with the company Masbosques. . . . We filed legal actions because the consultation protocol was not complied with. They violate and ignore our fundamental rights, which are enshrined in the Constitution. They did the procedure with people who were not empowered.”
The tutela action was first heard by a judge who rejected the Pirá Paraná Indigenous communities’ arguments. The judge argued that the Indigenous People have other judicial mechanisms to challenge the REDD project and that the tutela action was not the correct legal mechanism. Following an appeal, the Administrative Tribunal upheld the judges decision.
But on 28 April 2023, the Colombian Constitutional Court selected this case for review. The case will provide judicial guidelines on the way REDD projects are implemented as well as whether tutela is the correct mechanism for upholding Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
Enter Delta Airlines
In March 2022, a company called Latin Checkout bought 1.3 million offsets from the project for about US$4 million. Latin Checkout shares the same founding partners with Cercarbono, the company that certified the REDD+ Baka Rokarire project. Latin Checkout also developed the EcoRegistry platform. That’s the platform where all of Cercarbono’s carbon credits are registered, including those from REDD+ Baka Rokarire
In September 2022, Delta Airlines retired 1.3 million carbon credits from the REDD+ Baka Rokarire project.
In October 2022, Andrés Bermúdez Liévano reported on Mongabay, that,
we asked Delta Airlines how it evaluates the quality of the bonds it purchases and if it knew that the project whose credits it used had been sued by the current indigenous authorities two months earlier. As of the date of publication, it had not responded to our two requests for information.
Delta Airlines faces a lawsuit in California over its “carbon neutral” claims - which needless to say are based on buying carbon offsets.
The lawsuit accuses Delta of “grossly misrepresenting the total environmental impact of its business operations in its advertisements, corporate announcements, and promotional materials and thereby attaining underserved market share and extracting higher prices from consumers.”
In its publicity material, Delta Airlines claimed that the projects it buys carbon offsets from, “Protect forests and support local communities”.
This is simply not true. Delta Airlines has bought carbon offsets from a series of REDD projects that failed to respect the rights of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities living in and around the project areas.
The REDD+ Baka Rokarire project is yet another REDD project to add to the long list of projects that failed to respect the rights of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities living in and around the project area.
How to write something about Redd in Madagascar, who received US $8.8M for 1,76M tons of carbon ?
Thank you, great research, and the link to Delta! I've seen this too often - easy money comes in and divides a community and all former sense of value is abandoned. Truly sad.