“NO to REDD and Carbon Markets”

A new documentary from World Rainforest Movement.

“In the forests of Africa, Asia, and Latin America communities . . . are used to their territory being threatened by miners, illegal loggers, and land grabbers. But now, in addition to these threats, they are facing a new kind of greed. The greed of those who mine the air. The carbon market proponents.”

That’s the start of a short documentary published recently by World Rainforest Movement. The film shares experiences, reflections and testimonies from Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have decided to say, “No to REDD and carbon markets”.

In a statement about the film, World Rainforest Movement writes that,

These communities also challenge the capitalist, racist and colonialist logic of these projects – which seek to use forests historically protected by communities in order to greenwash the image of polluting companies and generate more profits.

The film was produced and edited by Joana Moncau. It is also available in French, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The film features a series of interviews with Indigenous Peoples and local communities affected by REDD projects. Sulma Lópe Balarezo, an Indigenous Tacana leader from Bolivia, says that,

“They came here saying that as community members and owners of our land, we could take and sell carbon credits. I didn’t know what trade was, or what carbon credits were. And neither did my people.”

Marisol García Apagüeño is an Indigenous Kichwa leader in Peru. She asks,

“And what are carbon credits? Who buys them? Who issues them? What do they solve? What are we talking about?”

The meeting in Alto Turiaçu, Brazil

In 2024, Indigenous Peoples, representatives of communities and organisations from Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Costa Rica met in the Ka’apor Indigenous territory of Alto Turiaçu in Brazil.

Wildlife Works and Forest Trends are attempting to develop a REDD project in Ka’apor Indigenous territory. The Ka’apor Council, Tuxa Ta Pame, opposes the project and have called on Brazilian federal prosecutors to evict Wildlife Works from their rainforest.

During the 2024 meeting, Indigenous Ka’apo leader, Itahu Ka’apo, says,

“This dialogue is very important for us because we want to learn a lot of information from other countries, from leaders who have come here so that we can understand these carbon credits. Because many people have already had experiences with carbon credits and they are already going through problems and difficulties. This is what we have to talk about amongst ourselves to debate against REDD.”

Colombia

Tatiana Carbiban Jaramillo is an Indigenous Sikuani leader from Colombia. The Banakale - Isimali REDD project was established on their territory by a company called Biofix Consultoría SAS. Jaramillo says,

“They were very strategic because they used an Indigenous person. They used her to get to us, but they did not actually hold a prior consultation in our territory. They held it in the city. They paid for people’s hotels and meals. They treated them very well in order to be able to greenlight the project.”

Another Biofix Consultoría project is the Tángara REDD project in Colombia. Evangelista Aragón Cuero, an Afro-descendant leader, describes how he first learned about the project:

“Two people visited me saying they wanted to speak with the leaders of my territory. They wanted to move forward on a project with children and the elderly. They brought gifts and an invitation to a meeting that was held in the territory. When they left, the women noticed they were pulling out a drone. ‘Why do have that drone? What is it for?’ ‘Oh that, that’s just so we can get a better understanding of the area.’

“This really got our attention and concerned us. We got to the bottom of it and found out that they already had an established carbon credit business in our territory which we were not aware of.”

Álvaro Silvio Guadir is an Indigenous Pastos leader from Colombia. The REDD+ Environmental Project for the Protection of Pachamama Cumbal is on his territory. The project had sold carbon credits to Chevron before the communities even knew that the project existed.

Guadir says that,

“We did not know what the carbon market was. Yet there was a contract that had been signed without a consultation, without the free and informed consent of the communities. And when we discovered this and the signed contract, we began to meet in the communities, in assemblies, and all of our communities together concluded that this contract was not welcome in the territories, since it has a time frame of 30 years, extendable to 100 years.

“The contract contains some clauses that were not in alignment with our culture or with nature. They were not in alignment with the context of our community and territory. So we got some legal and technical advice and the contract has been suspended until the process of prior consultation moves forward.”

Brazil

José Francisco Mascimento Barroso, a leader from a riverside community, describes how consent was fraudulently obtained for the Valparaiso REDD project in the state of Acre in Brazil:

“They asked us to sign meeting minutes verifying the presence of the inhabitants who were at the meeting. And I later found out through a project document that this list that they had requested was used to verify that the people were in agreement with the project. And the people were not! They did not even know that this list was going to be used to say they were in agreement with the project. When I discovered this, the project had already sold a lot of carbon credits.”

Nilson Silva is a leader from a riverside community in Brazil. He explains how he became suspicious about REDD:

“What is this market? The forest has been there for many years and the communities have been protecting it for many years. And now a project is coming to save the forest and the company’s going in there offering millions for the communities to just lie in their hammocks and do nothing. I have a friend who always says that he gets suspicious when money is involved. And that’s also what happened to me. I became suspicious.”

Later in the film, he talks about the REDD project where he lives: The Ecomapuá Amazon REDD project.

Silva says that,

“We began to notice a lot of outsiders who we perceived were not from the region or territory. We investigated to understand what those people were doing there. This is how we found out that there was a project within the territory. We found this out after it had been going on for 10 years. We were able to initiate a lawsuit against Verra which had certified the REDD project in the community’s territory. This is how the project was slowed down, not stopped, but slowed down. And now it is in the courts.”

Silva gives his overview of the 2024 meeting in Alto Turiaçu:

“Through this gathering, this conversation, this dialogue, this exchange of experiences, we have come to understand that everyone is going through the same thing. For us it is essential to understand that REDD has already harmed many territories, communities, and people.”

Uganda

The 2024 meeting in Alto Turiaçu in Brazil, also included videos of people affected by forest carbon projects in other countries.

Kvampeire Rosset describes her experience of Ecotrust’s tree planting programme, Trees for Global Benefits. She says that,

“I began to plant trees for the Ecotrust carbon project. I upheld the agreement by planting the trees that Ecotrust had asked me to. In return they promised me money to take care of my children, which they never gave me. Since I planted those trees I have not made a single dollar from them, but I have children to take care of and to feed.

“It got to a point where I could not guarantee that I could provide food for my children through the planting of those trees. So I decided to cut down the trees and plant banana trees, as you can see in the background. When I cut down the trees and started growing food, they began to threaten me, calling me on the phone in the afternoon and at night.”

REDD and carbon markets are a false solution

World Rainforest Movement’s Teresa Perez points out the fraud of the carbon markets:

“One of the great deceptions of the carbon market is to make us believe that this carbon dioxide which is emitted in large amounts can be offset by a forest or a plantation in a country far away from where the carbon has originally been emitted.”

Winnie Overbeek of World Rainforest Movement adds, “We call carbon credits pollution credits because they give these companies the right to pollute.”

Of course, the biggest buyers of these pollution credits are Big Polluters.

Overbeek continues:

“The mechanism is perverse because REDD projects are not implemented in places where there’s a lot of deforestation. Why is that? Because it is much more profitable to have large monoculture soy bean and oil palm plantations, and large scale mining. These activities generate a lot more money than carbon projects.

“So what actually happens? These projects are brought to forest areas that are not endangered and there are always communities in these areas.”

Marisol García Apagüeño, Indigenous Kichwa leader from Peru, says,

“We don’t them to keep using our work of caring for, protecting, and defending the forest so they can continue to have a green image in the world. A false green image, because here in my territory they are greenwashing their image and in other territories they are destroying, killing, and dispossessing other Indigenous Peoples of their communal home.

“It is hypocrisy on a global scale that this is not being talked about directly. Because otherwise this COP wouldn’t be in its 29th year, soon to be in its 30th year, and we are still not able to talk about a climate solution. This is why we have risen up and continue to resist these false climate solutions and we must not accept this false climate solution.”

At the end of the film, Sulma Lópe Balarezo, the Tacana leader from Bolivia says,

“And we must not accept these carbon credits. If we are going to defend our territories, then let it be for us, not REDD.”