The African Forestry Impact Platform is “perpetuating carbon colonialism”
The African Forestry Impact Platform is “perpetuating carbon colonialism”
A new report by the Oakland Institute reveals the focus on industrial tree plantations and carbon offsets
Industrial tree plantations and carbon offsets will be a major focus of the Africa Climate Summit which runs alongside the Africa Climate Week in Nairobi next week. One of the aims of the meetings is to produce a common African position for COP28, which will be held in Dubai in December 2023.
The CEO of the Africa Climate Summit is Joseph Ng’ang’a. He’s a co-founder of the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative which aims to massively expand the generation of carbon offsets in Africa.
Augustine Bantar Njamnshi, a Cameroonian activist with Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, describes the Africa Climate Summit as “a trade conference on carbon credits”.
A new report by the Oakland Institute titled “Green Colonialism 2.0: Tree Plantations and Carbon Offsets in Africa” looks at the African Forestry Impact Platform (AFIP), which was created in 2022 by New Forests, an Australian investment firm.
The report, written by Eve Devillers of the Oakland Institute and Kristen Lyons of the University of Queensland, highlights the dangers of this focus on tree plantations and carbon offsets as a so-called solution to the climate crisis.
The Oakland Institute writes that,
By paving the way for the expansion of destructive monoculture tree plantations in Africa, AFIP is perpetuating carbon colonialism – disguised as green development in the form of “sustainable” forestry and carbon offsetting. Driven by Northern actors seeking to capitalize on Africa’s resources, this insidious model enables land grabbing, environmental devastation, and dispossession in the name of profit.
In a press release, Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute says,
“The ACS and ACW represent a pivotal moment. African leaders have a historic opportunity to reject the false solutions that perpetuate the same exploitative model of colonialism that has fueled this environmental catastrophe. Instead, they must listen to the calls of over 400 African civil society organizations and prioritize real solutions that account for historical responsibility, uphold the rights of Indigenous and local communities, and pave the way for an equitable and just transition. African people deserve climate justice, not more extractivism.”
African Forestry Impact Platform
AFIP is an investment fund registered in Singapore. AFIP has raised US$200 million from three development finance institutions: Norway’s Norfund (US$76 million); Finland’s Finnfund (US$48 million), and British International Investment (US$75 million - incidentally, BII was at one point in its history called the Colonial Development Corporation).
New Forests is the second-largest private forestry manager in the world. It has US$7.3 billion of assets under management.
New Forests had previously partnered with Generation Investment Management, Al Gore’s investment company, “to initiate a new vision for Investing in Natural Climate Solutions”.
In May 2022, Japanese companies Mitsui & Co. and Nomura Holdings announced that they were going to buy up 100% of New Forests’ shares. Both companies have deep ties with the fossil fuel industry.
Mitsui is involved in the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas. It is also the fifth largest upstream oil and gas developer in Africa. Mitsui owns a 10% stake in TotalEnergies’ liquified natural gas project in Mozambique. The project has “wreaked havoc on the environment, forcibly displaced local communities, and exacerbated regional violence,” the Oakland Institute writes.
Nomura is a financial services company and investment bank with US$360 in assets. In 2021, Nomura joined the UN’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance in which bank commit to “net-zero” lending and investment by 2050. Within 11 months of joining the alliance, Nomura provided US$3.9 billion of finance to fossil fuel developers.
The Oakland Institute points out that the fact that New Forests is owned by fossil fuel financiers reveals who is actually benefitting from carbon offsetting:
Oil and gas corporations who are able to greenwash their activities through “net zero” emission pledges that rely heavily on carbon credits. This allows them to continue extracting and burning fossil fuels with impunity, all while reaping substantial financial gains.
New Forests claims that AFIP will “generate 2.26 million tonnes of additional carbon sequestration”. But as the Oakland Institute notes, “AFIP’s plan to scale industrial tree plantations is not about combating climate change, but is instead geared towards profit-making”.
Green Resources
AFIP’s first acquisition reveals that the platform’s real interest is in industrial tree plantations and carbon offsets.
In February 2023, AFIP bought Green Resources, a Norwegian company that has established industrial tree plantations in Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The company is “notorious for its history of land grabbing, human rights violations, and environmental destruction”, the Oakland Institute writes.
Following two decades of criticism of the company’s operations, in 2020, the Swedish Energy Agency finally cancelled its contract to buy carbon offsets from Green Resources’ plantations in Uganda.
Green Resources operates about 38,000 hectares of pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations. About half of the company’s operations are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the company has a target of 100% FSC certification by 2024.
The Oakland Institute has published a series of reports about Green Resources’ operation in Uganda, summed up as follows in the new report:
The Oakland Institute’s research in Uganda has documented the firm’s destructive impact on local communities and the environment.58 Undermining livelihoods and food security, vast tracts of land were seized from thousands of rural Ugandans to make room for the plantations.59 The tree plantations severely impacted the communities’ food security, as they lost access to land used for farming, grazing, gathering firewood, and other vital activities.
Despite Green Resources’ claims to be a leader in forestry-based offsets, in 2022, only 10% of the company’s plantations were certified carbon projects. Most of its plantation timber is sold as solid wood products, such as sawn timber, and electricity transmission poles. “This raises doubts,” the Oakland Institute writes, “about whether its offsetting initiatives are genuinely aimed at promoting sustainable practices or if they are more like a niche value-add to their timber business.”
According to Green Resources’ 2022 Sustainability Report, a majority of Green Resources’ carbon project are on track to run “towards their long-term baseline and will no longer produce carbon credits in the near future”. The Oakland Institute notes that “The likelihood that these credits will transform into permanent emissions reductions seems unlikely”.
I love that you're covering this. Colonialism in Africa is of course reprehensible, as is the blind eye western media turns to the continent. When I was writing about the heatwave burning up Greece and Southern Europe, finding information on Northern Africa was challenging. I didn't even find information in The Guardian, generally one of the better mainstream sources for climate change.
Anuradha Mittal says: "African people deserve climate justice, not more extraction."
Exactly! This justice should include reparations which could be funded by oxygen pricing for the historical and ongoing damage to the world's environment by extravagant consumerism of the rich North, as well as for, among other things, that these mid-latitudes are the intended landing spot for zillions of bits, large and small, of space junk.
Forestry management? Managed for what, profit? A tree plantation is not a forest. Suggesting that any form of "forestry management" could result in 2.6 million tonnes of carbon sequestration anywhere in the world is total nonsense. Sequestered carbon looks like coal or peat; it doesn't look like live trees, which, as we know, have no permanence.