The REDD+ Environmental Project for the Protection of Pachamama Cumbal in Colombia sold carbon credits to Chevron before local communities even knew the project existed

“The REDD+ Environmental Project for the Protection of Pachamama Cumbal is an initiative of the Pasto indigenous people of the Cumbal, Mayasquer, Panam and Chiles reservations, represented by their own governance organisation.” That’s according to the website of ColCX, a Colombian carbon credit certification and registry company.

But a recent article by Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, a Rainforest Investigations Fellow at the Pulitzer Center, paints a very different picture. The article is part of a collaborative investigation called Gray Carbon, that sheds light on carbon trading in Latin America. The collaborating organisations are the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), Mongabay Latam, La Silla Vacía, and El País América.

Here’s the start of the article:

On December 7, 2022, Diana Puenguenan saw a message that alarmed her. A former governor of the Cumbal indigenous reservation, where she lives, had shared on his WhatsApp status a photo of a legal document announcing the closing of a carbon credit sale in that community. “Does anyone know about this?” he asked.

That was the first news this 25-year-old sociologist, public administrator and indigenous Pasto had that an ambitious payment for environmental services project was underway in her indigenous territory, nestled between the paramos (alpine tundras) and volcanoes in southern Colombia, on the border with Ecuador.

The REDD project had been established on more than 40,000 hectares of the Pasto Indigenous People’s land without most of the people living there knowing anything whatsoever about the project.

The inhabitants of the Cumbal reservation formed a working group to investigate further. They call themselves the Colectivo Ambiental Cumbal. For five months they have tried to find out more about the project. But without much success. They have written to their governor, the companies developing the project, and the certifying organisation. None have replied.

The Gray Carbon journalist alliance also tried to get the documents. ColCX told them that its contracts with the project developers, including Global Consulting, feature confidentiality clauses and therefore they could not release the documents.

The project developers

The project developers are a Mexican company called Global Consulting and Assessment Services S.A. de C.V. and its Colombia subsidiary SPV Business S.A.S. The project was registered by ColCX on 25 May 2022.

The parent company of ColCX is Canal Clima, which is part of Valorem, the holding company of one of the richest and most powerful families in Colombia - the Santo Domingo family.

SPV Business was incorporated in Bogota in September 2020. Its sole shareholder since August 2022 is Global Consulting and Assessment Services.

A company called Deutsche Certification Body S.A.S. audited the project. The company was co-founded by Bárbara Lara Escoto in June 2019. She is also CEO of Global Consulting and Assessment Services and the legal representative of SPV Business.

Bárbara Lara Escoto is a Mexican chemical and industrial engineer. From 2003 to 2008 she worked for the Norwegian firm Det Norske Veritas, before setting up Gobal Consulting and Assessment Services. She claims that her company has registered more than 1650 projects under “internationally recognised carbon standards”. She did not reply to the Gray Carbon alliance’s requests for an interview.

Meanwhile Diana Caroline Avella Ostos was alternate legal representative for SPV Business, and was alternate legal representative for Deutsche Certification Body until one month before signing the contract with the then-governor of Cumbal.

Clearly, the auditing company, Deutsche Certification Body, faced a conflict of interest.

Liévano reports that ColCX’s technical manager Catalina Fandiño said that she wasn’t aware of any conflict of interest. “It is a matter of alarm and the issue of conflict of interest would have to be assessed,” she said.

Big Polluter Chevron bought the credits

On 14 October 2022, oil giant Chevron retired 315,00 carbon credits from the project. In total, Chevron has bought 849,000 carbon credits from the REDD+ Environmental Project for the Protection of Pachamama Cumbal.

The Gray Carbon alliance asked Chevron whether it knew that its carbon credits came from a project that most of the people living there were unaware of. Chevron replied that, “according to audit reports, it has the permits and approvals of the respective indigenous government authority and corresponding socialization processes were carried out”.

Chevron’s carbon credits were the subject of a recent report by Corporate Accountability, that found that the Big Polluter’s net zero plans were based on junk offsets.

Liévano has uncovered 849,000 more junk offsets to add to Chevron’s collection. No other company has bought carbon credits from this project.

Omaar Chiran, a lawyer and member of the Colectivo Ambiental Cumbal, told Liévano that,

“Everything must be done with participation and dialogue. The accumulated knowledge of the community, its elders, women, young professionals and environmental organizations was not taken into account, but rather the negotiation was carried out in Bogota behind closed doors.”

The project has been “totally detrimental to the rights, processes and worldview of the Indigenous Peoples,” Chiran says.

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