Statement by partners of Rainforest Foundation

Kenn Mondiai, Chairman, Eco-Forestry Forum, Papua New Guinea read out the text of The Oslo Statement on rainforests, communities and climate change.

The document was prepared by 55 network partners of the Rainforest Foundation who have gathered in Oslo over the last few days to discuss the issue of climate justice.

Click here to read the document.

Session 4: The economics of standing forests: Can climate related financing schemes become the basis for new, low carbon development models in forest-

Fighting deforestation, stimulating development and strengthening the rights of forest peoples in the Amazon: How to combine multiple agendas in practical politics.


Marina Silva, Senator, Brazilian Senate, and Minister of the Environment 2003 - May 2008, Brazil

Marina spoke of her personal experience in government and in civil society working on issues of the environment and of the rights of forest peoples. According to her, there is no incompatibility between protecting the forests and the local communities, and development. In fact, she sees the forests as being fundamental for development to take place.

Marina spoke of the need for changes, complex and sometimes paradoxical changes in order to deal with the crisis. She called for a new form of production and consumption that goes beyond technology, and the need to rethink our way of life and how we are.

Marina went on to say that the time has come to undo the damage of the past and to recognize the forest peoples and other local communities for the good they have done for the planet. She spoke of the need to rethink public policy, citing examples from her time in the Ministry of the Environment in Brazil.

According to Marina, development must be sustainable and include political, social, aesthetic and ethical concerns. Mentalities must change and we must think beyond just economic value when we are constituting our identities. She called for an ethical, sustainable world vision where technical solutions are transformed into real solutions.

Along with a vision, Marina explained, laws, structures and processes would be needed for real change to take place. Structures need to be flexible so that contributions from various stakeholders can be taken on board. Processes need to be democratic and transparent.

Marina concluded that the lessons learned from Brazil are that a strong agenda and command and control policies are important, but more important is to change the development model to one that takes into account environmental concerns.

Read Marina Silva's presentation here (Portuguese)

Session 4: Arild Angelsen on What will it cost?

What will it cost? Paying for avoided emissions, paying for ecosystem services or paying to pollute? Costs and consequences of alternative models for maintaining forests and forest carbon.

Arild Angelsen, Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway

Arild looked at the issue of forests and climate from the perspective of an economist. He outlined 3 types of costs associated with this: landowners costs (opportunity costs), government costs (budget costs), and international payment for REDD.

Among the questions examined were the following: who should be compensated? for what? (emission reductions, forest conservation), how should business as usual be defined? who owns the REDD rent? Who owns the carbon (a political question)? How to organize a system of differentiated pay?

Arild concluded with an interesting analogy, he compared forest carbon to a new cash crop for countries. A cash crop that required assistance to start production (define the project), assistance to produce the product, and that would receive payment for results.

Angelsen Rfn Redd Costs

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Session 4: Lovold on The new willingness to pay

The new willingness to pay: Climate change as a catalyst for implementing a truly sustainable development model in forest-rich developing countries.


Lars Løvold, Director, Rainforest Foundation Norway

Lars started his presentation by saying that lessons from the past point to unsustainability and that most countries that follow traditional development paths, end up losing most of their native forests. In other words, "normal" development, undermines the life support systems of the Earth-undermines ecosystem services.

He then asked the question, how much must we pay to change this logic, to keep the trees standing? And challenged the dominant answer so far that has been to pay for lost income, or, paying for the lost oportunity to make money.

Lars listed several problematic issues with the opportunity cost approach including who to pay? Should one only pay those with the capacity to deforest. This rewards the villains but not the guardians and creates a perverse incentive, you must destroy in order to be paid not to destroy.

Lars proposed an alternative system, what he termed a new, Green development approach. A system that maintains life support systems-climate, biodiversity, and provides social and economic benefits and opportunities to those who maintain the system. In this system, the standing forest becomes the source for social development (health, education), income at all levels, as opposed to the current paradigm where the plundered forest equals money.

A vital element of the new model includes entrusting the forest to the people who are attached to the forest-recognizing forest peoples' rights.

Lars concluded by saying that for the new system to work, you need the participation of all stakeolders in the planning and implementation of national REDD plans, legal reform and law enforcement, and the abolishment of the right to destroy without paying.

Lars' Presentation

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Session 5: Wrap-up and conclusions by panelists

The panelists were asked two questions: What is to you, the single most important lesson learned from this conference? And secondly: what would be your main message to the nations meeting in Copenhagen in December. Here are their answers:

Daniel Nepstad:
Today is a brilliant example of that the approach to REDD programs need to be politically viable. We need to emphasize as much the monitoring, measurement, reporting, and verification of social performance as we do of carbon performance. What we see in the Amazon today is the development of state level REDD programs and those are very much determined by the political reality. Can you move your zoning program into the world of law? That is entirely a political process. Some of the cost estimates for REDD begin to melt away when it becomes more a question of what is political viable to put into place. If you can institute a REDD program that channel tremendous benefits to forest peoples, and that is not compensating the drivers of deforestation – if you can pull that off as government there should be funds flowing into your government, if you do the opposite, there has to be a mechanism preventing that going forward.

The main message for Copenhagen is that REDD is never going to be perfect, nor is any international mechanism. It is possible though to build in mechanisms that ensures that people with rightful claims on resources and land will not be pried away from those resources. We can not oversubscribe REDD, there has to be a certain amount of space so that countries can develop REDD programs that are responsive to their own realities, but very sensitive to and strengthening ancestral and traditional claims on natural resources.

Marina Silva:
Concerning what I have learnt here, for me it was very interesting to verify – and I think someone managed to say that in one sentence – that we cannot think of forests as a mere carbon stock, but that we must think of them in terms of the sum total of their important contributions to protecting ecosystems, biodiversity, water etc. Thus, the lesson learnt is that we cannot once more make the same mistake of seeing things only as an opportunity in an economic or monetary sense; it is possible to have a value which is not necessarily monetarized, and this should also count – even though the monetary value is important.

Another message, which I believe is important for Copenhagen, is the question of commitment – intergenerational commitment. And in order to have intergenerational commitment, it is fundamentally important that we think about changing the development model so that it includes development at all levels, making use of all necessary means, including using REDD as a way of guaranteeing, or stimulating, this change in developing countries. It is very difficult for developed countries to change their energy system from fossil to renewable, but it is also very difficult for developing countries to change their development model. But this investment needs to be done, and part of the work that needs to be done in order to merit support has already been done by local populations, by traditional populations. So we need to see how we can account for, how we can give value to, the destruction that wasn’t done. We speak of avoided deforestation, but there is also a destruction which did not happen, and these populations are worthy – because of their history of non-destruction and worthy because of their continued non-destruction. And it is more or less this that I wanted to say.

As for Copenhagen, we need to leave from there with commitments to reducing our high emissions, and for all countries, including developing countries, to reduce their expectations for future emissions. Brazil may grow x, x, x percent, but this growth cannot be to the detriment of forests, cannot be to the detriment of our biodiversity.

Sandra Moniaga:
I sense the strong feeling of the importance of indigenous peoples and local communities in guarding the forest. I do acknowledge that there are communities involved in cutting down the trees, but mainly that is for survival, because there is no alternatives, but it should not stop them from being perceived as the guardian of the forest. I am sure that if their rights are secured and they receive all the benefits, they will manage sustainably.

My message for Copenhagen: there is no doubt that we have to respect and recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and other local communities – but importantly also to include them at all levels in the process. We also have to ensure the availability of all necessary conditionalities, for example the recognition of their land tenure, their land rights, but also the diversity of resource management systems. In the instance of Indonesia, but also other countries, good governance is important.. What is also needed is to have clear and creative ways in providing the rewards to the local people. Copenhagen should be a momentum, supporting a change of the development paradigm. I’d rather have no REDD if the basic conditionalities are not there.

Victoria Tauli-Corpus:
This is the last opportunity for the world to reform the forest governance and to ensure that the governance system really protects the forest as well as the rights of the stewards of the forest including indigenous peoples.

The message I have for Copenhagen is that the industrialized countries should make deep cuts in their emissions and provide adequate financial contributions to the developing countries, so that they will be able to pursue a green low carbon economy. And further: regard that contribution as something they are owing to the world, not because they are kind. They have already occupied the largest atmospheric space today. It is time for them to give the poorest and most countries and peoples a chance to live lives of dignity and wellbeing.

Arild Angelsen:
The single most important issue, to cite a well-known persons these days: “Yes, we can” – and we have a lot of experience to build on for doing that.

I have a message to three forms of decision-makers: the first one is to the decision makers in the rich countries, including my own – and that is that Norway and other countries will have no credibility if we do not clean up in our own backyard. And whatever we do to pay for REDD through offsets or funds should be in addition to what we are doing ourselves.
For the policy- or decision-makers in developing countries: a lot of what we talked about today is not about receiving a check from the rich countries, but is primarily about your responsibility in terms of governance and political reforms.
To the NGOs and the Civil Society I would say that you should be willing to take some risks to avoid the much larger climate risk. One cannot afford to be ideological. Have a pragmatic approach when it comes to markets. A market is not intrinsically good or bad. It can be amazingly effective to give right signals to people, to give incentives to mobilizing funds. But you are also very likely to get a lot of carbon cowboys/cowgirls that are in the market just to take money and have no concern whatsoever about the environment. So we need to have the safeguards and regulate the market. There are also a couple of dilemmas that you should face. Focusing on the problems of REDD, it can fire back on what you have as a solution or what you think is good – be careful on that. There is also the question of overloading the mechanism. Keep things sensibly simple – that is the challenge we all face to achieve what we want. So, take some risks in order to avoid the even bigger risk!

Frances Seymor:
We need more discussion on the potential and appropriate role of international agreements, international institutions and agreements in leveraging fundamental reforms at the national level and below. We have experienced using money and conditionality to try to leverage fundamental reform – and it was called structural adjustment. So I really think that we have to pause and think about what are realistic expectations, to think about how to translate Lars’s inspiring vision into the political realities that we face between political and national and below. It is a fundamental and fraught debate that we really need time to have.

I will call upon all parties to make the leap of faith to reach an agreement, so that we can get started and learn. But I would underline that good proposals need to be underpinned by good procedures. So I would urge negotiators to pay special attention to building in mechanisms for managing the trade-offs, managing the risks and enabling mid-course corrections as we proceed on that learning process.

Kenn Mondiai:
The main lesson that I learned, is that my brothers and sisters that are here with us from the tropical countries, the Rainforest Foundation and all the other partners that have been supporting us in the work that we are doing in our own countries – is going in the right direction.
In Copenhagen there should not be any distinction between people coming from developed or developing countries. If we are going to be serious in addressing the global climate question, we should look at the issues in the context of the survival of the human race.

Lars Løvold:
The main lesson learnt from the conference: to be honest, it was actually Dan’s tree experiment reducing rainfall by a third and after three years the big trees started dying. We all know that we actually depend on having the Amazon there. It is very easy to see the future dramatic consequences of the sort of the marginal situation of the survival of the Amazon forest; we know that is being cut up.

As for REDD and decision-makers: make REDD function so that will be in harmony with the principles of participation and transparency and in a way which is in accordance with international obligations already assumed: Which means to respect biodiversity and people’s individual and collective rights.

Adriana Ramos blogger fra Holmsbu

Adriana Ramos i Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), Regnskogfondets største samarbeidspartner i Brasil, blogger her fra dag 2 av partnerseminaret i Holmsbu:

Adriana Ramos blog:

In this second day of the event two main issues are linked in the discussion: Indigenous peoples rights and climate change.

In the first session we could see from the presentations done by Lily La Torre, from Peru, Roger Muchuba, from RDC and Mark Bujang, from Malaysia that ensuring indigenous peoples rights to their territories is a key issue that is still to be achieved.

There are however some mechanisms that can be used to support peoples efforts. The ILO 169 Convention and the UN Declaration on rights of indigenous peoples are good examples that were mentioned in the meeting.

Pressure from economic interest
The presentations made more clear that economic interestes are pressuring indigenous peoples territories and livelihoods. This makes it necessary to increase peoples knowledge about how to use international legal instruments.

The discussion regarding indigenous peoples rights is also a key issue in the Climate change convention negotiations, showed by the panelists in the second session of the day.

This event is a great opportunity to exchange experiences and different points of view. Based on this we can try to build strategies to deal with these challenges.

Adriana Ramos
Instituto Socioambiental - ISA

Flere bilder fra Holmsbu

Fotos: Espen Wæhle.

Her er alle deltakerne på Holmsbu!

Regnskogvoktere fra hele verden er samlet i Holmsbu. - Aldri har mulighetene vært større for å bevare verdens gjenværende regnskoger, sa daglig leder Lars Løvold ved åpningen av jubileumsuken for Regnskogfondet.

Dag 2 på Regnskogfondets partnerseminar i Holmsbu er i gang. Første taler er advokaten Lily La Torre fra Peru. Hun snakker om urfolk og internasjonale menneskerettigheter. Les intervju med Lily og flere av gjestene på Regnskogfondets nye hjemmesider her.

Dag 1 på Holmsbu snart ferdig

Regnskogfondets partnerseminar på Holmsbu er nå i full gang. Gjestene fra verdens største regnskogsland har ankommet. Temaer i dag har blant annet vært utveksling av erfaringer fra arbeid i Kongo, Indonesia og Peru.

Følg med på Regnskogfondets nye hjemmesider for intervjuer med deltakere og annet nytt.

Regnskogfondets partnerseminar på Holmsbu i gang.

Regnskogfondets jubileumsuke begynner i morgen, mandag 15. juni. Først ut er et tre-dagers seminar på Holmsbu med våre partnere fra Amazonas, Sentral-Afrika, Sørøst-Asia og Oseania.

Søndag ettermiddag har de første gjestene ankommet og møteaktiviteten er allerede høy.

Afrika-avdelingens Ingelin Ladsten, Stefan Kistler og Lionell Diss snakker med sine samarbeidspartnere fra DR Kongo: Roger Muchuba, Cyrille Adebu og Adolphine Muley.

Følg med de neste dagene for flere blogginnlegg fra seminaret.

Fra yanomamiene i regnskogen til dress i Rio

Torkjell Leira, samfunnsgeograf og programkoordinator for Amazonas i Regnskogfondet, har skrevet reisebrev fra sin siste tur til Brasil. Forrige gang vi hørte fra han var fra regnskogene lengst vest i Brasil, på besøk hos yanomami-indianerne.

Her skriver Torkjell fra siste del av reisen:

"Det ble to intense dager i Brasilia og Rio. Møter fra morgen til kveld i Brasilia, middag på ambassaden om kvelden og grytidlig opp for å fly til Rio og møter der på tirsdagen. For meg ble det historisk: For første gang i livet stilte jeg med dress og slips i jobbsammenheng!

Møtene dreide seg om Amazonasfondet, et fond brasilianske myndigheter har opprettet for å få penger til å stanse avskogingen i Amazonas. Norge har lovt å støtte fondet med inntil én milliard dollar fram til 2015, men bare hvis Brasil leverer resultater i form av redusert avskoging. Dette er en helt ny måte å tenke bistand på.

Bakgrunnen for den norske støtta er ønsket om å kutte utslippene av klimagasser raskt og effektivt. Avskoging står for ca. 20% av verdens totale utslipp. Og som Jens Stoltenberg forbilledlig sa det i Brasil i september i fjor: ”Tiltak mot avskoging kan gi oss de største, raskeste og billigste reduksjonene i utslippene av klimagasser.”"

(På bildet fv: Hans Bratskar leder for regjeringens klima- og skogsinitiativ, Torkjell Leira, sjefen for Amazonasfondet Eduardo Bandeira de Melo, og "stabssjef" for Amazonasfondets team Raul Andrade.)

Se flotte bilder fra Borneo

Fotograf Joakim S. Enger reise i april til den malaysiske delstaten Sarawak som ligger vest på øya Borneo. Se Joakims fotoserie fra besøkene hos penanene og andre urfolksgrupper i området.

Link til Joakim S. Engers fotoserie fra Borneo:

Link for å lese mer om Regnskogfondets arbeid i Sarawak:

(Begge foto: Joakim S. Enger).

Hilsen etter fire dager hos yanomamiene

Torkjell Leira, samfunnsgeograf og programkoordinator for Amazonas i Regnskogfondet, hilste i forrige uke fra et kurs i satelittovervåking i Belém i Brasil.

Siden sist har Torkjell vært en tur nordvest i Brasil på besøk hos yanomamiene og rapporterer entusiastisk fra besøket:

"Akkurat framme i Brasilia etter en fantastisk tur til yanomamiland! Fire opplevelsesrike dager langt inne i skogen. Fulgte et lærerkurs som Regnskogfondet har støtta sia Operasjon Dagsverk 1997. Det er særdeles velorganisert med tanke på at det går av stabelen midt inne i jungelen.

80 yanomamilærere deltar, imponerende engasjement til tross for lange dager og steikende sol. Mange av dem traff jeg i 2006, sist jeg var inne hos yanomamiene, og det føltes godt å huske navn og ansikter. Skulle hilse til Lars og Siri på kontoret!

Rakk også å overnatte ei natt i en landsby en times tid med båt ned elva, en annen dag var jeg ute på jakt med noen unggutter og fisket med en av de eldre.

Jeg dro rett fra skogen til hovedstaden Brasilia. Så nå er det ut av shorts og sandaler og inn i dressen for i dag er det tett med møter!"

(Foto: Torkjell Leira tok bildet på sitt forrige besøk til yanomamiene i 2006.)

Torkjell er på kurs i satelittovervåking

Torkjell Leira, samfunnsgeograf og programkoordinator for Amazonas i Regnskogfondet, er denne uken på kurs i Brasil.

Torkjell skriver følgende i dag fra Belém, nordøst i Amazonas:

- Jeg er på et kurs i satelittovervåking av avskoging som varer fra mandag til fredag denne uken . Deltakerne er 15 personer fra de forskjellige landene i Amazonas. Kursholder er Imazon - (Amazonas institute of people and the environment) som deler deres metolodogi for å måle avskogingen i Amazonas.

Imazon har spilt en stor rolle i utarbeidelsen av RAISG-kartet som ble lansert i april. Kartet er det første noensinne som viser alle indianerterritorier og naturreservater i Amazonas. Regnskogfondet er en av to finansiører av RAISG-kartet.

Formålet med denne ukens kurs er at Imazon og deltakerne på lengre sikt skal lage et nytt kart som viser avskogingen i hele Amazonas. Utfordringen er å samle avskogingstall fra de ni ulike landene i Amazonas og overføre dem i et felles kart.

Avskoging ned i 2009, opp i 2010

Imazon har fortalt at de antar av avskogingen i 2009 i Brasil vil være på ca 8-10.000 kvadratkilometer. Det vil være en betydelig nedgang fra i fjor. Men i 2010 er det valgår i Brasil. Derfor er det en fare for at myndighetene ikke vil være like strenge mot de som raserer regnskogen og at avskogingen derfor vil gå opp.

Torkjell Leira drar videre fra Belém til yanomami-territoriet nordvest i Brasil senere denne uken. Kanskje får vi en hilsen derfra også? Følg med på Regnskogfondets reiseblogg.

(Foto: Torkjell Leira på prosjekttur til Javari-dalen vest i brasiliansk Amazonas i november 2006).