![\"Roeung](\"https:\/\/imgs.mongabay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2024\/01\/05130706\/5206-%E2%80%93-Roeung-Haeng-collects-fruits.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Secretive loggers mostly operate at night to avoid detection by residents of the Pulung community, who Roeung said are opposed to the destruction of their community forest. They left behind cleared land scarred by black patches where the loggers had tried to burn the trees and vegetation they felled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to die because I feel so disappointed about this,\u201d Roeung told Mongabay. \u201cI regret the forest and also the wildlife that has been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s protested the move to Cambodia\u2019s environment, land management, agriculture and interior ministries, as well as the country\u2019s anticorruption unit, even taking the issue to officials in Phnom Penh, a six-hour bus ride away. But she found little support, faced accusations of being \u201cantidevelopment,\u201d and was even arrested at one point. (She said she was out on bail when Mongabay spoke with her in April.)<\/p>\n
Roeung said she\u2019d heard about a forest conservation initiative called REDD+, and that other communities were benefiting from it around Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in another part of Mondulkiri province, not far from the roadside cafe and traditional grass-roof Bunong house she rents on Airbnb.<\/p>\n
Though she said she didn\u2019t understand how REDD+ worked exactly, she was intrigued by the idea that the carbon held by forests of other Bunong communities could translate not only into renewed protection of their lands but also funding for education, health care and employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not well-educated, so the land and forests \u2026 are where our Indigenous community can make income,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Despite high levels of poverty, Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) like Roeung\u2019s hold the key to sustainable coexistence with the forest, research has shown. Their stewardship often maintains or even boosts the climate benefits of the forests they manage, not to mention the other ecosystem services and habitat for biodiversity that healthy forests provide.<\/p>\n Globally, Indigenous-held lands \u2014 some of which are officially recognized, many of which are not \u2014 hold 80% of the world\u2019s biodiversity, according to data from the World Bank. Their lands also house nearly a fifth of the world\u2019s forest carbon, according to a 2018 report from the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition. But in many parts of the world, including Cambodia, Indigenous land rights are tenuous, if they\u2019re legally recognized at all.<\/p>\n REDD+, short for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, was designed in part to help forest-dependent communities on the frontlines of forest loss. Scientists estimate that more than a third of climate change mitigation could come from nature-based solutions like REDD+ by reducing the emissions associated with deforestation and forest degradation.<\/p>\n REDD+ relies on supporting communities in managing their forests in the face of increasing pressure from activities like logging and conversion to agriculture. The reduction in emissions can be sold as carbon credits, and part of the proceeds are supposed to be channeled back into forest conservation.<\/p>\n But the approach is contentious. Investigations and research have shown that many projects may lead to fewer climate benefits than claimed. The pursuit of profits from the trade of carbon has forced communities off their lands, and other cases have been tainted by allegations of abuse at the hands of project staff. These concerns have led to calls for the reform of REDD+ and the voluntary carbon trade, or for ending the practices entirely.<\/p>\n At 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres), Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary covers a much larger area than the Ngleav Krach Community Forest. More than 1,000 known species of plants and animals live within Keo Seima\u2019s borders. And critically, loggers, plantation firms and hunters have put that richesse in danger. Those threats made it an attractive candidate for the REDD+ project that began in Keo Seima in 2010.<\/p>\n But which communities and forests fit into REDD+ schemes isn\u2019t always clear to people like Roeung who live closest to the forests and may be looking for support in finding ways to protect them. For their part, the people who run these projects admit that a focus on the immediate project area means they cannot help everyone.<\/p>\n Around the world, some IPLC leaders have publicly backed REDD+. An international group of Indigenous organizations voiced their support for REDD+ in an open letter in May. They acknowledged that REDD+ isn\u2019t perfect, but they said they see it as a pathway to recognize communities\u2019 efforts to conserve forests and to finance their efforts, preserve their cultures and traditions, and support economic development.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that carbon markets are an important tool, but we need to redesign it,\u201d Levi Sucre Romero, an Indigenous Bribri leader from Costa Rica and the coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB), said during a press briefing at COP28, the 2023 U.N. climate conference in Dubai. \u201cWe need to refocus it within the respect of Indigenous peoples\u2019 rights and to have a more open dialogue with those who are paying for these carbon credits.\u201d<\/p>\n REDD+ has given communities tools that allow them to continue protecting their forests, said German Qaghay Sedoyeka, a member of the Datooga ethnic group and a project manager with the Yaeda Valley REDD Project in northern Tanzania. Prior to partnering with Carbon Tanzania, a \u201csocial enterprise\u201d business registered in the U.K., villages like Qangdend where he grew up faced an influx of people to their region. Many of these outsiders didn\u2019t have the same relationship with the landscape that the Datooga and allied Indigenous hunter-gatherers like the Hadza have.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re really custodians of the forests in their villages, and they have been safeguarding the forests for centuries,\u201d Sedoyeka told Mongabay.<\/p>\n With the support of the Yaeda Valley project, community members were able to obtain legal certificates establishing what\u2019s known in Tanzania as \u201ccustomary rights of occupancy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis helps the community to strengthen the protection of their land and forests, which safeguards the livelihood of the community in the villages,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beginning in 2012, Bunong communities living around Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary were among the first in Cambodia to obtain collective land titles under the country\u2019s 2001 Land Law as part of a REDD+ project led by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Experts say these rights are critical for the conservation of forests, their carbon and their biodiversity in Keo Seima and elsewhere.<\/p>\n The projects in Tanzania and Cambodia also provide support for education, health care and employment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really appreciate that nowadays [the world has] come to realize and recognize the contribution of the local communities and Indigenous people,\u201d Sedoyeka said.<\/p>\n Yet even with that acknowledgment, many Indigenous leaders say they still don\u2019t feel that their voices are being heard. Some have said they\u2019d like to weigh in on the types of support that would be most useful to their communities, or where funding should be directed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to really push climate solutions,\u201d said Deborah Sanchez, a member of the Miskitu Indigenous community in Honduras and coordinator of forest, climate and biodiversity with AMPB, which signed the May 2023 REDD+ letter. \u201cBut at the same time, we need to push that these solutions [don\u2019t diminish] the rights of some of the people that are living in these territories and forests.\u201d<\/p>\n Other rights advocates have voiced similar fears, even as the world relies on these communities to maintain the last remaining terrestrial carbon sinks \u2014 at least in part so that wealthier parts of the world can continue their carbon-intensive lifestyles. In effect, they say, these projects could be viewed as a form of \u201ccarbon colonialism.\u201d<\/p>\n Globally, some actors have looked to carbon credits as potential profit-making ventures, in some cases, trying to secure the rights to forest carbon credits with little consultation or consent from the communities that would be most affected by these projects.<\/p>\n Mongabay first reported on an agreement to monetize carbon and other ecosystem services from the forests in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo in November 2021. The deal, orchestrated and signed behind closed doors by a few state leaders and representatives of companies from Australia and Singapore, included natural capital rights for some 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres).<\/p>\n The agreement covered more than one-quarter of the state\u2019s land area, but the state\u2019s Indigenous peoples largely didn\u2019t \u201cknow that their jungles have been conserved,\u201d said Peter Burgess, CEO of a company involved in the deal called Terra Australia, in an interview with Mongabay. Proponents of the agreement have since declined to speak with Mongabay.<\/p>\n The arrangement rankled Indigenous and human rights organizations in Sabah and further afield. Local groups say they would have supported a more transparent and inclusive way to market those ecosystem services as a way of jump-starting sustainable economic development in the state. Many observers saw the agreement as little more than a land grab designed to make money for a select few. (More than two years later, the deal is moving forward, even though proponents have yet to clarify key provisions, including where most of the forests are located in Sabah.)<\/p>\n Elsewhere, consultation efforts with local communities seem to have lacked the depth necessary to communicate the implications of agreements, which can last a century or more. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an India-based company called Kanaka Management Services (KMS), with little apparent experience in carbon markets or REDD+, began soliciting local communities for permission to market carbon credits from their forests in late 2021.<\/p>\n Mongabay\u2019s reporting revealed that the people hired to gather signatures were spending as little as 35 minutes speaking with people about the project. KMS has also reportedly secured carbon rights in Papua New Guinea, which holds part of the world\u2019s third-largest tropical rainforest.<\/p>\n KMS hasn\u2019t answered specific questions about the project, despite repeated requests from Mongabay since May 2022.<\/p>\n Concern for the loss of land rights has led another Indigenous-led coalition, the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation (PACT), to call for a moratorium on the land-based carbon credit trade.<\/p>\n Critics of REDD+ and the voluntary market say the lack of consideration for IPLCs is part of a larger problem \u2014 one in which representatives of these communities aren\u2019t included from the outset in designing the projects they\u2019re expected to carry out.<\/p>\n \u201cIn too many cases, Indigenous peoples and local communities are not being treated as equal partners,\u201d Katherine Lofts, a senior research associate at McGill University who studies the connections between human rights and climate change, told a panel in September. Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is included in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge is really that the voices of these communities and peoples are legitimately heard but also taken into consideration, and that\u2019s where the \u2018prior informed consent\u2019 comes into play,\u201d Marco Aurelio Ch\u00e1vez Coyoy, coordinator of the legal department of the Community Forestry Association of Guatemala (Utz Che\u2019) and a Maya K\u2019iche\u2019 community member, said during the same panel.<\/p>\n IPLC leaders also say they should be receiving more funding for their efforts. A 2021 report from the Rainforest Foundation Norway found that less than 1% of climate-related aid went to supporting IPLC land and tenure rights. And even concerted efforts to route money to these groups often fall well short of their goals.<\/p>\n Such frustrations and the slow flow of promised financing have led Indigenous groups to create their own funds, such as the Nusantara Fund in Indonesia and the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund in Mexico and Central America, that aim to funnel donor money for climate- and conservation-related action directly to communities.<\/p>\n Finding ways to support these groups is key to progress, according to Josh Tosteson, president of the REDD+ project marketing firm Everland.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important component [of REDD+], of course, is the change-making work on the ground. It\u2019s the work by, and in partnership with, communities and other stakeholders to intervene in the system that is causing deforestation and transforming those dynamics,\u201d he said. \u201cThe substantial majority of the money has to flow to the stakeholders who have a say in what happens in the forest. That\u2019s the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n From a REDD+ perspective, an issue that arises for many communities is that the protection they\u2019ve provided may be too good.<\/p>\n To qualify for REDD+ project status and subsequent funding through carbon crediting, project developers must demonstrate that a project would actually reduce emissions. In other words, they must show that the emissions reductions wouldn\u2019t have happened if the project wasn\u2019t there. Requiring this \u201cadditionality\u201d is increasingly seen as a component of the integrity of the credits that are supposed to represent tangible progress toward climate change mitigation.<\/p>\n The tools of REDD+ are designed to work in forests under immediate threat, Tosteson said.<\/p>\n \u201cREDD+ is urgent care. You\u2019re intervening and using the medicine of REDD+ when you\u2019re in trouble,\u201d he added. In places where forests aren\u2019t under immediate threat, \u201cREDD+ is actually not the [appropriate] mechanism\u201d to support these communities, he said.<\/p>\n But not everyone agrees that communities should be left out if their forests aren\u2019t threatened.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is totally unjust,\u201d Samuel Nguiffo, director of the Cameroonian NGO Centre for Environment and Development and an author of the PACT position paper, told Mongabay. \u201cTheir way of life is very sustainable, and they are punished for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Tosteson agreed that IPLCs that have protected their forests should be supported and compensated.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir forests are not threatened because they\u2019re wise stewards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tosteson pointed to the Forest Peoples Partnership that, like the Nusantara and Mesoamerican funds, aims to channel more financing to IPLCs while ensuring they\u2019re involved in decision-making.<\/p>\n More broadly, being left out may lead these groups to lose faith in the process, said Frances Seymour, who was a distinguished senior fellow with the World Resources Institute at the time she spoke with Mongabay.<\/p>\n \u201cI worry that some very well-intended people who are focused on maintaining the environmental integrity of carbon markets may have lost sight of what carbon markets are for, which is protecting the climate,\u201d said Seymour, who is currently with the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the United States, though her views do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government or the Special Presidential Envoy.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the case of Indigenous peoples dying on the frontlines when they\u2019re trying to defend their territories from the illegal loggers \u2014 to say that this is not additional is just insulting to the people [who are] risking their lives,\u201d said Seymour, who is also board chair of the organization Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART), which runs The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (TREES).<\/p>\n At a national scale, Guyana and Gabon are considered high-forest, low-deforestation (HFLD) countries. While many factors have allowed them to hold on to their forests, observers cite interventionist government policies as partly responsible for why their forests remain relatively healthy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the carbon market rules are designed in such a way that it excludes those examples of where Indigenous peoples or governments like Guyana and Gabon are taking proactive actions to protect forests and as a result of those rules, we end up losing those forests, that\u2019s a perverse outcome,\u201d Seymour said.<\/p>\n Some climate experts have argued that ART\u2019s issuance of $750 million in credits from Guyana didn\u2019t represent the full suite of climate benefits claimed because it included forests that weren\u2019t threatened with imminent clearance. But Seymour said it\u2019s nearly impossible to identify where the next deforestation frontier will be.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pressures are relentless,\u201d Seymour said, \u201cand we\u2019re seeing HFLD jurisdictions suddenly experience upticks in deforestation.\u201d<\/p>\n ART makes a special category of TREES credits available to HFLD areas, in addition to the more traditional removals and reduced emissions categories.<\/p>\n Sanchez likewise said the additionality discussion is myopic because it\u2019s too focused on demonstrating the threat of deforestation to sell more carbon credits.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we see the maps, the only forest that is really still remaining is the forest where we live, the forest that we steward, the forest that we see as home,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not always about carbon, but it\u2019s always about people and about climate justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Outsiders used to come to the community where Sanchez grew up in Honduras and accuse her father of laziness because he hadn\u2019t cleared the forest to make way for cattle and the purported riches it could bring.<\/p>\n But the value his family saw in the forest was worth more to him than raising livestock, she told Mongabay. They used timber for houses and canoes, they collected medicinal plants, and the rivers and streams provided them with fish.<\/p>\n Sanchez\u2019s family\u2019s experience speaks to a fundamental difference in the way that many Indigenous and local communities view their forests. Compensation, she said, should flow directly to people on the ground \u2014 the site of \u201cthe change-making work,\u201d as Tosteson put it.<\/p>\n To some, REDD+ and the voluntary market may seem like a viable avenue for achieving that goal. But there\u2019s so much more to healthy forests that these markets can\u2019t capture, Sanchez said. It\u2019s part of the reason the world is turning to Indigenous approaches to conservation as solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. They\u2019re effective, she added, and that\u2019s something that the architects of these projects haven\u2019t quite understood yet in her view.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Global North has to learn the way we see the world, in the way that we are learning the way that they see the world,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n Griscom, B. W., Adams, J., Ellis, P. W., Houghton, R. A., Lomax, G., Miteva, D. A., . . . Fargione, J. (2017). Natural climate solutions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(44), 11645-11650. doi:10.1073\/pnas.1710465114<\/p>\n West, T. A. P., Wunder, S., Sills, E. O., B\u00f6rner, J., Rifai, S. W., Neidermeier, A. N., Frey, G. P., & Kontoleon, A. (2023). Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation. Science, 381(6660), 873\u2013877. doi:10.1126\/science.ade3535<\/p>\n Help to save wildlife by donating as little as $1 – It only takes a minute.<\/p>\nRewarding stewards of the forest<\/h2>\n
Communities face down \u2018carbon cowboys\u2019<\/h2>\n
What qualifies as \u2018additional\u2019?<\/h2>\n
Citations:<\/h2>\n
What you can do<\/h2>\n
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