“Developed country proposals to buy the right to continue polluting the atmosphere by planting more trees makes a farce of the climate change negotiations.” said Hector Huertas, an indigenous leader from Panama on behalf of the newly christened Forum of Indigenous Peoples and other Local Communities on Climate Change on the opening day of the meeting of the Subsidiary Bodies on Climate Change at Lyon, France.
The group is seeking ways of formalising their participation in climate change negotiations so that the interests of indigenous peoples will be urgently addressed. Indigenous peoples who dwell on the earth’s last remaining forests and other critical habitats fear dispossession.
“Not only are indigenous peoples on small island states on the brink of losing their lands to sea level rise, but indigenous peoples throughout the world, particularly forest-dwellers, are in danger of losing their lands and livelihoods to proposals to plant thousands of hectares of trees to act as gigantic carbon sponges” says Clark Peteru of Western Somoa. “Mature forests will be cut down to make way for more rapid growing tree species and agricultural land will be transformed into tree plantations”.
“The proposal stinks, it gives the impression of doing something when the net effect is to make the problem worse” stated Raymond de Chavez of the Philippines. “It allows industrial countries to continue polluting the atmosphere, and throws the social cost on marginalised populations. Moreover it establishes a market in carbon emissions which will benefit only developed countries. Profits will be made even as countries disappear under water or entire populations lose their lands. It’s obscene.”
“What is needed is a fundamental change in philosophy regarding our relationship to the earth. Only then will developed countries get serious and honour their pledges, already quite small, to reduce their carbon emissions rather than fiddle as the earth burns,” Antonio Jacanamijoy of Colombia concluded.
See DECLARATION OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL FORUM OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ON CLIMATE CHANGE
