In April 2008, I participated in an international fact-finding team that traveled throughout the Malaysian state of Sarawak to document reports that Indigenous communities were being systematically deprived of their land and other basic human rights through collusion between the state government and oil palm companies. Sadly, this practice has not stopped despite more than two years of efforts by Indigenous advocates and supporting groups like RAN.

Yesterday, I learned that the state Land and Survey Department demolished 25 homes in Sebauh, near the city of Bintulu (on Malaysian Borneo). The state claims that the homes were illegally built on state land, but the department moved forward with the destruction despite the fact that the community’s land rights claim is still pending in the courts. (Sarawak’s legal system is bogged down with such cases, and they drag on for years. Our fact-finding team found multiple instances where homes or crops were demolished despite on-going legal disputes.)

The now homeless community members report that state officials intentionally destroyed all of their possessions during the demolition. In response, about a hundred community members have set up a blockade to prevent the rest of their homes from being bulldozed.

We’ll continue to monitor this situation and let you know what you can do to help. In the meantime, this is another reminder that we need to make sure that any palm oil that goes into the products we buy is produced in a manner that respects both the environment and human rights. Go to TheProblemWithPalmOil.org to take action and learn more.

Today, 100 delegates from the Copenhagen climate talks – mostly from NGOs, but led by two members of the Bolivian government delegation, and with dozens of members of organizations from the Global South and Indigenous groups – marched out of the Copenhagen climate talks and tried to join the People’s Assembly at the Reclaim Power protest outside, only to be blocked and severely beaten by Danish police (who were working closely together with UN security).

The police cracked down incredibly hard on the Reclaim Power protest today – both inside and outside the Bella Center – and arrested 240 people (on top of the over 1,000 that they’ve arrested in the past week), but they didn’t prevent the protest from being an incredibly powerful and formative moment in the global movement for climate justice.

The Reclaim Power protest was co-organized by Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action, two international networks of people’s movements, Indigenous groups, and grassroots activists from around the world – including Via Campesina, Indigenous Environmental Network, Focus on the Global South, Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment. The action sought to subvert the undemocratic and unjust UN COP process by creating a People’s Assembly, which would privilege the voices for climate justice of Indigenous peoples and people from the Global South – those groups that have been most marginalized from the COP-15 talks.

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As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP15, contains no provisions to monitor vital safeguards in developing countries which will receive funding to implement REDD, nor language that will ensure the protection of intact natural forests in those countries.

REDD is intended to help developing countries protect their remaining rainforests and reduce the 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest degradation and peatland destruction.
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This report comes from John Akwetey with RAN Ghana.

Since the colonial time, the Indigenous people of Pokuase have depended on their Forest reserve, more than any other Indigenous group in Ghana. Everything about the Pokuase, including their cultural, rituals and portable drinking water, had been influenced by the rainforest. However, in the last years since corporate developers first moved to the area, the Indigenous people of Pokuase had suffered from various diseases through the contamination of their stream, forceful repression for trying to protect their forest reserve and lack of support in their struggle.

In the past, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized the unique value of Pokuase culture and the Gua Koo forest reserve by declaring that the Pokuase “have long rich history of their natural environment, as evidenced by their strong tie with the Sunkwa stream.”

RAN Ghana members with Pokuase youth

With climate talks underway in Bangkok, Indigenous activists reviewing the text and engaged in the talks calling for no market-based REDD deal, Greenpeace activists blockading the tar sands in Alberta, and the EU investigating fraud in carbon trading schemes, today is a big day for the movement for climate justice.

Too bad it’s such a disappointing day for climate in the US. Today Senators Boxer and Kerry released their first draft of the Senate climate bill, a companion to the House ACES bill passed this past June. It calls for the US to reduce emissions by 20% of 2005 levels by 2020. By comparison, island nations and the world’s least developed countries are calling for 45% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.
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It isn’t every day that you get go on speaking tour in Minneapolis/St. Paul with a delegate from Papua New Guinea. Or to meet activists and students in a city full of bicycles and inspired, socially and environmentally active people and delightful local food co-ops. Or to witness the connection between the global and the local becoming as clear as what’s possible when we all work together…

The residents of Minneapolis/St. Paul are living near the fancy headquarters of Cargill, the very corporation that is leveling rainforests in Papua New Guinea to expand their palm oil plantations.
What a realization.

Matilda Pilacapio, human rights and environmental activist from Papua New Guinea

It was a deeply significant experience to hear Matilda Pilacapio’s powerful and poignant personal narrative of Cargill’s rainforest destruction in her community. It was heartbreaking to hear the devastation of traditional ways of life, of matrilineal land ownership, of communities held together by forest subsistence being ripped into unsustainable cycles of brutal plantation work, dismantled family structures, polluted rivers, lost ecosystems, undrinkable water, and deceptive contracts that trick people into giving up their ancestral land. It was sobering to hear that the corporation responsible for these atrocities is in the Twin Cities area, and that the people of Papua New Guinea and everywhere are counting on us to take action in our own communities to literally change the world. It was inspiring to realize that we can.
The positive aspect of globalization is that it has united people and information. We live in a time where it is possible to make ripples that reach literally around the world by affecting the corporations and institutions that are in our communities. What an incredible amount of agency we have as Americans.
It has never been clearer to me that as Americans, we have an opportunity (and a responsibility) to use that agency.
After Matilda’s lectures and slides of the effect of oil palm in Papua New Guinea, people would ask, “What can we do?” “I am hoping that you all will set up a strategy with RAN” Matilda said. Now, students and community members are stepping up to start a RAN- Twin Cities chapter. People have already started to raise awareness about oil palm and participate in Global Days of Action with 350.org to highlight the connections between Big Agriculture, deforestation, and climate change. In spite of being busy students, activists, and parents, people are making time to work on this important issue, largely because of the power of Matilda’s words! We are meeting tonight to figure out specifics of how community members want to make a difference here, and I am so excited and honored to see the brilliance of people here stepping it up in their own backyards to protect the land of people like Matilda and the climate we all share.

Hillary V Lehr is the Grassroots Action Manager for the Rainforest Action Network’s Forests Program.

Senators Kerry and Boxer have said that they are on track to introduce the first step for Senate version of the ACES climate bill next Wednesday, September 30th. The draft will reportedly include an emissions reduction target of 20% from 2005 levels by 2020, an modest improvement over ACES’ 17% target, but nowhere near the emissions reductions required to respond to the climate crisis.

Still, the Senate political scene is heavily influenced by coal and agriculture states and even these modest targets face a major uphill battle. Instead of reducing emissions, big oil, king coal and the senators they support are looking to carbon offsets as a solution. ACES offers 2 billion tons of emissions reductions to be achieved through offsets, a significant chunk of these are REDD offsets, also known as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation from tropical rainforests.

Yes, REDD is promising for protecting forests. But if the Senate bill is as bad as the House ACES bill was, then REDD is poised to do more harm than good. In order to actually protect forests, the Senate bill’s forest provisions should:

1) Ensure that REDD measures are not a substitute for aggressive domestic emissions reductions.
2) Prioritize biodiversity and conservation, instead of logging and plantations. The House bill doesn’t even define the term ‘forest’, meaning that REDD offset credits may be encouraging converting rainforests into monocultural paper or oil palm plantations.
3) Protect and enforce Indigenous Peoples’ rights to free, prior and informed consent, in accordance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4) Create an international fund for REDD instead of tradeable forest carbon offsets.
5) Build a firewall to keep REDD carbon emission reductions out of fossil fuel emissions markets. There should be no offsets trading between forest and fossil carbon.
6) Strengthen weak forest governance in tropical countries with high rates of corruption and poor law enforcement.

If the Senate climate bill’s REDD provisions fail to include these safeguards, than the US climate bill will be doing more harm than good for tropical rainforests. You can take action on the Senate climate bill today; go to the RAN action center and tell your Senators to fight for strong REDD provisions in the climate bill today!

In Toronto today, RAN appealed directly to Janet Nixon – the wife of Royal Bank of Canada’s CEO, Gordon Nixon – to help us end her husband’s company’s massive bankrolling of the Alberta tar sands.

During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – RAN’s own Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com”. On the streets below, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN supporters, spreading the same message to every RBC employee they could talk to: an appeal to Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to phase out its investments in Alberta tar sands projects. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.

And at the same time as the banner was being unfurled, RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC regain its environmental leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. Over 3,000 people sent over 12,000 emails to these top RBC execs. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)

You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching):

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Check out the final glorious episode of the 10 day adventure of RAN and Substance educating and mobilizing people to stop the Tar Sands, with rock bands Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere

In this one we talk to bands, Chrissy Swain from Grassy Narrows, RAN activists, and talk about how YOU can get involved with the campaign

A group of folks has come together in Toronto to help push the campaign to clean up RBC forward. Here’s their report on a recent confrontation with bank Executives over the bank’s financing of the tar sands. Check out the video on YouTube

Five activists with the Rainforest Action Network attended the Investing in Water conference at University of Toronto to confront RBC’s Director of Corporate Environmental Affairs, Sandra Odendahl, on RBC’s financing of tar sands developments in Alberta.
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