Over the past 12 years, RAN has supported through our Protect-an-Acre small grants both Defense and Ecological Conservation of Intag (DECOIN) and Community Defense Council in the Intag region in the western Andes of Ecuador, a cloud forest ecosystem that is a globally significant biological hot spot. For 2 decades now, communities there have successfully led the struggle to halt all mining in the region, keeping out major Japanese and Canadian corporations.

Copper Mesa, until last year, was the owner of a two mining concessions in the Intag. But the company ran into a strong, organized opposition from communities, local government and, eventually even the national government, which eventually stripped Copper Mesa of its concessions in the country.

Now the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had been sued by 3 Intag activists, has delisted Copper Mesa from the exchange.

DECOIN organizer Carlos Zorrilla wrote in an email to Intag community supporters:

“This is a key victory in Intag’s very long and exhausting battle against mining interests. So big in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe. After all, this has been a dream of ours and something we’ve been working on for almost six years.”

Copper Mesa’s shares lost about 60% of their value in the 48 hours after the TSX delisting.

Here in Copenhagen (Day 5, 5:00 PM), delegates from all over the world are not surprised that the U.S. is playing a disappointing role in the climate negotiations, after all the science calls for 40% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the U.S. climate legislation calls for only 4%. This past summer, RAN opposed the Waxman Markey bill in the House of Representatives for many reasons, the largest being the inclusion of 2 billion tons in carbon offsets. These are 2 billion tons of carbon that U.S. polluters do not have to stop emitting, a gaping loophole in our effort to thwart climate change that keeps us addicted to fossil fuels.

Half of those offsets were to be used for domestic sources from sectors whose emissions are not capped, particularly the agriculture and forest sectors. The other half, 1 billion tons of offsets, are to come from international sources. The two major potential source of carbon offsets internationally would be:

1) The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or a similar regime of reduced emissions projects from developing countries. The CDM is quite controversial, and exists under the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. did not sign onto, so these CDM-like projects would theoretically need to emerge from the new agreement now being negotiated in Copenhagen.

2) And the second source would be carbon credits from international forests. This regime is also being negotiated right now in Copenhagen, and its outcome will influence if not determine the future for forest protection in the coming decade. A strong REDD deal with good safeguards would mean forest protection and the rights of forest dependent people respected. A weak REDD deal without strong safeguards would allow the continued logging of the intact natural rainforests in countries like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

More »

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.
More »

The controversy surrounding the US Chamber of Commerce continues. The labor coalition Change to Win recently issued a report on how the Chamber has been hijacked by right wing ideologues, whose opposition to regulation of greenhouse gas pollution has included calling for the EPA to conduct a ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ on climate change. In a letter to members sent today, Chamber COO called groups like RAN who believe that climate change is a real problem ‘environmental extremists’.

Meanwhile, more and more companies and business groups (Apple, Exelon, PG&E) are dropping their membership in the Chamber and public opposition to the Chambers’ climate change denial is growing. The latest opposition is coming from the high tech sector, where the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Silicon Valley Joint Venture are running an ad campaign against the Chamber for its opposition. And the Chamber is on the run, having been forced to backpedal on its claims to be the voice of the business community; last week the Chamber claimed to ‘represent’ 3 million businesses, but this week it quietly reduced that number to ‘300,000’ members. Investors are calling for companies that they own shares in to drop their membership in the Chamber, and local Chambers are formally distancing themselves from the US Chamber’s opposition to action on climate change.
More »

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.
More »

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!

All too often those debating the solutions and proposed actions to tackle global warming fail to challenge the assumptions. While it’s important to deal with emissions it can be argued that the root causes of emissions lie farther upstream and can more effectively deal with the challenges we are facing. Cutting emissions is good. Investing in clean energy and cutting emissions before the fuel is readied is better. Read on.

The Carbon Logic Problem Statement | Grist. by Ken Ward

An acclaimed mountaineer, a Baptist minister and a distinguished economist were stuck in a pit. The mountain climber said, “Stand back boys, I’ll have us out in a jiffy,” but the walls of the pit were loose shale and she couldn’t gain purchase. Then the minster raised his arms high and in a deep sonorous voice called for deliverance but after an hour of prayer he too admitted defeat. Finally, the economist stood, brushed dirt of a shabby Harris tweed jacket and said, “This is easy. First, assume a ladder.”

Environmentalists are trying to get out of a deep pit too, and in our push for Waxman-Markey we are acting like the mountaineer, minister and economist. We support ACES because, well, it’s there, and we are accustomed to moving doggedly forward for the best we can get. We also hope for deliverance via a gentle greening, where fossil fuels wither away and a sustainable future of vegetable gardens, strong local communities and good jobs blossoms. Finally, we have invested in what may be termed serial delusional assumptions.

• In the beginning, we thought that Enron and others aiming to cash in on carbon trading (as they did in the sulphur market) would out-muscle fossil fuel giants.
• We believed that techno-policy crafted by tuned-in elites could be quietly slipped into place, avoiding a flat-out messy and risky political slug-fest.
• We were convinced that major corporations like BP, GE and WAL*Mart were honest in their pledge to shift away from fossil fuels and had both the means and will to do so.
• We had faith that a solid majority of the American public, properly educated, would support effective climate action, so long as we did not offend sensibilities with Chicken Little predictions.
• Finally, we now assume we can fix broken policy somewhere down the line, so anything is better than nothing. More »

Great news from Australia! A logging company has settled its lawsuit against its activist critics, and believe it or not the logger is the one who has to pay the legal fees!

In 2004, the largest logger in Tasmania, Gunns Ltd. surprised the world by suing 20 of its strongest critics, charging them with 9 separate acts of misconduct. Every single action these activists had taken had been nonviolent, ranging from organizing massive street protests to lobbying government to stop Gunns from destroying Tasmania’s old growth forests. Had Gunns been successful, it would have sent a chilling effect across the world for all activists who exercise free speech in defense of the earth. Fortunately, this is one battle that the good guys won.

Now, a quick note on Gunns, which is about as bad as a logging company can get. It clearcuts old growth forests for copy paper, then sets fires in the forest to burn anything that might remain, and sets poison traps to kill any wildlife that has escaped the logging and fires and might feed on newly-established plantations. Naturally, activists across Australia and around the world got involved in protests against Gunns.

Among the Gunns 20 was the Australian Wilderness Society, an ally organization of RAN’s. Through our office in Japan, since 2006 RAN has been working with The Wilderness Society to educate Japanese customers about the beautiful old growth forests of Tasmania, the horrible logging practices of Gunns, and the role of the Japanese paper industry in supporting Gunns’ old growth logging. 80% of Tasmania’s pulp and paper is exported to Japan, where it is manufactured into disposable paper products like tissue and copy paper.

In 2007 RAN’s Global Finance campaign advised ANZ Bank to not finance Gunns’ pulp mill. Eventually ANZ listened, and to this date Gunns is struggling to find financing for the pulp mill. Meanwhile Gunns’ stock price is barely worth the old growth paper it’s printed on, and despite the horrible economic climate the company continues to pursue the idea that it needs to build a new pulp mill. Through our most recent conversations with Japanese customers, they are becoming less interested in buying Gunns’ paper: Ricoh, Canon and Fuji Xerox are all asking suppliers Oji Paper and Nippon Paper to exclude old growth fiber from Gunns.

After all of this pressure, from RAN, from Australian activists, and from concerned individuals around the world, Gunns today dropped its lawsuit, which sought $3.5 million in damages from the Gunns 20 activists, and instead is paying $350,000 in legal fees to The Wilderness Society!

One surprising measure of how effective forest activists are is the level of repression they face. Cheers to The Wilderness Society for standing up and fighting back!

Coming up in November, RAN staff will be attending the FSC General Assembly meeting as one of 350 members of the environmental chamber. The FSC is the only forest certification scheme in the world in which RAN and environmentalists can fight for greater protections – others, like the SFI, won’t even let us in the door. And it’s a good thing too, because this year we have some serious issues to bring up with the FSC.

As you can read in our letter to the FSC Executive Director (ran-to-fsc-101308), the FSC’s Controlled Wood Standard has serious problems with inclusion of wood fiber in violation of the FSC’s rules. Meanwhile, critics have alleged that ‘an estimated sixty percent of FSC timbers come from ancient forests’. As FSC members, RAN is asking the FSC to respond to this claim by providing accurate data regarding the percentage of FSC timbers derived from primary (never industrially managed) and old-growth (older than 200 years) forests.

As RAN undertakes our strategic review of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC’s) benefits and costs, how the FSC responds to these controversies will affect whether, and how much, RAN can continue supporting the FSC. In coming months, we will continue to report back our conclusions to our members and supporters. Stay tuned.

Forest News Watch posted an interesting interview with Boise Cascade CEO Tom Stephens Friday.  When asked what effect “the agreement reached with Rainforest Action Network” had on day-to-day operations of Boise Cascade, Stephens responds in part that “I’m not aware of any agreement between the two parties, either before I came or after.”

Stephens is either experiencing memory loss or mincing words too carefully. At issue is “Boise and the Environment“, a 2003 document variously referred to in public relations materials from the company as a “statement”, “policy” or “commitment.”

While not a formal agreement like a contract, the statement certainly made a big impression. Boise’s press release describing “Boise’s commitment to work with environmental groups to successfully eliminate the purchase of wood products from endangered areas” earned feature coverage in the Wall Street Journal. That sounds a lot like an agreement to me–and a very public one that should register as such with Mr. Stephens and his Brand Managers.

Why? Because since Stephens took the reins at in 2004, Boise has diminished its reputation by taking two steps back from the step forward it made in 2003. The first step back was to pick a fight with RAN and others by quietly re-writing its “Boise and the Environment” commitments in 2005 just as its loggers were moving into Old Growth areas of the Deschutes National Forest. Step two followed another website re-write when  Boise ran into trouble early this year for selling paper sourced from disputed Indigenous lands to OfficeMax (links to pdf).

Boise’s current comments are summarized in its “Wood Procurement Policy” that contains no reference to its former 2003 statement. Prior commitments to work with conservation organizations on Endangered Areas, establish a robust chain-of-custody program, encourage reforestation by its suppliers, support wilderness area designations and report annually on its efforts are all missing.

Could Stephens reworking of Boise’s policies merely be a realistic response to Boise’s reorganization from logger to manufacturer? Maybe. Boise has, after all, made some good moves with Stephens at the helm.  But even if you think our beef is just the angry recriminations of an ENGO scorned, consider that Stephens could benefit from his own lesson in managing conflict and controversy. Had Stephens been more transparent with RAN and others about Boise’s policies and motives over the years, we could have anticipated these controversies and advised Boise on avoiding them without pulling its brand and those of its customers into the harsh light of a market campaign.

Next time maybe. Till then, I suggest Stephens contemplates his own advice: “communication is the key to resolving conflicts.”

I’ll add one more: agreements matter.