Indigenous people

The Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Programme is the product of the first multistakeholder design process to be undertaken in Nepal’s forestry sector. The Programme will build on the achievements of over 20 years of forestry work of the Government of Nepal supported by the UK, Switzerland and Finland. The Programme is designed for 10 years and to be implemented in two phases. NRs 4.45 billion has been agreed as joint grant funding assistance by these three donors for an initial 4 years.

Indigenous and community groups have made a wish-list detailing how schemes that aim to reduce deforestation and forest degradation should work for those living in and amongst the forest.

Global Forest Coalition and Global Justice Ecology Project have produced a new video entitled A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests. The twenty-eight minute video, documents opposition among Indigenous Peoples, forest-dependent communities and environmental justice groups around the globe, to controversial programs that claim to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) by putting forests into the carbon market.

In this article I wrote for Earth Island Journal earlier this year detailing the fatal flaws of the climate mitigation scheme known as REDD (for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), I quoted World Bank President Robert Zoellick as calling REDD, “the best chance, perhaps the last chance, to save the world’s forests.”

Goldtooth expresses his misgivings about agriculture being included as part of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). Arguing that "REDD is going to be the largest legal land grab the world has ever seen", the indigenous North American warns of colonialism and forced privatisation. And according to him "those with the most money and power can – by remote control, lock up the largest land areas in developing countries".