Published November 27, 2010
by iris_author
A new false solution has recently emerged, duly greenwashed in order to create confusion – and greater business opportunities, wrote the World Rainforest Movement in an article published by Australia’s EngageMedia.org Nov. 24. The story included a case study of a REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) project in Laos by one of the world’s largest paper companies, Oji Paper.
Between 2004 and 2006, said the article, Keith Barney (MES ’02), a York PhD candidate in geography and a member of the York Centre for Asian Research, carried out a study in the village of Ban Pak Veng in Hinboun District, Laos. Barney described the village as suffering a “double displacement effect”, the first caused by being downstream of the recently constructed Theun Hinboun Power Company (THPC) dam and the second by Oji’s plantations. “Through the land reform program,” Barney writes, “village degraded forests, which are crucial for village food security and swidden production, have been zoned for industrial plantation production and bulldozed.”
In 2006, Oji commissioned the Global Environment Centre Foundation to carry out a feasibility study to investigate how Oji could gain carbon credits through the clean development mechanism (CDM). The report described villagers as carrying out “illegal slash-and-burn (or swidden) farming,” and noted that they have “no other means to secure food.”
As Barney pointed out, the report omitted to mention that villagers in Ban Pak Veng were “undertaking swidden farming not out of timeless tradition, but largely due to the loss of access to lowland paddy from the THPC hydro power project.”
Barney added that the CDM feasibility study “ignores at least 20 years of research in Laos on the importance of upland farming and swidden-based, non-timber forest products in the rural economy.” Barney documented in detail the complex relationship the villagers have with their land and forests and noted that the state officials, who are responsible for producing the maps for the land reform program, “do not use anything like the same terms for landscape and forests as villagers do.”
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Posted in: Sustainability News
