Friends of the Earth Australia and AidWatch released a joint report ‘What a Scam – Australia’s REDD Offsets for Copenhagen’, examining the Australian and Indonesian Governments’ program to create carbon ‘offsets’ from reduced deforestation.

The report is endorsed by WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia, Indonesia’s largest environment organisation) and Serikat Petani Indonesia (Indonesian Peasants Union).

Download the ‘What a Scam – Australia’s REDD Offsets for Copenhagen' here.

The key findings of the Report are:

1. The Australia-Indonesia REDD proposal favours the complete marketisation of forest credits, to help Australia offset its responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Unlike other REDD agreements, such as the recent Memorandum of Understanding between Norway and Guyana, the Australian agreement with Indonesia does not guarantee indigenous rights, and as such breaches the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, signed by Australia in April 2009.

3. The Australian Government has siphoned off $200 million in overseas aid for its REDD campaign, breaching UN requirements that climate aid be additional to development assistance.

4. Documentation for the Australia-funded ‘first large scale’ REDD pilot fails to mention the rights of local forest-dependent communities; it also faces opposition from local people who do not want REDD offset schemes in their area.

5. The Australian Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) permits all Australian emissions to be offset overseas, potentially in REDD schemes, breaching the UN requirement that offsets can only supplement domestic emissions reductions.

6. Emissions offsets like REDD are not recognised by the UN, but can be validated from 2010 under the CPRS; recognising these cut-price ‘non-Kyoto’ offsets creates a hidden subsidy for companies submitting these credits for validation.

7. Other emissions trading schemes, such as in the European Union and as proposed for the United States, have no plans to recognise REDD offsets before 2020; they cap overall access to international offsets, and impose strict conditions on what type of offset can be recognised.

8. The Australian REDD offset model breaches Australia’s international obligations, and is a scam: it is not aimed at reducing deforestation, but at creating a source of cheap credits for increased emissions in Australia.

Download the ‘What a Scam – Australia’s REDD Offsets for Copenhagen’ report here or below.

Download a short summary of the report here