The worst form of slavery is to willingly offer yourself on the auction block, get bought and pretend you are free. This is what participation in the mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is. Coming at a time when climate action has shifted away from legally binding requirements to voluntary, “intended nationally determined contributions”, REDD provides a perfect space for polluters to keep polluting while claiming they are champions of climate action.
The REDD mechanism is already resulting in the violation of individual rights, as well as collective rights of communities and indigenous peoples. REDD offers polluting industries, carbon speculators, and governments that serve them the freedom to continue officially endorsed misbehavior.
This publication by the No REDD in Africa Network aims to demystify REDD and REDD-type projects, and all their variants, and show them for what they are: unjust mechanisms designed to usher in a new phase of colonization of the African continent. From examples presented, it is clear that the REDD mechanism is a scam and the polluters know that they are buying the “right” to pollute.
This briefing highlights the seriousness of the threat of the carbon trading Pandora’s box being opened by REDD and REDD-type projects and shows clearly that what is in the offing is not just land or water grabs but a continental grab. REDD is not just another scramble for Africa, but a vicious grabbing of the entire continent, with those selling out demanding to be applauded for doing so in the name of “sustainable development”. REDD is on course to result in grossly oppressive and exploitative systemic and structural changes which include a historic takeover of land tenure and water tenure, carbon colonialism, carbon slavery and exacerbated forms of violence against women.
REDD constitutes a new offensive against the peoples of Africa, especially farmers, pastoralists, hunter-gatherers and indigenous peoples.
REDD is a devious mechanism whose name sells what it cannot deliver. Everyone desires an end to deforestation and no one approves of forest degradation. REDD takes advantage of the critical role forests and all other ecosystems play in the ecological balance of Earth to sell the concept, while at the same time giving climate criminals the opening to enclose the commons, abridge community rights and gamble away our future through African carbon stock markets such as the African Carbon Exchange (ACX) in Kenya and the African Carbon Credit Exchange (ACCE) in Zambia.
The No REDD in Africa Network warns that REDD may be the ultimate wedge to crack open the door for the invasion of the African continent with genetically modified crops and trees. It could also promote the false notion that genetically modified crops are “climate smart” agriculture. It threatens to take over soils, water (blue carbon) and entire eco-systems. It may also rekindle the culture of colonial plantation agriculture also infamously called ‘cash cropping’. In Africa, REDD is emerging as a new form of colonialism, economic subjugation, and impoverishment.
Outraged by the rampant land grabs and neocolonialism of REDD, Africans at the World Social Forum in Tunisia in 2013 took the historic decision to launch the No REDD in Africa Network to defend the continent from the REDD onslaught.1 Through this publication the No REDD in Africa Network is calling for a decolonization of Africa and the building of hope for present and future generations. This is a timely call we must all heed. We cannot stay silent while a whole generation of landless Africans is being created on the platform of a climate scam.
