In August 2026, more than 2,500 Indigenous Peoples and communities from the Amazon basin met in Puyo, Ecuador for the 12th Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA).

Patricia Gualinga is from Sarayaku, a Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The community has spent decades defending its territory from oil exploration. She writes in El Pais that one of the proposals at the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum is to promote fossil fuel-free zones — permanently protected territories free from oil and gas exploration.

Gualinga writes that in Ecuador, the Amazon region faces the threat of 6.7 million hectares of oil blocks. 57% of the Ecuadorian Amazon is threatened. That’s 5.5 million hectares of primary forest. Oil and gas exploration threatens 4.4 million hectares of Indigenous territories, or 61% of Indigenous territories in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The Political Declaration of Puyuk

The Political Declaration of Puyuk came out of the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum. Puyuk is the original name of Puyo. The Declaration states that,

We live in a time of a global capitalist system unlike anything seen before in world history, amid a fiercely competitive multipolarity, where the old, declining U.S. imperialism and the Global North refuse to give up their unipolar power, relying largely on military force and fascist politics in a new version of Plan Condor in Latin America. . . .

We cannot ignore that the XII FOSPA is taking place in a historic moment of multiple global conflicts — wars between empires over the reshuffling of planetary hegemony, and a bitter dispute for control of energy resources, minerals, rare earths, water, and biodiversity – which have in turn unleashed wars within the Amazonian countries: colonial invasion and occupation as in Venezuela, or the so-called internal wars taking shape or intensifying within countries like Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, threatening to spread across the Pan-Amazon and the Amazonian countries – wars in which the “internal enemy” is none other than the peoples resisting dispossession.

Less than two weeks after this Declaration, the Trump regime announced a deal to control more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. This follows the January 2026 illegal military attack on Venezuela by US forces, including the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The Declaration also denounces false climate solutions such as “carbon markets, debt-for-nature swaps, and thematic bonds, among others, as well as the announcements by countries of the North that they are cutting climate financing in order to prioritize war over life”. The Declaration demands “non-repayable climate financing and reject[s] carbon markets, debt swaps, and other false solutions”.

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No carbon credits with jaguars!

And the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum rejected digital jaguar carbon credits. This follows on from the press release put out in April 2026 during the 25th Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues by the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, Acción Ecológica, and the Global Justice Ecology Project.

The press release from the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum follows in English and Spanish:

Pan-Amazonian Social Forum Rejects Carbon Credits with Jaguars

August 25, 2026, Puyo – The XII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum categorically rejected the use of the Amazon and jaguars as carbon credits because it violates the Sacred, dispossesses Indigenous Peoples of their territories, and is a false solution to the climate crisis, which greenwashes oil companies that are destroying the Amazon and the climate.

Today, polluters can buy digital carbon credits with jaguars (Panthera onca) – which are essentially permits to continue polluting – online using a credit card or cryptocurrencies from projects like Greenoxx’s Jaguar Amazon REDD Project, which supposedly protects jaguars, but actually logs the rainforest where they live.

In the Puyuk Political Declaration, launched at the closing ceremony of the XII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum, which was attended by more than 2,500 people from the nine Amazonian countries, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, peasant, feminist, and youth organizations denounced the “hegemonic capitalist development model, based on the commodification and appropriation of nature and the commons.” In particular, the Forum rejected the carbon market and “jaguar credits” and other “false solutions” to the climate crisis caused by “the burning of fossil fuels” and “mining.”

Similarly, the Declaration of Women Against Extractivism and Violence presented to the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum by the Conference of Women Defenders of the Territories of Abya Yala, also explicitly opposed jaguar offsets. “We reject the use of our territories and sacred animals—such as jaguars— for carbon credits, since these finance the dispossession of our territories, commodify our Pachamama (Mother Earth); and greenwash the polluting industries responsible for the destruction of the Amazon and the climate crisis, such as the oil company Chevron-Texaco.”

Felipe Bonilla of the renown environmental NGO Acción Ecológica of Ecuador states that “using animals for carbon offsets is the worst form of the current colonization of nature, because it commodifies the most sacred beings that inhabit the rainforest.”

In 2026, the United Nations and conservation NGOs launched the Jaguar 2030 Roadmap to commodify and privatize jaguars and their habitat as “natural capital,” which includes their use as carbon credits. The plan covers 18 countries from Mexico to Argentina, mostly targets Indigenous Peoples’ territories, and does not exclude extractive industries or dams from the projects.

Indigenous leader Marlon Santi of the Kichwa Nation of Sarayaku, former president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and co-founder of the International Campaign Enough is Enough! Jaguars are NOT carbon credits, explained that jaguar credits are offensive to Indigenous Peoples because “in our worldview, the jaguars of the rainforest are the sacred spirits of our ancestors, so jaguars absolutely cannot be used for the carbon market. The West doesn’t understand this because it turns everything into a commodity.”

Nicole Auz of Quito Sin Minería (Quito Without Mining) also clarifies that “jaguars and whales are not offsets or carbon credits to justify—or, as they say, ‘compensate’—the pollution caused by oil and mining companies. Nature doesn’t need us to put a price on her: she needs us to stop destroying her and respect the people, cultures, and territories that care for her.”

The Province of Pastaza and Yasuní rainforest in Ecuador are priority areas for jaguar offset projects. According to Waorani leader Alicia Cawiya from Yasuní, “governments want to implement REDD+ and SocioBosque carbon offset programs in our rainforest and put jaguars into the carbon market. But for the Waorani, the jaguar, the condor, the snake, lightning, thunder, and rain are our family. Hear our cry: Jaguars cannot be sold as carbon credits because that destroys our family and violates our rights. Our beloved Amazon and our jaguars ensure our existence and the future of humanity.”

In addition to jaguars, lions, whales, and elephants are used for carbon credits by oil and mining companies. The UN is building a Global Carbon Market with Wild Animals. Such false solutions exacerbate global warming and could accelerate the extinction of the jaguar, the largest feline in the Americas.

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Contacts: Acción Ecológica, Felipe Bonilla +593 98 786 1386 (English and Spanish)
Enough is Enough! Jaguars Are NOT Carbon Credits Campaign, Marlon Santi +593 99 366 1570 (Spanish)

Foro Social Panamazónico rechaza bonos de carbono con jaguares

25 de agosto 2026, Puyo – El XII Foro Social Panamazónico rechazó rotundamente la utilización de la Amazonía y los jaguares como bonos de carbono porque viola lo sagrado, despoja territorios de los Pueblos Indígenas, y es una falsa solución a la crisis climática, que sirve como lavado verde para las petroleras que destruyen la Amazonía y el clima.

Hoy en día contaminadores pueden comprar bonos de carbono digitales con jaguares (Panthera onca) - que son permisos para seguir contaminando – en el internet con una tarjeta de crédito o criptomonedas de proyectos como REDD con Jaguares en la Amazonía de Greenoxx que supuestamente protege los jaguares, pero tala la selva donde viven.

En la Declaración Política de Puyuk, emitida al cierre del XII Foro Social Panamazónico, que contó con la participación de más de 2500 personas de los nueve países amazónicos, organizaciones indígenas, afrodescendientes, campesinas, feministas y juveniles denunciaron el “modelo capitalista de desarrollo hegemónico, basado en la mercantilización y apropiación de la naturaleza y los bienes comunes.” En particular, el Foro rechazó el mercado de carbono y los “bonos jaguar” y otras “falsas soluciones” a la crisis climática causado por “la quema de combustibles fósiles” y “extracción minera.”

De igual manera, el Encuentro de Mujeres Defensoras de Territorio de Abya Yala en su Declaratoria de las Mujeres Frente al Extractivismo y la Violencia presentada ante el Foro Social Panamazónico también se opuso a los bonos jaguar. “Rechazamos la utilización de los territorios y animales sagrados -como los jaguares- para obtener bonos de carbono, ya que estos incluyen financiamientos a favor del despojo a nuestros territorios, mercantilizando a nuestra Pachamama; al mismo tiempo que lavan la cara de las industrias contaminantes responsables de la destrucción de la Amazonia y la crisis climática como la petrolera Chevron-Texaco.”

Felipe Bonilla de Acción Ecológica de Ecuador afirma que “los bonos con animales es la peor forma de colonización actual de la naturaleza, porque mercantilizan lo más sagrado de los seres habitantes de la selva.”

En 2026, las Naciones Unidas y ONGS de conservación lanzaron el Plan Maestro Jaguar 2030 para mercantilizar y privatizar los jaguares y su hábitat como “capital natural” que incluye bonos de carbono. El plan abarca 18 países desde México a Argentina, se concentra en los territorios de los Pueblos Indígenas, y no excluye el extractivismo ni las represas de los proyectos.

El dirigente indígena Marlon Santi de la nacionalidad Kichwa de Sarayaku, expresidente de la CONAIE y co-fundador de la Campaña Internacional ¡BASTA YA! Los jaguares NO son bonos de carbono, explicó que los bonos jaguar resultan ofensivos para las Nacionalidades Indígenas porque “en nuestra cosmovisión, los jaguares de la selva son los espíritus sagrados de nuestros padres, así que definitivamente no se pueden utilizar a los jaguares para el mercado de carbono. El occidente no entiende esto porque convierte todo en mercancía.”

Nicole Auz de Quito Sin Minería también aclara que “los jaguares y las ballenas no son bonos ni créditos para justificar —o, como dicen, ‘compensar’— la contaminación de empresas petroleras y mineras. La naturaleza no necesita que le pongamos precio: necesita que dejemos de destruirla y respetemos a los pueblos, sus culturas y los territorios que viven con ella.”

Pastaza y Yasuní son áreas prioritarias para proyectos de bonos jaguar. Según la dirgente Waorani Alicia Cawiya de Yasuní, “los gobiernos quieren hacer REDD+ y SocioBosque con nuestra selva y meter los jaguares en el mercado de carbono. Pero para los Waorani, el jaguar, el cóndor, la serpiente, el relámpago, el trueno y la lluvia son nuestra familia. Escuchen nuestro grito: Los jaguares no se pueden vender como bonos de carbono porque eso violenta nuestra familia y viola nuestros derechos. Nuestra Amazonía amada y nuestros jaguares aseguran nuestra vida y el futuro de la humanidad.”

Además de jaguares, se utilizan a los leones, las ballenas y los elefantes para bonos de carbono de las petroleras y mineras. La ONU construye un Mercado Mundial de Carbono con los Animales Silvestres. Semejantes falsas soluciones agudizan el calentamiento global y podrían acelerar la extinción del jaguar, el felino más grande de América.

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Contactos: Acción Ecológica, Felipe Bonilla +593 98 786 1386
Campaña ¡BASTA YA! Jaguares NO son bonos de carbono, Marlon Santi +593 99 366 1570

German authorities have withdrawn carbon credits generated by 30 projects in China that were supposed to have reduced pollution from fossil fuel extraction. The authorities found the projects to be “suspicious”, to have overstated the number of carbon credits generated, or to be completely fake projects.

Bloomberg reports that ExxonMobil was among the companies that bought carbon credits from one of the projects.

The scandal was first exposed in 2024, by the German TV station ZDF. In 2018, the German government launched a carbon offsetting programme in China. Under the programme, oil companies could meet their emissions targets by buying carbon credits from “upstream emission reduction” (UER) projects.

The Federal Environmental Agency started investigations into the projects in August 2023. ZDF visited one of the projects in China. It had been audited twice by two German auditing firms: Müller-BBM Cert and Verico. It turned out to be an abandoned poultry farm. ZDF calculated that the project had raised €80 million from sales of carbon credits, which were paid for by German consumers when they bought petrol.

By September 2024, Germany’s Environment Agency had rejected more than 200,000 carbon credits.

In May 2026, Bloomberg reported that European companies had bought more than 2 million carbon credits from fossil fuel projects in China that had failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg visited some of the project sites and analysed drone footage and satellite images.

Bloomberg journalists Petra Sorge and Natasha White wrote that,

The projects did not appear to exist. One site was still under development and there was no sign of the equipment needed to trap emissions.

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Freedom of information request

Bloomberg reports that it has obtained Germany Environment Agency dated mid-January 2026 via a freedom of information request. The report reveals that ExxonMobil was among the companies buying the carbon credits.

The copy of the agency’s report that Bloomberg obtained is heavily redacted. Of the 30 withdrawn projects, 24 were redacted because investigations are ongoing. “For the six named projects, decisions to revoke credits are now final, the Environment Ministry said in a separate letter,” Bloomberg reports.

The 30 projects that the German authorities withdrew claimed to have saved a total of 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide. That’s approximately the same as the annual emissions from 500,000 cars.

The companies that bought the withdrawn credits to offset their emissions “have been ordered to compensate for the shortfall,” Bloomberg reports.

US$4.9 million on fake credits

An ExxonMobil company in Belgium bought 96,000 carbon credits according to a registration document seen by Bloomberg. The carbon credits cost about US$51 each, giving a total of US$4.9 million spent by ExxonMobil on fake carbon credits.

“A spokesperson for ExxonMobil said the company always acts in accordance with all legal requirements and does not generally comment on investigations,”Bloomberg’s journalist Petra Sorge writes.

The UER market was at one point considered a yardstick for carefully designed carbon markets. It was administered by European governments, while individual projects were verified by third-party auditing firms based in Germany. Dozens of energy companies bought credits within the system, which is now winding up.

In May 2026, a Bloomberg investigation found that Robin Wang was involved in several of the fake projects. Wang worked for both auditing firm Verico and for project developer Beijing Karbon.

The German Environment Agency’s report obtained by Bloomberg, states that Beijing Karbon had, “through deception, created the appearance of legitimate UER projects”. The company was the main developer of 45 project that the Agency considered “suspicious”.

Neither Beijing Karbon nor Verico responded to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.

This is the seventh in REDD-Monitor’s occasional series of REDDisms. Each post consists of ten quotations, nine of which are recent and one of which comes from my collection of REDDisms dating back to 2009.

“You can set up carbon markets, consumer markets, and just pretend, but if you want to get serious about climate change, really serious, in line with the science, and you want to meet targets like 80 percent emissions cuts by midcentury in the developed world, then you need to be intervening strongly in the economy, and you can’t do it all with carbon markets and offsetting.”

Naomi Klein, February 2012

“We have ongoing work on developing a method for carbon credits that will be completed in 2028, and my sense is that it will become available in most countries starting in 2029, but the process is ongoing.”

Subhra Bhattacharjee, FSC Director General, June 2026

“Emissions trading systems are not delivering the impact that was promised.”

Alexandre Prado, WWF-Brazil’s climate change lead, June 2026

“None of us are going to make any money when the country blows up.”

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, July 2026

“We know that, in order to meet the Paris Agreement goals, high-income countries must reduce total energy use. Some of this can be achieved through efficiency improvements, yes. But it also requires scaling down damaging and unnecessary forms of production – not just fossil fuels, but also things like SUVs, private jets, mansions, fast fashion, industrial beef, advertising, and the practice of planned obsolescence. Scientists have made it clear that if we want to achieve sufficiently rapid decarbonization, this has to be on the table.”

Jason Hickel, political economist and author, June 2026

“Even a market of flawless credits could still slow real decarbonisation.”

Ugo Panizza, Francesco Tripoli, and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, August 2026

“The cuts in USAID have had massive consequences for our work, our financial stability and our ability to support the Cambodian people. After the suspension of USAID funding in February 2025, CCHR lost 38% of its total budget, including 27% of our administrative costs. As a result, we had to lay off half of our employees, the remaining employees have since worked with reduced salaries.”

Sovantha Seng, Cambodian Center for Human Rights, July 2026

“The use of carbon credits by coal mining to reduce net emissions grew significantly in FY2024-25, matched only by the oil and gas extraction sector.”

Hellenic Shipping News, August 2026

“Carbon credits are the catalyst for a change we’ve been driving for more than 17 years in South American livestock production. Regenerative grazing has so many benefits that it will eventually become the norm, but we believe this milestone will turn organic growth into exponential growth, because humanity needs it and is willing to pay for it.”

Pablo F. Borrelli, CEO of Ruuts, August 2026

“I genuinely think Africa could become the defining force in global carbon markets. The continent has extraordinary natural assets. If Africa gets governance right, invests in local capabilities and keeps integrity at the centre, it won’t just supply the market. It will influence how the market operates globally.”

Shikha Sharma, Global Technical Lead – Offsets & Removals, SGS, August 2026

Trees for Global Benefits is a tree planting project in Uganda. The project started in 2003 and is run by an NGO called Ecotrust (Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda). The project is supposed to benefit the climate by encouraging farmers in Uganda to plant trees and giving them some of the money from sales of carbon credits.

Under the project, more than 51,000 farmers have planted trees on their land. The project has issued more than 7.5 million carbon credits, certified by Plan Vivo, a UK-based carbon certification scheme.

The problem, as several academics and journalists have reported over the years, is that when the trees grow too tall and dense, it becomes difficult to grow food on the land. Some farmers have now cut down the trees to make them into charcoal.

The Trees for Global Benefits project featured on REDD-Monitor earlier this year as a case study in the series “Crooked Carbon Business” written by Simon Counsell and Jutta Kill.

In June 2026, journalist Sofie Erna Schmidt wrote an article about Trees for Global Benefits published in the Danish newspaper Politiken.

DanChurchAid

The Danish humanitarian NGO DanChurchAid (Folkekirkens Nødhjælp) has spent 8 million kroner (about US$1.2 million) to plant 280,000 trees through the Ecotrust project. DanChurchAid has made climate agreements with Danish companies. On its website DanChurchAid states that these deals “can be used to reduce both your company and your customers’ CO₂ footprint”.

One of these offsetting deals is with the football club AFG (Aarhus Gymnastikforening), which states that “compensation agreement with DanChurchAid, which ensures that emissions from our flights are matched by concrete climate measures in Uganda”.

Mattias Söderberg is DanChurchAid’s advisor on Global Climate Policy. “For us, the point itself is that it’s a development we create. It is not just about climate but about climate and development,” he tells Politiken

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Farmers’ experiences with Ecotrust

In Uganda, Schmidt interviewed to 16 farmers in two districts in west Uganda. Some of them had documentation such as contracts and application forms. None of them believe that they have received the payments they are entitled to.

Schmidt met Brian Aheebwa on his small farm. He thought Ecotrust’s tree planting project would be a way to make more money. But as the trees grew, Aheebwa saw his harvests getting worse. He tells Schmidt that the soil does not have enough nutrients for both food and trees. He has now cut down most of the trees.

Another farmer, Fred Okori, has also cut down most of his trees because he has not received the payment he believes he was entitled to. “We cut the trees down because of poverty,” he tells Politiken. He built a kitchen from some of the trees he cut down from the Trees for Global Benefits project.

Okori was a volunteer coordinator for Ecotrust and helped arrange agreements with about 40 farmers in his village. “The farmers planted the trees because they also want the money,” he says. Most of these farmers had now cut down the trees. “Not only a few have cut down the trees, but most,” he tells Politiken.

A week after Politiken met him, Okori died after a long illness.

Farmers are paid six times over a 10 year period — payments are made when farmers reach requirements such as tree planting targets, survival rates, and trees measuring a certain diameter. As shown in this table from a Carbon Sale Agreement that a farmer, Evasi Tindagwesire, showed to Politiken:

In the contract, she has agreed to maintain the trees for 25 years. But payments only last 10 years. In total, after 10 years, she should receive US$74.53. That’s after the project has taken 10% of the money for the “Carbon Community Fund”.

The contract is written in English. Many farmers understand only very little English. The amounts are in US dollars not Ugandan shillings.

The contract states that Tindagwesire should plant trees on her entire plot of land. Instead, she planted trees around the edge of her plot of land. As a result Tindagwesire’s trees will absorb less CO₂ and she will receive less money.

Schmidt writes that,

Ecotrust confirms to Politiken that Evasi Tindagwesire’s trees are planted incorrectly in relation to the contract. But they compensate for the fact that someone plants differently than agreed in the contract. The organisation is planning to visit her.

John Byanuhanga is an 86-year-old who lives with his wife and his grandchildren, who also have children. He planted most of his Ecotrust trees around his home. The family has had to grow their food on another plot of land — 40 kilometres away. Byanuhanga could not find his contract with Ecotrust.

Carbon credits sold ex-ante

Ecotrust sells carbon credits are sold ex-ante — before the amount of CO₂ absorbed by the trees has been measured and verified. Politiken tried, without success, to get figures on exactly how much CO₂ the trees in Ecotrust’s Trees for Global Benefits project have absorbed. Ecotrust told Politiken that the numbers exist, but refers to the fact that the calculations are improving.

“It doesn’t seem that an actual check has been made of how much CO₂ is tied in the trees, that is, whether these credits are based on a real reality on earth,” Jens Friis Lund, professor of political ecology at the University of Copenhagen, comments to Politiken.

In 2026, the carbon credit rating agency BeZero downgraded its ranking of the Trees for Global Benefits to “BB”, Politiken reports. According to BeZero’s rating system, “BB” means a carbon credit from the project has only a “moderately low likelihood of achieving 1 tonne of CO₂e removal from the atmosphere”.

Missing auditing report

The Trees for Global Benefits project undergoes third-party verification audits every five years. That’s one of the reasons that DanChurchAid gives for working with Ecotrust.

But the most recent auditing report was completed in May 2019 and is for the period 2013 to 2017. Ecotrust’s 2024 Annual Report states that,

In accordance with the PV [Plan Vivo] Climate Standard requirements, Trees for Global Benefit undergoes third party verification every five years. ECOTRUST engaged Aster Global for the audit covering the period 2018 to 2022 and by the end of year, the desk review had been concluded.

However, the audit has still not been made available on Plan Vivo’s website.

“We are very concerned that we do not have the third-party verification yet,” DanChurchAid’s Söderberg tells Politiken. “That is something we expect to happen in the near future. We need that. We also want to know whether it is handled properly.”

DanChurchAid’s cooperation with Ecotrust continues, despite the missing audit report.

Jonathan Crook of Carbon Market Watch points out that “Climate credits issued since 2017 should not be used by a buyer to compensate for their emissions or postulate any kind of environmental benefit as they have not actually been checked by an independent third party.”

Ecotrust confirms to Politiken that the verification report has “taken longer than they expected, but it is on the way”.

Lack of clear information

Some of the farmers that Politiken speaks to have not received a copy of their contract. Others don’t know where the contract is. Half of the farmers say they signed a form that they believe is a contract. But the forms turn out to be only application forms.

Politiken speaks to Klara Fischer, a senior lecturer in environmental communication at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She has been researching tree planting projects in Uganda since 2014.

In 2024, she wrote a short article together with David Tumusiime of Makerere University based on interviews with farmers enrolled in the Trees for Global Benefits projects. The article highlights two problems with Ecotrust’s project:

• Shortcomings in ensuring that tree planting does not undermine food production; and

• Lack of clear information to farmers about how the project works.

Fischer tells Politiken that,

“Some of the farmers have signed the form, which leads them to believe that they are then part of the programme. It is not always clear to the farmers whether they are part of the tree planting project. And that in itself is evidence of the lack of sufficient communication between Ecotrust and the farmers.”

Fischer explains that the misunderstandings about the project is a recurring problem. “Sometimes it leads the farmers to plant the trees in ways that undermine their food production,” she says.

“Deficient” training

According to Ecotrust’s project design document, farmers “receive training and attend workshops to identify forestry activities that are suitable to their needs”. Each farmer is “trained to develop a land use/business plan, with a specific management objective”.

The project design document also claims that, “This is a cooperative community-based carbon offsetting scheme in which, through workshops, community members define activities that are technically specified by the project.”

But none of the farmers that Politiken ask had produced a “land use/business plan”. One farmer didn’t take part in any workshops because he lived too far away.

Two older farmers, who had been involved in the project since 2013, tell Politiken that the training was better when they joined the project.

They describe the current training as “deficient”.

“Ecotrust will need to provide information that ensures that the farmers do it the right way,” Fischer tells Politiken. “Otherwise, I do not think that Denmark or Sweden should invest in this project.”

Fischer visited the project in Uganda in 2024, following reporting by Staffan Lindberg in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Fischer did not find evidence for some of Lindberg’s reporting, such as farmers starving as a result of tree planting on their farmland. But she did find that some farmers had cut down their trees before then end of the contract.

“In my view,” she explained, “this is mainly due to two factors: firstly, the project only pays the farmers for ten years, while it is expected that the trees will stand for 25 years. Secondly, there is insufficient information about the project, which has led to some farmers joining the project without fully understanding what they needed to undertake.”

She added that,

“The lack of advice and information given to the farmers has created misunderstandings regarding payments and how long the farmers must commit to letting the trees stand. It has also been difficult for farmers to make informed decisions about planting trees is the most appropriate investment for their land. There have also been shortcomings in ensuring that tree planting does not undermine food production.”

Fischer points out that Sofie Erna Schmidt’s research in Uganda reveals similar problems to the ones she saw two years ago. “This does not indicate that there have been major changes,” she tells Politiken. “You cannot believe you can change this organisation. It’s clear from their track record that’s not going to happen.”

In 1992, the Tanzanian government signed a deal with a company called Otterlo Business Corporation. The company is a hunting and tourism company owned by wealthy sheiks from the United Arab Emirates, including Brigadier Mohamed Abdul Rahim Al Ali, a former UAE deputy minister of defence.

The following year the Tanzanian government gave Otterlo Business Corporation the right to hunt on 4,000 square kilometres of land — reportedly in exchange for millions of dollars for Tanzania’s army.

The Maasai were not even consulted about any of this and since then have faced a series of violent evictions. REDD-Monitor has been documenting the violence against the Maasai in Loliondo for more than a decade.

Germany’s conservation finance in Maasai territory

In November 2018, after violence erupted yet again in Loliondo, I wrote to Germany’s government-owned development bank, KfW, and to the German aid agency, GIZ, to ask about their conservation projects that were taking place on the traditional territory of the Maasai.

GIZ was at the time running a project titled Sustainable management of natural resources in Tanzania. KfW was also involved, and partners included WWF and the Frankfurt Zoological Society. Neither GIZ nor KfW would comment on the violence and threat of evictions against the Maasai.

In 2022, Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism posted a statement on its Instagram account:

The German Ambassador to Tanzania, Hon. Regina Hess has supported the ongoing efforts of the Government of Tanzania in rescuing the Ngorongoro Conservation Area by protecting the conservation and environment of the area to address the effects of climate change.

Given that the Tanzanian government was at the time threatening the Maasai living in Ngorongoro with evictions (a threat that has not gone away) this statement certainly gives the impression that Hess supports the evictions of Maasai Indigenous people from Ngorongoro.

When Survival International Germany asked the German Embassy about its position on the land rights of the Maasai, the Embassy did not answer.

The Instagram post came in March 2022. Just three months later, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism announced the creation of the Pololeti Game Controlled Area on the edge of Serengeti. This announcement annexed 1,500 square kilometres of Maasai village land — land that Otterlo Business Corporation had been lobbying for control of since its arrival in Tanzania.

Following the announcement of the Pololeti Game Controlled Area came massive evictions carried out by state agencies, including the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA). Thousands of people were left homeless, dozens of Maasai were injured, and the Maasai lost important grazing land for their cattle.

In December 2022, Hess handed over 51 new ranger vehicles an airplane and a helicopter to TANAPA.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society, which receives funding from the German government, has also funded and equipped TANAPA. Benjamin Hindrichs reports in Mongabay that the Frankfurt Zoological Society’s funding to TANAPA continued as TANAPA “carried out both violent and nonviolent evictions from high-conservation value areas on the edge of Serengeti”.

A spokesperson for the Frankfurt Zoological Society told Mongabay that the organisation “is not involved directly or indirectly, in any resettlement activities in Loliondo or the Ngorongoro Conservation Area”.

“If the rangers are using vehicles to hunt the Maasai, who provided the cars? Who provided the fuel? Who pays for them?” Joseph Oleshangay, a Maasai lawyer, asked. “It is not only the rangers themselves who are responsible for the violence, but also those who provide them with the means to use violence.”

In early 2024, the German government increased its support for conservation in the Serengeti ecosystem by US$9.5 million.

Tanzanian NGO statement

Four Tanzanian NGOs put out a statement yesterday. The statement is from the Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations Forum (PINGOs Forum), the Ujamaa Community Resource Team, the Pastoral Women’s Council, and Traditional Ecosystems Survival Tanzania (TEST).

The statement makes clear that the German aid agencies are still in denial about the human rights of the Maasai and the fact that German finance is playing a direct role in the threats, evictions, and violence against the Maasai.

Here is the statement from the Tanzanian NGOs:

Arusha, Tanzania
24 August 2026

We, the representatives of Indigenous Peoples’ and civil society organizations working on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, land rights, conservation, accountability and community development in Tanzania, issue this grievance statement following the visit of representatives of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German Embassy in Tanzania, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and the German Development Bank (KfW) to Tanzania, including their engagement on conservation and development initiatives in Loliondo.

On 11 August 2026, a roundtable discussion was held in Arusha between German institutions and invited local CSOs, including ourselves, during which Maasai representatives respectfully raised serious concerns regarding the impacts of prevailing conservation models, the handling and resolution of community grievances, and the implementation of development programmes supported through German development cooperation. Particular concerns were raised in relation to interventions involving BMZ, KfW, GIZ, and FZS, especially where these affect community land, livelihoods, participation, and rights.

Community grievances must be taken seriously and should not be treated merely as matters of project performance. We therefore issue this statement to call on the respective German entities to conduct an independent, transparent, impartial, and rights-based investigation capable of addressing community concerns and ensuring meaningful accountability.

When we raised our grievances, we were surprised that German entities place the responsibility for these complaints primarily on Tanzanian institutions such as TAWA and TANAPA, without acknowledging the primary role of German institutions that finance and support conservation programmes implemented by these institutions. We respect Tanzania’s sovereignty. However, sovereignty does not remove the responsibility of development partners to ensure that their support does not contribute to human-rights violations. The way conservation operates in Tanzania is through the collaboration of three key actors: investors such as OBC, who benefit from grabbing the land; Tanzanian state operatives, who provide the necessary violence to create space for investors; and the conservation donor community, which provides the moral cover to justify displacement, either by presenting it as necessary for conservation or by funding small projects and amenities just outside the areas where authorities have carried out violent operations.

All actors involved in funding, designing, or supporting projects must be accountable for impacts on human lives caused by or in the name of these projects. As financiers and development partners, they have to exercise due diligence and accountability processes regarding the impacts of supported projects.

We therefore respectfully request BMZ to formally acknowledge and document the grievances raised by the Maasai community; establish an independent assessment process; engage directly and confidentially with affected communities, including elders, women and youth; review compliance with applicable human rights, including land, participation and FPIC; and transparently communicate findings and corrective measures. We respectfully request BMZ to provide a written response to this statement, clearly indicating:

1. How the grievances presented by the Maasai representatives have been recorded;

2. What process BMZ proposes to investigate them;

3. How independence and confidentiality will be ensured;

4. How affected communities will participate;

5. What role Maasai leadership will have in the process; and

6. When BMZ proposes to convene the next high-level conservation dialogue.

We also call on FZS to give adequate attention, investigation, and a meaningful response to our concerns. The Maasai community across Loliondo, through its legitimate leadership, has repeatedly raised serious concerns on the complicit role of FZS in land grabbing including supporting Tanzanian authorities financially and morally in the illegal establishment of the Pololeti Game Reserve and planning to grab Enguiserosambu Forest, in furtherance of exclusive conservation objectives supported by other German institutions. Despite these grievances having been raised consistently over a prolonged period, they have not received an adequate response.

We further call on KfW and FZS to clarify their safeguards and policies on Indigenous Peoples’ rights in Tanzania, including:

1. Community participation and FPIC in project design and implementation;

2. Assessment of land and livelihood risks;

3. Grievance and accountability mechanisms; and

4. Response to allegations of adverse impacts.

Finally, we call on GIZ to reconsider the findings and narrative of its Loliondo study, which appears to portray Maasai communities as threats to conservation, while insufficiently examining how restrictive conservation policies and land-use measures may contribute to livelihood insecurity. GIZ should recognize coexistence as a community-led conservation approach, acknowledging that people, livestock, wildlife, and ecosystems can sustainably share landscapes through customary governance, Indigenous knowledge, and community-led stewardship. We remind you of our Maasai conservation vision that can serve as a useful guide in that regard.

Everyone who intends to undertake conservation projects in Maasailand must understand we are all equal in dignity and rights. German institutions should stop implementing conservation projects based on the assumption that we are easily disposable or displaceable. We are not.

Our concerns extend beyond individual projects to broader issues of land and territorial rights, customary governance, pastoralists’ livelihoods, cultural integrity, Indigenous knowledge, participation in conservation governance and benefit-sharing. We therefore request meaningful recognition and participation of legitimate Maasai leadership in all German funded programmes affecting Maasai territories. We emphasize that our intention is to ensure that German-Tanzania cooperation intended to support conservation and development does not inadvertently violate or erode the rights, dignity, cultural integrity, livelihoods, and customary governance systems of the communities it is intended to serve. We believe in “Conservation with communities, not conservation over communities.”

To make this a reality, we propose a structured Maasai–Germany conservation policy dialogue on land and territorial rights, cultural integrity and customary governance, and rights-based conservation and community development. Our intention is not confrontation, but to build a stronger partnership grounded in mutual respect, transparency, accountability, and genuine participation. Maasai and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations remain ready to engage constructively and in good faith with BMZ and other German institutions to address the grievances raised and identify meaningful, rights-based solutions. We respectfully urge BMZ and other German institutions to treat these concerns as matters requiring substantive institutional review and accountability, rather than limiting them to routine project performance monitoring.

Contact:

PINGOS’S FORUM
P.o Box 14437, Sakina kwa Iddi
Arusha.

In April 2026, the NGO Coalition of Liberia, a network of more than 25 civil society organisations working in the forest sector, sent a letter to Liberia’s president, Joseph Boakai. The letter urged Boakai to defer the endorsement adn signing of Liberia’s Draft Carbon Market Policy “until a genuine, inclusive, and credible national validation process has been conducted”.

Rainforest Rescue recently launched a petition based on the April 2026 NGO Coalition letter. So far, more than 46,000 people have signed the petition.

In a REDD-Monitor post about Liberia’s Carbon Market Policy in May 2026, I highlighted the influence of two US-based organisations in developing the Policy — the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and Gordian Knot Strategies.

In September 2024, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations signed a Letter of Engagement with the government of Liberia to provide technical support to prepare the generation of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs as carbon credits are labelled under the Paris Agreement).

In January 2026, the Liberian government hired Gordian Knot Strategies, to provide technical and financial guidance in the development of the country’s Carbon Market Policy. Sean Penrith, CEO of Gordian Knot Strategies, responded saying that he would be “more than happy to discuss directly with you if you want to discuss further”. REDD-Monitor has sent him some questions about the role played by Gordian Knot Strategies, and looks forward to posting the interview in full and unedited in due course.

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African Development Bank

In May 2026, the Financial Times reported that the African Development Bank was putting pressure on the Liberian government to pass the Carbon Market Policy. Two people told the Financial Times that a portion of AfDB funding would depend on the government approving a carbon sales framework.

New Narratives reports that the African Development Bank denied this claim. On 20 May 2026, the Bank approved financing for Liberia “aimed at strengthening the country’s fiscal sustainability and improving governance in its mining sector, but with no mention of carbon trading”.

Rees Mwasambili, country manager of the Liberia office of the African Development Bank, told New Narratives that “carbon market trading decisions are for Liberia government to make, on Liberia’s terms and timeline”.

“Given that the African Development Bank has indicated that it is no longer rushing the process, I believe there is no reason for the government to rush it either,” Dayugar Johnson of the Civil Society Independent Forest Monitors told New Narratives.

But civil society organisations remain concerned about key issues including land rights, revenue sharing, and the free, prior and informed consent of communities to carbon trading on their land.

James Otto is programme coordinator for the Community Rights and Corporate Governance Program at the Liberian NGO, the Sustainable Development Institute. “The carbon market is evading the truth,” he told Rainforest Rescue. “It puts forest-dependent people at the margin and takes away their dignity. The government needs to be honestly sincere, openly engage engage with forest communities and place community priorities at the top of the carbon policy development.”

UNDP

Meanwhile UNDP Liberia is working with the Carbon Market Authority to “advance carbon market development”. Back in June 2024, UNDP held an online meeting titled, “Making carbon markets work for forest communities in Liberia.”

In June 2026, at a meeting between UNDP Liberia and the Carbon Market Authority, Aliou Dia, UNDP Liberia’s resident representative, said that, “Carbon markets present a unique opportunity to translate natural capital into sustainable economic value, while ensuring benefits reach communities and support long-term environmental sustainability.”

Which may sound good, but the reality reflected in Rainforest Rescue’s petition suggest something completely different is taking place. Here is the petition letter to president Boakai:

To: President Joseph Nyuma Boakai

Your Excellency President Joseph Nyuma Boakai,

Liberia is globally recognized for its outstanding forest protection. Western chimpanzees are one of its flagship species, and the survival of their habitat is largely thanks to local communities who protect the forests they depend on.

We are deeply concerned that the proposed Carbon Market Policy hurts these communities and alienates them from environmental protection. While they have safeguarded Liberia’s forests for generations, the policy risks rewarding the government, developers and traders far more than the people who have long protected these lands.

We note that endorsing the draft Caron Market Poilcy without a robust national validation risks:

1. undermining the legitimacy and public trust in national policy, as well as damaging the international reputation of Liberia, given that the policy potentially undermines Liberia’s ability to maintain its bilateral investment treaties and fulfill its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement;

2. exposing communities to arrangements that they neither fully understand nor have consented to – thus a recipe for future community-investor conflicts;

3. creating conditions for inequitable or unfavorable carbon agreements that may be difficult to renegotiate;

4. embedding structural gaps into future legislation on carbon markets and climate governance.

We respectfully urge that:

1. the endorsement and signing of the draft Carbon Market Policy be deferred;

2. a comprehensive national validation process be convened, ensuring the full and effective participation of communities, civil society, and other stakeholders at the grassroots level across affected regions;

3. adequate time and space be provided for technical review, public dialogue, and incorporation of stakeholder inputs before final approval.

Yours faithfully,

Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about the Italian company Tozzi Green, and its carbon plantation land grab in Madagascar. The post is based on an article by Emma Strömberg, a journalist with the Swedish-language newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet.

Strömberg spoke to Jenni Mölkänen at the University of Eastern Finland, who has carried out research about the impacts of Tozzi Green’s tree plantations on local communities on the Ihorombe plateau.

Mölkänen’s research, written with Tellu Loikkanen, Matthieu Lussac Pierre, Odine Fitiavana Tanjona ny Rindra, and Marketta Vuola, was published in Suomen Antropologi in April 2026.

The research was funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The researchers note that the Ihorombe plateau is “known for its immense grasslands”. The name of the plateau comes from a perennial bunchgrass called horo, which is essential for zebus, the drought-resistant humped Malagasy cattle.

Three main communities live on the plateau: Andiolava, Satrokala, and Ambatolahy. The plateau is sparsely populated with about 35,000 people living there.

There is “little to no access to healthcare or basic public services” the researchers write. Most settlements do not have electricity or running water. People told the researchers about recent drought conditions, reduced harvests, and an increase in pests and crickets.

“We use zebu for everything”

The majority of the people living on the Ihorombe plateau are the Indigenous Bara people. The Bara are the largest zebu-herding group in Madagascar and historically were semi-nomadic. “We use zebu for everything, for our daily life for bad or good occasions,” one herder told the researchers.

Zebus are a family bank — if the family needs money for household or unexpected living expenses, they can sell their cattle.

Some people welcomed the company, for example a mayor in one of the community where the company had built a school, a hospital, roads, and two dams, and established access to water and electricity.

But the researchers report that “many of our interviewees opposed the company’s efforts”. One person told them that,

The company project is not clear. The company just takes the land without proper consultation. The company’s activities occupy extensive areas of land that restrict zebu herders’ livelihoods and the benefits, like schools and education or infrastructural developments are not shared with the villages and communities where the company works.

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No process of free, prior and informed consent

Communities do not know how long Tozzi Green’s tree planting project will last. Some said 25 years, others mentioned 30, 40, or 50 years. (Verra’s registry states that the project started in November 2022 and will run till November 2062.)

Several zebu herders told the researchers that the consultation process was unclear. One person said,

“The elders and family and clan leaders, lonaka, were invited to the consultation meeting as well as the commune mayors. The company promised to build hospitals and schools and create jobs, but they didn’t do those things ( . . . ) Moreover, the agreement was not written in a language that the elders knew.”

Meetings took place in French which the elders and family leaders did not understand. No meeting records or minutes were taken. “Some also pointed out that the state in co-operation with the company used the military to intimidate local people into accepting the implementation of the projects,” the researchers write.

“The company planted trees, and it is not safe now to walk”

Some elders signed an agreement to give their land to Tozzi Green in return for promised benefits such as a school and a hospital.

“The company promised to build a classroom and a dam, and asked us for our land,” one elder who had signed an agreement told the researchers. The company “should have done what they promised”, they added.

Another said that “the company promised to offer work to the young people; however, only rich people got jobs ( . . . ) after maize, the company planted trees, and it is not safe now to walk.”

Zebu herders consider the plantations to be unsafe. Cattle thieves “can steal a zebu and easily hide in the forest,” herders told the researchers.

The main issue for cattle herders and farmers is that Tozzi Green has taken their land, restricting the area available for zebu grazing. One person told the researchers that,

“The company wants to restrict our territory, and they did not bring any development ( . . . ) The company has brought poverty to Ihorombe. They brought a grass1 that is too hard for zebus to eat, they do not like it.”

On 18 December 2025, REDD-Monitor wrote about a company called Evertreen. The company sells carbon offsets from a range of projects around the world. On its website, Evertreen claims to be “on a mission to transform the world, one tree at a time”.

My article raised a series of red flags about Evertreen’s operations:

On 6 August 2026, Beatrice Battelli, director of PR and communications at Evertreen left a comment following the post on REDD-Monitor.

I have some questions about Battelli’s response, which I will send to her in the next few days. When I receive Evertreen’s response I will post it in full and unedited and provide a link to the response from this post.

In the meantime, here is Battelli’s response dated 6 August 2026:

Dear Chris,

I’m Beatrice Battelli, Director of PR & Communications at Evertreen. Thank you for the detailed piece — we take transparency seriously, so rather than dismiss it, here are the facts with sources anyone can check.

We publish our registries and IDs. The claim that we “give no information about which registry” isn’t accurate. Our certified credits come from named projects with public VCS IDs — e.g. Katingan Mentaya (VCS 1477), Tambopata–Bahuaja (VCS 1067), Vida Manglar (VCS 2290), Mikoko Pamoja (VCS 3660), TIST (VCS 2338) — each verifiable on the Verra Registry and retired once with a unique serial. We also publish independent ratings (BeZero, Sylvera, Calyx Global) and state plainly that we are an intermediary that sources and retires credits, not the project developer. (http://evertreen.com/verra-carbon-credits)

The CO₂ figure is lifetime, not annual. The article compares our per-tree number to a mature tree’s annual uptake. Ours is the total a tree is expected to sequester across its functional lifespan (often decades), estimated with species-specific allometric equations (GlobAllomeTree, FAO/CIRAD), IPCC 2006 factors and the standard 3.67 CO₂:C ratio — around 0.8 t over a tree’s life. Full method: http://evertreen.com/how-we-estimate-tree-co2. Trees and certified credits are separate products; we never merge them.

Pricing is linear. Our corporate plans are £150 (100 trees), £300 (200 trees) and £900 (600 trees) per month — exactly £1.50 per tree at every tier. The £100/£500/£1,000 figures in the article are not our prices. (http://evertreen.com/trees)

Refunds. The “irrevocable waiver” quoted is from a previous version of our terms. Our current terms give a 14-day statutory cooling-off (Clause 7.5) and a full refund at any time before funds are committed to a planting cycle (Clause 7.4).

Monitoring. Every site is GPS-boundary-mapped, with drone mapping, permanent photo points, forest-inventory survivorship plots and community surveys; corporate partners receive the exact GPS of their trees.

On ownership: Synesthesia Colours, one of our shareholders, is registered on the second floor of an office building — the ground-floor restaurant at that street address is an unrelated business.

We’ve also removed any project a standards body has withdrawn or placed under review. Our full point-by-point response is here: https://www.evertreen.com/transparency. And anyone — including you, Chris — can email partnerships@evertreen.com for registry serials, coordinates or certificates. We would rather be checked than believed.

Let me know if you have additional questions, and if you agree this article was not carefully drafted and should be updated. We are happy to support you with updating it if needed.

— Beatrice Battelli, Director of PR & Communications, Evertreen

Debates Indígenas (Indigenous Debates) is a digital magazine run by the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). Recently Debates Indígenas featured an article about carbon markets and Indigenous Peoples.

The article is titled “Carbon Markets and Indigenous Peoples: Between False Solutions and Forced Choices.” It is co-written by five people:

• Paine Eulalia Mako is a Maasai Indigenous woman and the executive director of the Ugamaa Community Resource Team;

• Tunga Bhadra Rai belongs to the Rai Indigenous Nationality of Nepal and is the director of the Climate Change Programme of the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities;

• Gideon Sanago is a Tanzanian Maasai Indigenous person, working with Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organisations (PINGO’s Forum);

• Rosario Carmona is a programme consultant on climate with IWGIA; and

• Stefan Thorsell is climate advisor at IWGIA.

The article notes that for many Indigenous Peoples, carbon markets “represent a familiar pattern of external control over their lands, now falsely justified under a green flag”.

Rather than addressing the root causes of climate change, mechanisms such as REDD+ reframe Indigenous territories as "carbon reservoirs" intended to offset pollution produced elsewhere — a form of climate colonialism that reshapes power over land and governance while allowing extractive economies to continue operating.

The article is critical of carbon trading and REDD in particular. The authors write that REDD has developed into a complex network of project developers, conservation NGOs, certification bodies, financial intermediaries, and government agencies.

One of the justifications for carbon markets is that they can “mobilise private finance”. But this ignores the trillions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies every year. Carbon markets do nothing to challenge the economic structures that are driving the climate crisis

Safeguards or dispossession?

The article notes that international safeguards are supposed to protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. But in practice, these protections are often weak, non-binding, or easily circumvented.

Indigenous Peoples’ organisations have reported a series of problems, the authors note: “incomprehensible contracts, rushed consultation processes, unequal access to information, uninformed decisions, and growing restrictions over customary land tenure”.

None of this is new. Back in 2013, Francesco Martone and Tom Griffiths of Forest Peoples Programme raised the alarm of weak safeguard implementation.

Free, Prior and Informed Consent is an important right of Indigenous Peoples recognised under the international legal framework of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 No. 169 (ILO 169).

But as the authors point out, FPIC is “often reduced to a procedural formality or a simple verification requirement”.

Communities are approached through isolated meetings, technical presentations, or consultations conducted in foreign languages and under significant pressure. Contracts frequently involve highly complex legal and financial arrangements spanning decades, yet communities receive little independent legal or technical support to assess the long-term implications.

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Asymmetry of information

The asymmetry of knowledge and power is profound in carbon projects, the authors write. Carbon project developers, intermediaries, and certification bodies have specialised expertise, legal advice, and access to international finance.

Communities are often pushed into making decisions about carbon projects without fully understanding carbon trading, or what the implications will be for their livelihoods, access to their territories, contractual risks, or how much they will receive from the sales of carbon credits.

“The result,” the authors write, “is an environment in which Indigenous Peoples’ territories become incorporated into volatile global carbon markets without the rights-holders exercising informed and meaningful engagement over the process.”

Fortress conservation

The restrictions on Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods associated with carbon projects can be severe, including limitations on shifting cultivation, grazing, hunting, gathering, and subsistence forest use. Some carbon projects see Indigenous Peoples as a threat to protecting the forest, replicating the model of “fortress conservation”.

The authors give the example of a failed REDD initiative in Tanzania where “wilderness” narratives were used to justify violent evictions, authoritarian conservation, and treating Indigenous People as intruders in their own territories.

Carbon projects “reshape local governance systems,” the authors write. They “exacerbate internal inequalities and generate conflicts regarding representation, benefit-sharing and territorial authority.”

Benefit-sharing is often unclear, delayed, and minimal, with communities receiving only a small fraction of total revenues. Women, youth and traditional authorities are frequently excluded from negotiations — despite bearing much of the social and environmental burden — while project revenues, when they do materialize, may be captured by local elites or external intermediaries. As the “carbon rights” or the benefit share is often defined together with the land ownership, the carbon market has become another weapon for eliminating customary land rights of Indigenous Peoples due to the non-recognition of customary land rights by many governments.

Junk credits

The authors also look into the issue of junk credits — credits issued for emissions that either did not occur, or cannot be reliably verified. In January 2023, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial published the results of a nine month investigation into forest carbon offsets. They found that 94% of carbon credits did not actually benefit the climate.

Three structural issues with REDD are behind this problem — these are the fundamental problems inevitably underlying all REDD projects:

• Leakage refers to the fact that while deforestation might be avoided in one place, the forest destroyers might move to another area of forest or to a different country.

• Additionality refers to the impossibility of predicting what might have happened in the absence of the REDD project.

• Permanence refers to the fact that carbon stored in trees is only temporarily stored. All trees eventually die and release the carbon back to the atmosphere.

But these credits are used by Big Polluters to greenwash their destructive operations.

“Therefore,” the authors write, “carbon offsetting does not function as a pathway beyond fossil fuels, but rather as a mechanism that allows emissions to continue elsewhere.”

Indigenous Peoples’ responses to carbon markets

Some Indigenous organisations reject carbon markets, pointing out that they are false solutions that commodify nature and allow polluters to continue polluting.

The authors note, however, that “the reality on the ground is often more complex”. Some communities take part in carbon projects “not from endorsement, but rather from the need to navigate an increasingly restrictive political and environmental environment”.

Some Indigenous communities see carbon trading as a lesser threat, compared to other forms of extractivism. Others hope to secure territorial recognition through engaging in carbon projects. “In this sense, participation may function less as acceptance than as a strategy of defence and political survival,” the authors write.

Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are demanding stronger territorial protections, transparent contracts, independent legal support, community-controlled benefit-sharing mechanisms and consultation processes designed according to Indigenous Peoples’ governance systems rather than project timelines.

This has been a crucial issue since the beginning of REDD discussions. Yet Indigenous communities are still struggling to get their rights recognised in the face of REDD projects on their territories. To give just one example, Kichwa Indigenous communities in Peru have seen their land rights and territory taken away by the Cordillera Azul REDD project and have been campaigning for their rights for many years.

Self-determination

The article ends with a call to go “beyond carbon markets”. Regardless of whether Indigenous communities engage with carbon markets or not, a key issue for all Indigenous Peoples is self-determination. The right of Indigenous Peoples to determine what happens within their territories is a fundamental right. “Secure collective land tenure must be a precondition for any legitimate form of engagement,” the authors write.

They note that Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are promoting “alternative approaches centred on on territorial rights, direct access to climate finance and non-market forms of climate action”.

The authors conclude their article as follows:

These approaches also challenge the broader political economy underpinning carbon markets. Addressing climate change requires far more than new financial instruments. It demands a radical structural transformation of society and the economy, facilitating a rapid fossil fuel phase-out, strict regulation of extractive industries and supply chains linked to deforestation, cancellation of illegitimate debts, and large-scale public investment in Indigenous and community-led initiatives.

The expansion of carbon markets suggests that the global economy continues to seek ways to manage the climate crisis without confronting the structures that created it in the first place. Indigenous critiques expose the limits of that approach. They remind us that forests are not simply carbon reservoirs, and that climate justice cannot be reduced to accounting exercises conducted in distant financial centres.

This year’s El Niño is predicted to be the strongest El Niño event since reliable records began. “It may end up the strongest by a truly mind-blowing margin,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather writes. “The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.”

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains how it declares El Niño as follows:

NOAA declares an El Nino (Spanish for “little boy”) has formed when temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are 0.5°C above average for several consecutive months. Additionally, NOAA monitors the atmosphere above this region of the Pacific, looking for a pattern called the Walker Circulation, a massive east-to-west air flow driven by the temperature and pressure differences between the warm western and cool eastern oceans. When the Walker Circulation breaks down and warmer water shifts east toward South America, El Nino is declared.

On 11 June 2026, NOAA officially announced that El Niño has developed in the tropical Pacific.

During a recent press briefing, Hausfather said that it’s “not outside the realm of possibility” that combination of global heating and El Niño could result in global average temperatures in 2027 reaching 1.7°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The last time the global temperature exceeded 1.5°C was in 2024 — the hottest year on record.

The impact of El Niño on the Amazon

This is particularly bad news for the Amazon rainforest. The Brazilian meteorological agency has released a forecast that El Niño is expected to delay the rainy season, increase the risk of wildfires, and worsen drought in the Amazon.

Carlos Nobre of the University of São Paulo was among the first scientists to raise the alarm of an Amazon tipping point. “The Amazon has to be very prepared from now through the beginning of 2027, at least up to March, because this El Niño is very likely to induce a severe drought,” he told The Guardian.

A news feature in Nature highlights the risks of El Niño for the Amazon rainforest. “For the Amazon rainforest, the timing could hardly be worse,” journalist Quentin Septer writes.

El Niño events typically result in droughts in the Amazon basin. The most recent El Niño formed in June 2023 and lasted until June 2024. The Amazon saw severe drought, dried up rivers, and the worst fire season for more than two decades. Researchers are warning that this could push the Amazon past a tipping point, where the rainforest would be replaced by savanna and degraded woodland.

The 2023-2024 El Niño saw a massive spike in the area of forest burned, as well as vast areas of forest degradation — which makes the rainforest more vulnerable to fire.

Septer spoke to Bernardo Flores, a researcher on Amazon resilience at the Juruá Institute in Manaus. In 2025, Flores was lead author of a paper in Nature that warned of “unexpected ecosystem transitions” even in remote parts of the Amazon basin as a result of interactions between different disturbances, such as “frequent extreme hot drought and forest fires”.

Flores told Septer that,

“If this next El Niño really is as strong as we think it will be, it might result in things like huge wildfires in the Amazon, spreading across areas that were unimaginable before. We will see how much of the forest might die from it.”

Tipping point

Flores warns that if too much of the Amazon rainforest burns during the current El Niño, “it could basically cross the tipping point”.

“We may have already crossed the tipping point,” Flores adds. “We don’t know.”

Part of the concern about the current El Niño is that the Amazon rainforest has not recovered from previous droughts. Another major drought could further weaken the forest.

A 2026 study, led by Nico Wunderling at Goethe University in Frankfurt, modelled changes in the movement of moisture in the atmosphere to test the impacts of global heating and deforestation. The authors found that a tipping point could be reached with global heating of 1.5 to 1.9°C and deforestation of 22 to 28%.

About 17 or 18% of the Amazon rainforest has already been deforested. And Hausfather warns that with El Niño, global temperatures could reach 1.7°C in 2027.

“I don’t think that a single year, even if it would be a very strong El Niño, would be sufficient to pass the tipping point,” Wunderling tells Septer. But in the long run this is how a tipping point will be reached. “We will see more extreme events — due to El Niño, for instance. They will become more severe. And then the recovery time for the trees is just not enough.”

This, obviously, has important implications for REDD. “If you want to tackle the climate crisis, there are two things you can do,” Martin Simonneau of Cool Earth said in a 2025 interview with REDD-Monitor. “One, protect nature. Two, wean ourselves off fossil fuel. Don’t do them separately. Do them simultaneously. But don’t use rainforests or any other carbon sink as a way to offset your reliance on fossil fuel.”

While we must protect rainforests, we cannot trade the carbon stored in forests against continued burning of fossil fuels. The rainforests are severely impacted by the climate crisis. And to address the climate crisis we have to stop burning fossil fuels.

Andreas Tozzi is an Italian businessman. He is CEO of his family’s renewable energy company, Tozzi Green. In 2012, the government of Madagascar leased almost 7,000 hectares of land in the Ihorombe region to JTF Madagascar, a Tozzi Green subsidiary. And in 2018, the company signed a lease for a further 4,000 hectares of land.

Communities living on the Ihorombe plateau accuse Tozzi Green of land grabbing. They have been protesting against the company’s operations for more than a decade. Tozzi doesn’t seem to care.

At first JTF Madagascar planted jatropha as a biofuel crop. The jatropha plantations failed and the company planted maize for poultry feed. This also failed and JTF Madagascar subsequently started planting acacia and eucalyptus trees as a carbon offset project.

On it’s website, the Tozzi Green explains that,

In 2023, after an initial testing phase with the ongoing climate change in Madagascar, particularly with the worsening drought conditions, Tozzi Green, through its subsidiary JTF, redirected its investments towards a reforestation activity involving and engaging local communities.

Tozzi Green describes the land it has planted trees on as “originally degraded and marginal land”. The company even claims to be “saving it from desertification and transforming it into agricultural land”.

The reality is that communities were using the land to graze their cattle and to grow food for their families. For more than a decade, communities living in the area have protested against the company’s operations. The communities accuse Tozzi Green of land grabbing.

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Funding from Finland and Belgium

Tozzi Green is receiving funding for its operations in Madagascar from the Finnish and Belgian development finance institutions: Finnfund and BIO. In 2020, when JTF Madagascar was still planting food crops, Finnfund and BIO invested €7.5 million in JTF Madagascar.

At the time, Jari Matero, Associate Director of Finnfund commented that,

“This is our first direct investment in Madagascar and we are excited about partnering with the leading agricultural company in the country. We’re convinced that the social and environmental development impacts are already significant and we look forward to seeing how modern agricultural technology utilized by JTF Madagascar can increase the productivity and improve food security in the country.”

Mamy Rakotondrainibe disagrees. She is the executive director of the organisation Collectif TANY — which was established in 2009, to defend community lands against land grabbing.

Collectif TANY has written to Finnfund and BIO several times highlighting the problems that Tozzi Green is creating for communities. In December 2025, Collectif TANY and five other local organisations send an open letter pointing out that the majority of people living in the area did not agree to leasing the land to Tozzi Green. They demanded that the company does not expand its tree plantations further and leave the land that it currently occupies.

Rakotondrainibe told Emma Strömberg, a journalist with the Swedish-language newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, that,

“Tozzi Green promised improvements for the local population, including building schools and infrastructure and providing jobs for young people. But the company has not fulfilled all its promises and the local population feels cheated.”

Collectif TANY’s December 2025 letter was also addressed to the Washington DC-based carbon certification company Verra. “We also want to draw Verra’s attention to the fact that the land has been acquired without the consent of the local population,” Rakotondrainibe told Hyfvudstadsbladet.

The status of the project is listed on Verra’s registry as “Under Validation (Public Comment Period Closed)”.1 The project title is Satrokala ARR Grouped Project and the project number is 5755. No carbon credits have been generated by the project so far, as the project has not yet been validated and verified.

Additionality?

The Project Document, which was prepared by a company called Carbon Credits Consulting SRL, claims that the project is additional — in other words without the money from the sale of carbon credits, the project would not go ahead.

The Project Document states that,

According to the applied methodology, for the area-based project the investment barrier analysis is in addition to the regulatory surplus check and the performance benchmark. Since the proposed area-based project does not generate revenues nor receive financial incentives from sources other than the sales of carbon credits, the investment barrier analysis is not required.

The Project Document makes no mention of the €7.5 million that Tozzi Green received from Finnfund and BIO. Which is presumably what is paying for the tree planting operations.

Finnfund’s response

Strömberg, the journalist with Hufvudstadsbladet, asked Kaisa Alavuotunki, director of sustainability at Finnfund, about the Tozzi Green project.

“We have been monitoring the project company and have seen the tangible benefits it has brought,” Alavuotunki told Hufvudstadsbladet. “But we also understand that there are local tensions, and the company has been responsive to these.”

Alavuotunki states that Finnfund is “in constant contact with Tozzi Green’s project company”.

However, she provides no information about how Tozzi Green has actually responded to the “local tensions”.

When asked about the reports from local communities that JTF Madagascar has not kept its promises to build schools and infrastructure, Alavuotunki says,

We cannot speak on behalf of the company, and I do not wish to dispute people’s experiences. If people feel that not all agreements have been fulfilled, this is precisely the sort of issue it is important to discuss through dialogue.

And when asked about how the local communities benefit from Tozzi Green’s tree-planting operations to sell carbon credits, Alavuotunki refers to “Verra’s report” which she says “clearly highlights all the benefits that the company’s presence has brought”.

Alavuotunki appears blissfully unaware that “Verra’s report” was written by an Italian company called Carbon Credits Consulting. That, of course, is the company hired by Tozzi Green to get the project through Verra’s rubber stamp certification process.

Strömberg also spoke to Jenni Mölkänen at the University of Eastern Finland, who has carried out research at Tozzi Green’s tree plantations in Ihorombe.

Mölkänen told Hufvudstadsbladet that the Finnfund and BIO funding to Tozzi Green highlights the conflicts of interest that result from development finance going directly to companies:

“The rules of the game change when the partner shifts from local civil society organisations to companies. A company’s ultimate aim is to generate profit for itself, whilst organisations have different objectives. This affects the kind of society that is built: who benefits and who does not?”

The first carbon credits approved by the UN’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism were from a “clean-cooking” project in Myanmar. Since February 2021, a civil war in Myanmar has resulted in conflict, displacement and state-sponsored violence.

The military junta has targeted schools, hospitals, religious buildings, and other civilian infrastructure.

Almost 100,000 civilians have been killed. the UN states that 3.6 million people have been displaced.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who played a key role in the 2010s in Myanmar’s transition from dictatorship to partial democracy, and whose party won the November 2020 election was arrested on 1 February 2021. She, and others in the National League for Democracy remain in arbitrary detention.

In June 2026, a report by the Global Forest Coalition, Myanmar Policy Institute, Plan 1.5, Biofuelwatch, and Gibson Climate Justice Lab highlighted the problems with implementing a carbon trading project in a country that is currently run by a military junta.

Yadanar Maung, a spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar is quoted in the report as saying that,

“Partnering with MONREC [the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation] in a project tied to international carbon market mechanisms lends false legitimacy to the military junta and whitewashes its international crimes.”

The Climate Change Center, the South Korean NGO running the carbon project in Myanmar, gave a dreadfully weak response to the criticism. As Biofuelwatch’s Almuth Ernsting pointed out in a comment on REDD-Monitor, the response “leaves many open questions”.

The reality is that carrying out a carbon trading project with the Myanmar military dictatorship to allow greenhouse gas emissions in Korea to continue is simply indefensible.

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Letter to SK Telecom

On 11 August 2026, 28 civil society organisations sent a joint letter to Jung Jae-heon, the CEO of SK Telecom.

SK Telecom is one of 12 SK Group affiliated companies that have invested in the project in Myanmar since 2018. The civil society organisations’ letter demands that SK Telecom:

• end the company’s investment in the project;

• refrain from trading the carbon credits already generated by the project; and

• establish an internal system to fairly and accurately assess and verify international mitigation projects.

In a statement, Zaw Tuseng, director of the Myanmar Policy Institute, comments that,

“Communities in Sagaing and Magway are living through airstrikes, displacement, the destruction of villages and severe restrictions on movement. Under these conditions, credible monitoring, meaningful consultation and informed community consent cannot simply be assumed. SK Telecom should not use carbon credits generated under such circumstances to claim climate progress. It must disclose its involvement, suspend the use of these credits and support an independent, conflict-sensitive review that listens directly to affected communities.”

The organisations request a response by 24 August 2026.

The civil society letter is posted here in full:

Recipient
Jae-heon Jeong
SK Telecom President & CEO

Sender
Plan 1.5 and
27 Civil Society Organizations and Coalitions

10 August 2026

Dear Jae-heon Jeong,

We, a group of civil society organizations, are writing to urge SK Telecom to end investment in the Myanmar Cookstove project.

We are deeply concerned about the human rights violations and the over-crediting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions associated with the Myanmar cookstove project (PoA 10471), in which the SK Group has invested. In light of SK Group’s DBL (Double Bottom Line) philosophy, which emphasizes the pursuit of both economic and social value, we urge SK Telecom to halt its investment in this project and establish a robust framework for responsible climate and human rights risk management.

Since March 2018, your company has invested in this project and, in February this year, received approval for the issuance of carbon credits under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). According to media reports, Climate Change Center (CCC), which manages the project, stated that SK Group secured 648,783 provisionally issued PACM carbon credits through this project. As the first-ever approval for issuance of PACM credits worldwide, these credits have attracted significant attention from civil society organizations in both Korea and around the world.

Unfortunately, the attention directed at this project — and that SK Telecom has received as one of its investors — is not due to its contribution to climate action or to improving the lives of people in Myanmar. Instead, it reflects mounting concerns over serious human rights abuses associated with the project and the credibility of the PACM, under which these carbon credits will be issued.

Human Rights Concerns

The Myanmar cookstove project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing traditional household cookstoves with improved cookstoves across Myanmar. The project developer, CCC, claims that the project not only generates carbon credits but also expands energy access, lowers household fuel costs, helps prevent deforestation, and reduces the health risks and domestic burdens faced by women and children.

The reality, however, tells a very different story

Since Myanmar’s 2021 attempted military coup, the project has continued without adhering to even the most basic ESG principles. Its local implementing partner in the Central Dry Zone is the Dry Zone Greening Department (DZGD), a government agency operating under the unlawful authority of Myanmar’s military junta. Furthermore, the project is being implemented in regions that have witnessed some of the country’s most severe political violence and attacks against civilians.

Myanmar civil society organizations have warned that “collaborating with the DZGD on projects linked to international carbon market mechanisms grants administrative legitimacy to the military regime and effectively provides impunity for its violations of international law.”

During the crediting period for which credit issuance has been approved by PACM, in the townships where the project was implemented in the Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay regions, 1,153 incidents of political violence and physical attacks by armed groups were recorded, including 298 attacks by the military targeting civilians. Local communities suffered casualties, widespread destruction of public infrastructure, and forced displacement. Sagaing alone accounts for approximately 35% of all internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar, while food insecurity has become increasingly widespread. Under these circumstances, it is highly questionable whether local residents were even able to maintain their normal cooking practices, let alone benefit from the distribution and use of “improved cookstoves.”

CCC portrays women as the project’s primary beneficiaries, claiming that it reduces their domestic burdens. In reality, however, women have been excluded from decision-making while their unpaid labor has effectively been converted into carbon credits. One of the project’s monitoring reports shows that approximately 80% of the 231 surveyed households were represented by male heads of household, indicating that the voices of women — the primary users of the cookstoves — were inadequately reflected in the survey findings.

CCC also maintains that the project was implemented in accordance with international carbon market rules and that its emission reductions were quantified using approved methodologies. However, because of the ongoing conflict, the independent third-party validation was conducted remotely through online interviews without any on-site verification. During the validation process, only two women were interviewed.

We therefore express our profound concern that this project continues to operate in areas devastated by military attacks on civilians, in partnership with an institution controlled by Myanmar’s military junta, while portraying those affected by the violence as beneficiaries of the project.

Over-Crediting of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions Concerns

The project’s climate benefits have also been significantly overstated.

According to a quantitative assessment conducted by the European climate think tank Carbon Market Watch (CMW), the project received approval for approximately 7.2 times more PACM credits than the actual emissions reductions likely achieved — even if one accepts the controversial assumptions about biomass cookstove projects being capable of delivering emissions reductions. In other words, most of the credits your company secured through this project are ‘hot air.’

This over-crediting is not the result of a simple calculation error. Rather, it reflects fundamental flaws in the design of cookstove carbon credit methodologies. For years, academic researchers and international civil society organizations have warned that these methodologies systematically favor project developers by relying on unrealistic assumptions for key parameters—such as the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB) and stove stacking—rather than scientifically robust estimates. Most critically, the classification of biomass as “renewable” or “non-renewable” embodies a double standard: fuelwood collected and burned by women for household cooking is classified as “non-renewable biomass,” whereas industrial biomass combustion is routinely classified as “renewable.” As a result, systematic over-crediting has become an inherent feature of these methodologies.

In particular, AMS-II.G, the methodology on which this project is based, was identified in a 2024 peer-reviewed study as exhibiting the highest level of over-crediting among all cookstove methodologies. It also failed to meet the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) established by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), underscoring broader concerns about its environmental integrity.

We are also deeply concerned that these over-credited carbon credits could be used for compliance under the Korean Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS) or counted toward Korea’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). Allowing credits that do not represent genuine emission reductions to serve corporate compliance or national climate targets would undermine the environmental integrity of both systems.

This concern, moreover, is not limited to the quality of these particular credits. Even where an offset project does deliver genuine reductions, those reductions are cancelled out by the continued or increased fossil fuel emissions they are used to “offset” — at best, carbon offsetting is a zero-sum game, not a contribution to mitigation. Relying on it therefore weakens global efforts toward the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal by creating the appearance of progress while actual emissions continue.

On 11 June, Plan 1.5, the Myanmar Policy Institute, and other CSOs jointly published the report Carbon Credits Under Fire, documenting the human rights and environmental concerns outlined above in relation to the Myanmar cookstove project financed by your company. The report is the first comprehensive assessment of the project’s human rights and environmental impacts in the context of post-coup Myanmar.

In response, CCC has merely reiterated that “all procedures were properly followed,” while failing to provide evidence that the project could have been implemented under conditions consistent with international human rights standards following Myanmar’s attempted military coup.

Other Korean companies, including the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), withdrew from the project following Myanmar’s attempted military coup. According to CCC announcement of 15 June, the only remaining corporate participants are 12 SK Group affiliates, including SK Telecom. While other companies chose to disengage from the project after the coup, the SK Group continued its investment and subsequently received 648,783 PACM carbon credits.

Because these are the first carbon credits ever approved for issuance under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), they are receiving close scrutiny from civil society organizations around the world. Unless SK Telecom takes a forward-looking approach to both the use of these credits and its continued involvement in the project, it will be difficult to avoid criticism that its actions are inconsistent with its own ESG commitments. Conversely, by halting from the Myanmar cookstove project without further delay, SK Telecom has an opportunity to demonstrate that its Double Bottom Line (DBL) philosophy genuinely seeks to create both economic and social value.

Accordingly, we respectfully urge SK Telecom to take the following actions:

1. Terminate its investment in the Myanmar cookstove project and commit not to convert the PACM carbon credits already approved for issuance through the project into Korean Offset Credits (KOCs) for compliance use under the Korean Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS).

2. Refrain from selling the PACM carbon credits generated by this project to third parties through the voluntary carbon market or allowing them to be counted toward Korea’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

3. Establish a robust due diligence and verification framework to rigorously assess greenhouse gas mitigation outcomes, additionality, and human rights impacts across all future international mitigation projects — not only cookstove projects.

We will be publishing the responses and lack thereof to this letter and would very much appreciate your reply to these requests by August 24th.

Should you have any questions or wish to discuss these issues further, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Plan 1.5, and 28 Global Civil Society Organizations and Coalitions.

60+ Climate Action · Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Griffith University · BigWave — Youth Climate Action Group · Biofuelwatch · Blue Dalian · Campaign for a New Myanmar · Carbon Market Watch · Climate Communications Coalition · Colectivo VientoSur · Earth Ethics, Inc. · Extinction Rebellion Korea · Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) · Global Forest Coalition · Global Justice Ecology Project · Green Korea United · Indigenous Environmental Network · Institute for Green Transformation(IGT) · International Campaign for the Rohingya · Korean Civil Society in Support of Democracy in Myanmar · Korean Federation for Environmental Movement(KFEM) · Korean Women’s Environmental Network(KWEN) · Link-AR Borneo · Myanmar Policy Institute · No Business With Genocide · Plan 1.5 · Practicing Buddhist Monk’s Association · Rainforest Action Network · Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente(RedAfros)

Contact:

Sooyoun Han
Policy Activist, Plan 1.5
sooyoun (a) plan15.org

Pranab Doley and four other Indigenous leaders, Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia, were arrested on 12 July 2026. The arrests followed protests against a planned five-star luxury tourist hotel by the Hyatt Group close to the Kaziranga National Park in northeastern India.

Pranab Doley’s case was heard on 27 July 2026 and the court granted him bail on 29 July 2026. But the following day the state of Assam invoked the National Security Act to keep Pranab in prison. Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia have been released on bail.

REDD-Monitor wrote about the arrests and the brutal model of fortress conservation carried out at Kaziranga national park here. The arrests have received widespread international condemnation, from Indigenous Peoples organisations and UN special rapporteurs.

Last week, I posted a statement by the Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA), condemning the arrests. CNAPA is collecting signatures in support of the statement — please sign on by sending an email to CNAPA.

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CNAPA has now issued a new statement, condemning the National Security Act charges against Pranab Doley. Please share this statement widely and please sign on to CNAPA’s previous statement.

Statement Condemning Baseless NSA Charges on Human Rights Defender Pranab Doley and Criminalisation of Indigenous Resistance in Kaziranga

by the Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA)
2 August 2026

The Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA), while welcoming the bail orders for the release of Indigenous leader and human rights defender Pranab Doley, Convenor of the Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Protection Committee (GKLHRPC) and founding member, CNAPA, along with four other Indigenous community leaders – Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia of GKLHRPC, strongly condemns and opposes the baseless and illegal slapping of charges under National Security Act (NSA), 1980 on Pranab Doley. We are relieved that Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia have been released from Golaghat jail in Assam and have reunited with their comrades, communities and families. Pranab continues to be incarcerated in Golaghat jail due to the fresh NSA charges slapped against him on 30th July, 2026, a day after his bail in the primary case in which he and the other four leaders of GKLHRPC were arrested on 12th and 14th July 2026.

CNAPA continues calling out the continued targeting of Adivasi/Indigenous/Tribal community leaders and political activists resisting the dispossession of Indigenous lands in the Kaziranga region for destructive greenwashing projects like tiger conservation and tourism.

Of Bail Orders and Bail Rejections

While Pranab, Amit, Brijit, Rajib and Bhaskar have got bail in FIR no 108/2026 of Bokakhat Police Station, the anticipatory bail applications of women leaders Geeta Gowala, Mrinali Gowala and Srimoti Kishan were rejected by the District Sessions Judge, Golaghat, Assam. CNAPA is concerned about the rejection of the anticipatory bail of the women leaders, which makes them vulnerable to continuous harassment and threats of arrest at any time. In fact, our worries have doubled with the recent news that the Adivasi women from Inlay Pathar do not even have a ‘safe space’ to protect themselves. They are being visited by senior police officers in the dead of the night with threats, even when they are sitting in front of the police station throughout the day demanding recognition of their ancestral land back, which was illegally grabbed from them without their consent by the Assam Tourism Development Corporation for the construction of luxury Hyatt hotels through its Indian partner Juniper Hotels.

We reiterate that no one should face the trauma that the women leaders are being subjected to relentlessly, and anticipatory bail is a right of the women leaders of Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli facing false and fabricated criminal cases against them.

Assam and the Statecraft of Arm-twisting

CNAPA expresses its shock and anger at the way in which the Assam Government under Himanta Biswa Sharma has subverted justice by serving fresh NSA charges on Pranab Doley even as his bail release papers were being prepared on 29th July 2026. It may be noted that the Assam Government issued a communication for grounds of detention on 30th July 2026 under Section 8 (1) of the NSA, 1980. The notice was then served to Pranab’s father at their ancestral home on 31st July 2026, stating that he is being detained under Section 3 (2) of the NSA, 1980. The sequence of events reveal the deliberate attempt of the Assam Government to wait for his bail to be given in the primary case he was arrested in and then use NSA, almost as an afterthought, to further detain him and thereby demoralise him and Indigenous/Tribal/Adivasi peoples and other marginalized sections of Greater Kaziranga who have been fighting against state-led violence on their lands and bodies through fake encounters, custodial murders, forced disappearances apart from forced evictions and land grabbing in the name of tourism, tiger, elephant and rhino conservation.

This post-bail invoking of the NSA on Pranab Doley clearly points to the fact that the Assam Government subverted the order of a sessions court. During the hearing and even later, the judge repeatedly warned the Investigating Officers of the case to submit the full case diary and not come up with fresh charges after orders were pronounced. While granting bail on 29th July, Additional Sessions Judge N.M. Abdullah Ahmed stated that, “the present dispute arises from deep concern over environmental degradation and its impact on the socio-cultural fabric of the local tea-tribe community.” The bail order further stated, “where environmental conservation intersects with indigenous life, the ordinary machinery of criminal law cannot be used to suppress local concerns. Genuine public peace is achieved not by silencing the affected people, but by listening to them.” It also stated, “it is also necessary to mention here that, in cases involving marginalised groups such as tea-tribe communities, structural inequality prevents the local community from negotiating on equal terms with corporate or state entities. In such a situation, treating an activist or community leader as an ‘external disruptive element’ does not lead to any productive outcome.”

But a reading of the NSA order detaining Pranab Doley under the NSA reveals something totally contradictory to what the Sessions Judge stated. It is clear the Assam Government seems to believe that this preventive detention is in the interest of maintaining the security of the state and public order. And to substantiate this claim, the Commissioner of Home and Political Department, Assam, has made references to Pranab Doley’s international travels which were for making representations on behalf of the people of Kaziranga against the violence and injustices they were facing at different United Nations conventions like the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and treaty body meetings of the UN Special Rapporteur on Business and Human Rights Group. In fact, regarding Pranab Doley’s foreign travels, the Sessions Judge had noted that, as an environmental activist, Pranab Doley has travelled to many foreign countries and may have received money for travel and other expenses in that process, and that investigating officers can carry out a “document-based investigation” “without requiring the judicial custody of the accused.” Yet Pranab Doley is in jail under a baseless and fabricated NSA order of detention.

The Assam Government seems to have mastered the statecraft of arm-twisting voices of dissent through false and fabricated criminal cases and prolonged illegal incarceration. It must be emphasised that this has been a pattern with the Assam Police, and they had earlier done the same with farmer leader Akhil Gogoi and now have repeated it with Pranab Doley.

Making a Mockery of National Security

It is pertinent to raise questions around whose interest ‘national security’ has been invoked. The BJP-led Government has been fencing off forests in the name of fortress conservation and selling off Indigenous/Adivasi lands to international luxury hotel groups in the name of tourism and GDP growth, continuing colonial traditions. Here are Pranab Doley and his comrades of Greater Kaziranga who have been questioning the growing structural inequalities, resisting dispossession and demanding recognition of forest and land rights for communities for decades. It is time that across India, people understand the fundamental basis of these Indigenous/Adivasi communities’ struggles and question who is making a mockery of ‘national security’! It is in this context that we want to remind everyone of Bishnu Prasad Rabha’s famous revolutionary verse “Raijye ache duiti patha, Ekti kalo, ekti sadathe, Raijyer jodi mongol chao, Duiti pathar boli dao” [there are two sacrificial goats in the state/one black, the other white;/if you want the best for people/then sacrifice both].

CNAPA therefore calls upon the Government of Assam to:

• Immediately release Pranab Doley and drop arbitrary and baseless NSA charges on him.

• Withdraw all fabricated criminal charges filed against peaceful protesters and human rights defenders in Kaziranga.

• Ensure an independent and impartial inquiry into the allegations of unlawful detention, procedural violations, and the reported use of excessive force during the protests.

• Suspend all construction and land acquisition activities of the Hyatt Luxury Hotels project at Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli.

• Recognise and respect land rights and revenue claims of the affected communities through transparent and lawful processes.

• Immediately stop exclusionary and militarised models of fortress conservation and ensure a democratic, rights-based approach that recognises Adivasi/Tribal/Indigenous peoples and local communities as custodians of biodiverse habitats.

CNAPA, a national coalition of indigenous peoples and forest-dwelling communities, Gram Sabha/Village Council federations, activists, journalists and academics from across India, stands unconditionally with the people of Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli. It condemns the Home and Political Department of the Assam Government, Kaziranga’s Forest Department and Bokakhat Police and Assam’s paramilitary troops’ attempts to intimidate, forcefully evict and illegally acquire lands for luxury Hyatt Hotels in Kaziranga.

In February 2021, Madagascar signed an agreement with the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). Under the agreement, FCPF would buy US$50 million worth of carbon credits generated by forests covered by the Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme.

The money was to be paid in three installments for carbon credits generated between 2000 and 2024.

The first payment (US$8.8 million) came in December 2023, for emissions reductions in 2000. Since then, nothing. The remaining payments are pending, subject to verification.

Payments are supposed to pay for conservation, including payments to local community groups, that play a key role in forest protection in Madagascar.

But in a recent report, Lynda Andriatsitonta, an investigative journalist with the Malina network, found that in practice, “implementation remains hampered by payment delays, a lack of consultation, and opaque decision-making processes”.

Andriatsitonta told Radio France International that,

“In terms of sharing the benefits of the program, 5% of the revenues from carbon credits are allocated to local communities, as a reward for their efforts to protect forests. We found that, despite the payment of a first tranche of World Bank funding, many local communities have still not received the benefits for them. Some even did not know that these rewards existed.”

The Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme

The FCPF’s Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme consists of 15 REDD projects in Madagascar which in total cover 10% of the country.

In total, 119 communes in and around these projects are supposed to benefit from the money from the sales of carbon credits.

80% of the money is supposed to go to the local area of the 15 REDD projects. The vast majority of the money, 60%, is allocated for “REDD initiatives”. 5% goes to communes, 2% is for monitoring activities by communes, and 8% is for social services and security in the communes. Only 5% goes to local communities.

The Malina team carried out a survey in the Alaotra-Mangoro region between June and November 2025, to find out whether the World Bank’s carbon credit money is actually reaching local communities.

They found that in Fierenena, Didy, and Andasibe local community groups “often do not know the exact amount of their share, or have not received it”.

Andriatsitonta reported bureaucratic delays and commune activities taking precedent over local communities. “Two years after the first payment, local beneficiaries are still waiting,” she writes.

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Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor

One of the protected areas included in the Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme is the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor, which is managed by Conservation International.

There are 11 community-based organisations in the commune of Fierenena. These organisations, called Vondron’olona Ifotony in Malagasy, are responsible for environmental protection at the local level.

Part of the Fierenena commune overlaps the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor. Of the 11 community-based organisations, six were supposed to receive carbon payments. But the local communities still do not know the exact amount of their share.

According to the benefit sharing plan for the Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme, each community-based organisation should participate in the development of a land-use plan. But Andriatsitonta reports that the “consultation seems to have been ignored”.

During discussions with the authorities, the Indigenous Peoples highlighted that they needed access to agricultural equipment, irrigation infrastructure, and the supply of seeds to improve production.

Andriatsitonta reports that Conservation International asked the mayor to develop a land-use plan — without consulting local communities. The money was to be spent on corrugated iron sheets, cement, and paint to renovate schools.

“The money intended for local communities was determined based on the requests of the communities and the municipality,” Conservation International’s Rameson Hariniaina told Malina.

The communities disagree with this version of events.

Ranaivoson Dieu Donné, president of the Fierenena local community group told Malina that,

“The idea regarding the use of the money did not come from the local communities. It was the mayor who was tasked by Conservation International with drawing up the budget.”

Conservation International only told the local communities that the carbon credit money existed after the mayor had presented his land-use plan. Nevertheless local communities agreed to request materials to renovate schools, even though this was not their idea.

Some villagers remain confused and upset. “Why aren’t our views taken into account?” one villager asked. “And why does the amount allocated to us remain unclear?”

Haingomanantsoa Rija Tahiana is head of REDD in Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. He told Malina that the mayor is not involved in deciding how the money is spent, although his opinion could be sought. Conservation International is responsible for allocating the money to local communities and develops the land-use plan together with the communities.

Malina reports Haingomanantsoa Rija Tahiana as saying that the process was fast-tracked for the first payment and the consultations “may not have been entirely exhaustive”.

By November 2025, the Fierenena and Didy local community groups had still not received their money — two years after the first World Bank payment for carbon credits. A payment planned for December 2025 was delayed.

The sapphire rush

Back in 2016, research published in Global Environmental Change raised the alarm that REDD could exacerbate poverty. The authors note the “growing concerns that REDD+ could exacerbate poverty in forest-edge communities by restricting access to land and forest resources, especially for those with insecure tenure”.

Speaking to the BBC, one of the authors Julia Jones of Bangor University, explained that the people receiving benefits from the REDD project “tended to be more socially connected; members of local forestry management committees, and they were – on average – richer or, at least, less poor”.

Things took a serious turn for the worse later in 2016 when somewhere around 45,000 people moved into the area to mine for sapphires. Miners cut down large areas of forest. Conservation International asked the government to call in the army.

REDD-Monitor sent some questions to Conservation International about the situation in the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor, but did not receive a response.

In 2020, Hayley Dixon, a journalist with The Telegraph, reported from the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor. By then, the REDD project was part of the World Bank’s Atiala Atsinanana Emissions Reductions Programme. Dixon found that “significant areas” of forest had been cleared.

Julia Jones told The Telegraph that the money from sales of carbon credits had to reach the people who were destroying the forest. But this has not happened. The money isn’t even reaching the communities in Madagascar that are trying to save the forests.

On 12 July 2026, Indigenous human rights defender Pranab Doley was arrested together with four other Indigenous community leaders, Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia. The police did not produce an arrest warrant.

The arrests followed protests against a five-star luxury tourist hotel by the Hyatt Group in Inglay Pathar, close to the Kaziranga National Park in India.

Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about the arrests and the brutal fortress conservation carried out at the national park. Several Indigenous organisations and UN experts have demanded the release of the Indigenous community leaders:

Earlier today, I received a message stating that Doley is still in police custody.

The Community Network Against Protected Areas put out a statement on 18 July 2026, condemning the Indigenous leaders’ arrests.

CNAPA is currently collecting signatures to the statement — please sign on by sending an email to CNAPA:

Please share the statement as widely as possible — and encourage others to sign on.

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Statement Condemning the Arrest of Human Rights Defender Pranab Doley and the Criminalisation of Indigenous Resistance in Kaziranga

by the Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA)
18 July 2026

The Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA) strongly condemns the arbitrary arrest of Indigenous leader and human rights defender Pranab Doley, Convenor of the Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Protection Committee (GKLHRPC) and founding member, CNAPA, along with four other Indigenous community leaders – Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia of GKLHRPC and calls out the continued targeting of Adivasi Indigenous community leaders and political activists resisting the dispossession of Indigenous lands in the Kaziranga region for destructive greenwashing projects like tiger conservation, tourism and luxury resorts, etc.

Pranab Doley was detained arbitrarily by Assam Police on 12 July 2026 in Guwahati without being furnished an arrest memo at the time of his detention. Pranab’s grounds of arrest were communicated at 3 am in the morning of 13th July 2026, many hours after he had been taken into custody. His residence was reportedly searched without a warrant, and electronic devices and several other items were seized several times. Pranab, Amit and Brijit continue to be in police custody till Monday (20th July 2026), while Rajib and Bhaskar are in judicial custody after their surrender before the Sub Divisional Judicial Magistrate Bokakhat on 14th July 2026. Besides this, several activists associated with the movement against the land acquisition for luxury resort – including Geeta Gowala, Mrinali Gowala, Srimoti Kishan etc – face criminal prosecution under serious offences and have been subjected to police atrocities. These illegal detentions, arrests and intimidations raise grave concerns regarding how Indigenous people are being criminalised for raising their voice against land grab as well as the violation of due process of law and the fundamental constitutional rights of citizens as guaranteed in law.

These arrests cannot be viewed in isolation. They are part of a larger pattern of criminalising democratic dissent by communities opposing the acquisition of Adivasi Indigenous agricultural and grazing lands at Inlay Pathar and Hatikhuli, adjoining Kaziranga National Park, for a proposed luxury tourism project by Hyatt International and its Indian partner Juniper Hotels. The affected families have consistently stated that they have cultivated these lands for generations, possess long-standing revenue records, and were neither meaningfully consulted nor provided Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) before their lands were fenced off and construction activities commenced. The people of Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli, along with leaders like Pranab Doley, have repeatedly engaged in dialogue with Kaziranga officials and the Golaghat District Administration for over four years, but instead of recognising their rights and addressing the issue, they were chased, beaten and abused on every occasion and were called illegal encroachers.

The communities whose agricultural and homestead lands are being stolen for the construction of the Hyatt Luxury resort belong to the Tea Tribe and Adivasi communities whose ancestors were brought to Assam under colonial systems of indentured labour. Despite generations of labour that contributed significantly to Assam’s economy and landscape, Tea Tribes and Adivasi communities continue to experience historical marginalisation and insecure land tenure. The current struggle is therefore not merely about land, but a larger resistance for dignity, livelihood, identity, the constitutional promise of equality and justice and the historical injustice meted out against these communities.

The protests that emerged in June 2026 were fundamentally about defending these rights. The Assam government’s response to the people’s peaceful mobilisation against the resort was the slapping of arbitrary criminal charges with a clear intention to harass leaders as well as stifle people’s voices. The arbitrary allegations include trespassing, carrying of weapons, outraging modesty of women police personnel among several others, which has created a chilling effect on democratic protests. This further sends a disturbing message that the police enjoy unquestioning impunity and that communities asserting their constitutional rights shall be treated as nothing but criminals.

Arbitrary arrests and violent repression of Indigenous leaders expose the broader link between the fortress model of conservation and extractive development that CNAPA has been consistently questioning.

Across India, many protected areas continue to be governed through a colonial “fortress-conservation” approach that views local and Adivasi Indigenous communities as obstacles to conservation rather than custodians of forests and biodiverse habitats. The Kaziranga region has, for decades, witnessed intensive militarised conservation, including arbitrary shoot-at-sight orders. Such an approach has repeatedly generated allegations of excessive use of force, arbitrary detention, fake encounters, intimidation, restrictions on traditional access to land and forests, leading to shrinking democratic space for communities living in and around so-called protected areas. Conservation cannot become a justification for land grab, criminalising Indigenous leaders, weakening constitutional protections or diminishing people’s civil liberties.

Long before the establishment of modern protected area regimes, Indigenous and forest-dependent communities coexisted with the forests, grasslands, wetlands and wildlife of the Brahmaputra region through locally evolved systems of stewardship and coexistence. Replacing these relationships with the exclusionary fortress-conservation model, while simultaneously permitting large-scale commercial tourism infrastructure in ecologically sensitive forest lands, reveals a troubling contradiction.

Ecological integrity can only be ensured only if the knowledge and rights of local communities are recognised and respected as people whose lives have historically been intertwined with ecosystems, rather than handing over vast tracts of forest lands for eco-tourism, hotels, mining and other commercial projects. All these are projects wear the mask of conservation but, in reality, are large-scale real estate brokering.

The arbitrary arrests of Pranab Doley, Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu and Bhaskar Saikia are not merely just arrests of individuals, but they represent a broader tactic to silence Indigenous voices who challenge the systemic historical oppression of their communities and defend their ancestral lands, forests and livelihoods.

CNAPA therefore calls upon the Government of Assam to:

• Immediately release Pranab Doley, Amit Nag, Brijit Kutum, Rajib Pegu & Bhaskar Saikia who have been arrested in connection with the protests at Inlay Pathar and

• Withdraw all fabricated criminal charges filed against peaceful protesters and human rights defenders in Kaziranga.

• Ensure an independent and impartial inquiry into the allegations of unlawful detention, procedural violations, and the reported use of excessive force during the protests.

• Suspend all construction and land acquisition activities of the Hyatt Luxury Hotels project at Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli.

• Recognise and respect rights and claims of affected communities through transparent and lawful processes.

• Immediate stop to exclusionary and militarised models of fortress conservation and ensure a democratic, rights-based conservation that recognises Indigenous peoples and local communities as custodians of biodiverse habitats.

CNAPA, a national coalition of Indigenous peoples and forest-dwelling communities, Gram Sabha/Village Council federations, activists, journalists and academics from across India, stands unconditionally with the people of Inlay Pathar and Hatikuli. It condemns Kaziranga’s Forest Department and Bokakhat Police and Assam’s paramilitary troops’ attempts to intimidate, forcefully evict and illegally acquire lands for Hyatt Luxury Hotels in Kaziranga.

JK Thimma, CNAPA leader and member of the Jenu Kuruba indigenous community of Nagarahole, Karnataka, said:

“The Assam Government and Kaziranga forest department must stop imposing the Hyatt Luxury Hotels project on Indigenous lands. If criminalisation of Indigenous leaders resisting dispossession from their ancestral lands does not stop, Indigenous communities all across India will unite to challenge the continuing historical injustice meted out against us. CNAPA stands in solidarity with the affected Tea Tribe and Adivasi communities of Kaziranga and reiterates that ecological integrity, Indigenous rights and social justice are inseparable. Conservation cannot be built upon dispossession, fear and the erosion of fundamental rights.”

On behalf of CNAPA :

1. Nagarahole Adivasi Jammapale Hakku Sthapana Samithi, Nagarahole, Karnataka

2. Tamil Nadu Tribal People’s Association, Tamil Nadu

3. Kendriya Sangharsh Samiti, Palamu, Jharkhand

4. Van Sanrakshan Sangrami Mancha, Chandubi, Assam

5. Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Committee, Kaziranga, Assam

6. All Assam Forum for Forest Dependent Communities, Morigaon, Assam

7. Tharu Adivasi Mahila Mazdoor Kisan Manch, Dudhwa, Uttar Pradesh

8. Maa Mati Suraksha Samiti, Similipal, Mayurbhanj, Odisha

9. Gram Sabha Federation, Sitanadi, Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh

10. Gram Sabha Federation, Udanti, Gariabandh, Chhattisgarh

11. PESA & Forest Rights Committee, Padmaram Gram Panchayat, Appapuram, Telangana

12. PESA & Forest Rights Committee, Padmaram Gram Panchayat, Pulitheegalabanda, Telangana

13. Vivasayigal Thozhilalargal Munnetra Sangam, Tamil Nadu

14. Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan, Uttarakhand

15. Achanakmar Sangharsh Samiti, Mungeli, Chhattisgarh

16. Sundarbans Jana Sramajibi Mancha, Sundarbans, West Bengal

17. West Bengal Jana Sramajibi Mancha, West Bengal

18. Adivasi Sakti Sangathan, Chhattisgarh

19. Baiga Sakti Sangathan, Achanakmar, Chhattisgarh

20. National Adivasi Alliance

21. Search for Action and Knowledge of Tribal Initiative, Telangana

22. Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, Gujarat

23. Fridays for Future, Karnataka

24. All India Union of Forest Working People

25. Kaimur Adivasi Dalit Adhikar Manch, Uttar Pradesh

Signatories (list in progress):

Undisciplined Environments collective, Global
Deverso Percorso Decoloniale collective, Global
Laura Pipolo, Independent Researcher, Italy
Emanuele Leonardi, Associate Professor, University of Bologna, Italy
Marco Armiero, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Chiara Caterina Razzano, Research Fellow, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Italy
Héctor Bujari Santorum, Journalist, Spain/Western Sahara
Valentina Delli Gatti, Activist Anthropologist, Mem.med, Italy
Leonardo Falascone, Artist, Italy
Benedetta Casagrande, Artist, Italy
Stefani Petrillo, United States of America
Michele Marrone, Italy
Nicola Capone, Philosopher and Activist, Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy
Federico Moraschinelli, Independent Writer and Graphic Designer, Italy
Marisol Manfredi, PhD Student, University of Pisa, Italy/Argentina
Luan Derick Carvalho Pinheiro, Teacher, Spain
Mario Scrima, Public Employee, Italy
Alice Dal Gobbo, Researcher and Activist, University of Trento, Italy
Emma Dalmazzoni, Student and Bookseller, University Bicocca of Milan, Italy
Mariana Eugenia Califano, Independent Historian, Italy
Jadel Andreetto, Writer and Documentarist, Italy
Resistenze in Cirenaica, Permanent Cultural Centre, Italy
Giulia Pochini, Data Officer, Peace Brigades International, Italy
Olivia Burchietti, PhD Student, Scuola Normale Superiore University, Italy
Giovanni Ricolfi, Commercial Employee, Italy

The NGO Forest Coalition has sent a letter to the UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, calling for urgent action to stop global deforestation. In June 2026, the government (under Keir Starmer) published a policy paper on strengthening the UK’s approach to global deforestation, with the aim of decoupling UK consumption from global deforestation.

The NGO Forest Coalition letter calls on the UK government to:

• Restore the UK’s International Climate Finance and increase direct funding to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, in line with the Forest and Land Tenure Pledge; and

• Implement the Government’s commitment to introduce robust deforestation regulations without further delay.

Earlier this year, the UK government published a bombshell report titled “Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security.” The report warns that “Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity.” Critical ecosystems that support food production areas and global climate, water, and weather cycles are “most important for UK national security”.

But the report that the government published is only part of the story — and even that was only released following a freedom of information request. An internal version of the full report, seen by The Times, goes much further.

The Times reports that the full report describes a “reasonable worst case scenario”. Many ecosystems around the world are so stressed that they could soon pass a tipping point. Once this tipping point is reached ecosystems degrade regardless of conservation measures taken to protect them. The full report states that forests in Canada and Russia could pass a tipping point by 2030, along with glaciers in the Himalayas that feed rivers that two billion people depend on.

Shortly after the abridged version of the report was published, the government cut climate finance by 20%.

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The NGO Forest Coalition letter is posted in full here — it can also be downloaded here:

28 July 2026

To: Andy Burnham MP, Prime Minister

CC: Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary
CC: Dame Angela Eagle, DBE MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
CC: Miatta Fahnbulleh MP, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
CC: Kirsty McNeill MP, Minister for International Development and Africa

Dear Prime Minister,

Ending global deforestation

We are writing on behalf of the NGO Forest Coalition, a coalition of UK NGOs working to end global deforestation, to congratulate you on becoming Prime Minister. The UK is a global leader in efforts to protect tropical forests and uphold the rights of forest peoples, and we look to you to sustain and strengthen this leadership in the years ahead. As the architect of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests, endorsed by more than 130 countries, the UK has committed to halting and reversing forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

With the clock ticking, we look to you to provide leadership on the following in support of ending global deforestation:

• Restoring the UK’s International Climate Finance to previous levels and increasing direct financing for Indigenous Peoples and local communities in line with the Forest and Land Tenure Pledge made at COP30.

• Implementing with urgency the government’s 23 June announcement on the UK’s approach to deforestation regulations.

Action to end global deforestation is urgent because:

Global deforestation poses a national security threat. Deforestation-driven biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are high-level threats to UK national security according to the government’s own national security assessment report.

UK businesses are calling for robust forest risk commodity regulations and close alignment with the EU Deforestation Regulation, saying that a clear policy environment is good for business. The UK Cocoa Coalition and the Retail Soy Group have called for the UK government to adopt forest risk commodity legislation because the delay is causing market confusion.

Financial institutions want to see an end to global deforestation, recognising that it poses a material risk. They want to see supply chain regulation and have called for mandatory financial due diligence to end the financing of deforestation.

Nature loss is bad for economic growth. Nature loss – including deforestation – could cause a 12% hit to the country’s GDP – larger than the impact of the global financial crisis or Covid-19. Around half of UK nature-related risks come from overseas, through supply chains and financial exposures.

Since the Environment Act was passed in 2021, more than 54,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed to produce goods imported to the UK. The impacts extend far beyond the loss of trees, threatening the rights, territories and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who depend on these forests and play a vital role in protecting them.

Ending deforestation is a key part of tackling climate change – deforestation contributes 11% of global carbon emissions, surpassing those from aviation and cement production. Furthermore, when we lose forests, we lose a key means of restoring climate stability for future generations.

Public support for action is strong. Polling in October 2025 by More in Common for Global Witness and WWF-UK found that 76% of Britons support the UK’s commitment to end deforestation by 2030, including a majority of Reform voters.

As we await the publication of the Responsible Business Conduct review we also call for new legislation in the form of a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act (BHREA): mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation that requires all businesses, financial institutions, and the public sector to address and prevent environmental and human rights harms in their global value chains. This would complement UK regulations on deforestation, further align the UK with EU legislation and has strong support from UK business.

Ending deforestation is good for the UK’s national security and good for business, biodiversity, climate and human rights. We look forward to working with you to achieve this.

Yours faithfully on behalf of the undersigned,

Signatories:

Matthew Owen, Director, Cool Earth
Rubens Carvalho, Deputy Director, Earthsight
Faith Doherty, Forest Programme Lead, Environmental Investigation Agency
Julia Christian, Co-Campaigns Coordinator, Fern
Asad Rehman, Chief Executive, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Helen Bellfield, Deputy Executive Director, Global Canopy
Alex Reid, Deputy Director of Campaigns, Global Witness
Gemma Hoskins, Global Climate Director, Mighty Earth
Joe Eisen, Executive, Rainforest Foundation UK
Gavin Crowden - Director of Advocacy WWF UK

The 48th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee is currently taking place in Busan, South Korea. One of the decisions to be made during the meeting involves the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. The Maasai living in Ngorongoro are facing mass evictions.

In the lead up to the World Heritage Committee meeting, Survival International set up an email action. More than 6,500 people have sent an email to the World Heritage Committee demanding that the evictions stop. “Ngorongoro is Maasai land and they have protected it for generations,” Survival International writes. “No place where such abuse occurs deserves the title of World Heritage Site.”

The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance wrote to the World Heritage Committee calling on them to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and international law.

The Oakland Institute also wrote an open letter pointing out to the World Heritage Committee that Ngorongoro cannot be a World Heritage Site and an eviction zone. “If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians,” the Oakland Institute writes, “then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.”

Adopted without discussion

In Busan, the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance reports that the decision on Ngorongoro “has now been adopted without discussion” by the World Heritage Committee.

“The Committee’s draft decision is still leaning on a framing that rangeland science abandoned decades ago,” Michael Brown, author and consultant, commented on REDD-Monitor. Brown cites several studies that show that “in semi-arid rangelands like Ngorongoro, rainfall variability — not grazing pressure — drives vegetation dynamics, and drought keeps herds well below any theoretical ‘carrying capacity’.”

Brown writes that,

“Consultation” without FPIC [free, prior and informed consent] isn’t a compromise — it’s the same relocation logic with better PR. Delist on hold the line on FPIC; there’s no third option that respects both the science and the people who’ve been managing this landscape the longest.

While the Tanzanian government has cut social services to the Maasai for several years, it is lobbying UNESCO to back a plan to upgrade the main tourist road linking the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti National Park. The government describes this as a “climate adaptation measure” rather than an expansion of tourist infrastructure inside a World Heritage Site. The government is spending about US$4.8 million on roads in Serengeti as part of a plan to increase revenues from tourism.

Masiaya Yonas Laiser represented the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance in Busan and gave a short statement to the World Heritage Committee:

Thank you Mr. Chairperson. I speak before you to represent the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance and Indigenous Peoples’ platform and the Maasai Indigenous People of the Ngorongoro area. We appreciate the Committee’s decisions from previous years which support the continuation of the multiple land-use plan which has served as the foundational basis for the establishment of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and is based on an agreement with the Maasai Indigenous People that ensured the area to remain a multiple land-use area after their eviction from the Serengeti.

The Maasai firmly condemn any attempt to dismantle this multiple land-use management approach. Doing so would constitute a major violation of our fundamental rights. It would signal a drastic shift in the management framework of this property. Such changes must never be undertaken without the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples. Most critically, they require the free, prior and informed consent of the Maasai residents of Ngorongoro.

We strongly echo the Committee’s request that the State Party submit the reports of the full reports of the Presidential Commissions of Inquiry. The State Party continues to reference these documents, yet they remain hidden from both the public and this Committee. The Maasai Peoples of Ngorongoro have contested many times the legitimacy and formation of these Commissions from the outset.

The property has been managed without a General Management Plan for more than ten years now, since the previous plan expired in 2016. This has resulted in management that excludes the Indigenous community and has contributed to unplanned tourism development, including hotels being constructed in environmentally sensitive areas.

True and sustainable conservation cannot exist with human rights violations. Any plan to forcibly relocate the Maasai community from their land as well as the Maasai cultural values in the OUV [Outstanding Universal Value] of the property is detrimental to its integrity.

No conservation without rights, no World Heritage without people!

Thank you chair.

Transparency? Constructive dialogue?

During a side event in Busan, Tanzania’s Ambassador to France and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, Saidi Yakubu, is reported to have said that the country “believes sustainable conservation of World Heritage Sites depends on transparency, constructive dialogue, and close cooperation between governments, communities living around protected areas, and the international community.”

The Tanzanian government formed two commissions to look at Ngorongoro in December 2024. During the three month process, the commissions were supposed to release their findings at regular intervals. Yet the government shared no information and has still not published the reports.

This is clearly neither transparency, not constructive dialogue.

Instead of listening to the Maasai’s concerns and upholding their rights as Indigenous Peoples, Tanzania has invited UNESCO, IUCN, and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to carry out a “Reactive Monitoring Mission” to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

To make matters worse, the Tanzanian government appointed Lekisongo Meijo and Lekoko Lepilal to participate in the meeting in Busan. Almost 100 Maasai have signed on to an “Urgent Denunciation” which states that “These individuals are regime-appointed imposters who possess no legitimate, moral, or cultural mandate to speak on behalf of our Maasai community.”

Their denunciation is posted in full below. It is also available in Swahili here.

25 July 2026

To: The Secretariat of UNESCO, the World Heritage Committee (WHC), and all Delegates Attending the WHC meeting in Busan, Korea

Subject: Urgent Denunciation of Fraudulent Representation of Lekisongo Meijo and Lekoko Lepilal as Maasai Representatives at the WHC

We, the Maasai Peoples of Ngorongoro, write to formally denounce the participation of Lekisongo Meijo and Lekoko Lepilal to the 48th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Busan, Republic of Korea, where the status of Ngorongoro World Heritage Site was discussed. These individuals are regime-appointed imposters who possess no legitimate, moral, or cultural mandate to speak on behalf of our Maasai community. The government has unilaterally handpicked and embedded these individuals within the official state delegation for a specific political objective, to manufacture the illusion of Maasai consent to relocate. By parading these proxies at international fora like UNESCO, the regime aims to mislead the international community into believing that the Maasai support the ongoing campaigns of “voluntary relocation” while land dispossession and human rights violations are happening in Ngorongoro. This is an attempt by the government to weaponize international platforms to rubber-stamp the eviction of our people from our ancestral lands. We will not let this happen.

Lekisongo Meijo and Lekoko Lepilal should NOT be recognised as Indigenous Maasai representatives but as members of the Tanzanian government delegation.

Here are the reasons why we reject these individuals as our representatives at the UNESCO meeting in Busan:

1. Illegitimacy Under Maasai Customary Law: Traditional Maasai governance does not recognize a singular “supreme leader,” king, or central chairperson. This autocratic structure is completely foreign to Maasai culture. It has been imposed by are not decision-makers. Rather, their role is to mediate community issues and make sure decisions made are just and considerate.

2. No Traditional Status: Lekisongo Meijo holds no genuine traditional title. He is not an Alaigwanani (traditional leader), nor has he been granted any temporary mandate to represent Maasai interests in Ngorongoro.

3. No Geographic or Familial Ties: Neither Lekisongo Meijo nor Lepilal originate from or maintain ancestral roots in Ngorongoro. They hold zero cultural or familial ties to the specific Maasai communities currently facing displacement.

4. History of State Co-optation: Since 2022, the Tanzanian Presidency and Prime Minister have openly weaponized Lekisongo Meijo as a proxy to divide the Maasai community and falsely claim Maasai backing for state-led forced relocation plans in Ngorongoro. These attempts have failed. Lekisongo is also implicated in the violent operation that took place in Loliondo in 2022.

5. Violation of International Human Rights Norms: Elevating state imposters to speak for a community targeted through all power and violent machineries of the state directly violates the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). This deceptive arrangement stands in absolute contradiction to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the fundamental humanitarian values that UNESCO is bound to uphold.

We urgently request UNESCO and all participating delegates to:

1. Not recognize Lekisongo Meijo nor Lepilal as representatives of the Maasai Indigenous Peoples, and re-classify them exclusively as part of the Tanzanian government delegation.

2. Refuse to recognize any statement, agreements, or concessions made by these individuals regarding Maasai ancestral lands.

On 23 July 2026, in the New York Southern District Court, Renwick Haddow, the scammer behind the Bitcoin Store and Bar Works Ponzi schemes, was sentenced to 54 months in prison and ordered him to pay more than US$58 million back to the victims of his scams.

REDD-Monitor first wrote about the Bar Works scam in January 2017:

I had been following Haddow’s career as a scammer since August 2013. He was the ringleader behind a UK company called Capital Alternatives and involved with a large network of scam companies. In a 2015 article, investigative journalist Khadija Sharife made a “conservative estimate” that the fraud network had extracted a total of US$180 million from retail investors “using a number of fabricated alternative investments”.

Two of the companies in the Capital Alternatives network were African Land and Capital Carbon Credits. African Land was incorporated in the UK in July 2008 and Capital Carbon Credits was incorporated in the UK in December 2010. Capital Carbon Credits and sold carbon credits from Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Australia to retail investors. On its website the company promised a “full money back guarantee” and “Returns in excess of 50%”.

Both companies were fraudulent and victims lost a total of £16.9 million.

Haddow was first banned as a director for eight years in November 2008 for his role as finance director in Branded Leisure, a scam company.

In February 2018, Haddow was banned again as a director for 15 years following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. “This is fraudulent conduct of the nastiest kind,” deputy registrar Baister commented.

The case against Haddow

The sentencing submission from the US attorney for the Southern District of New York includes a detailed background of Haddow’s scams.

In 2014 and 2015, Haddow ran a boiler room operation in Manhattan that sold more than US$600,000 investments in Bitcoin Store. He used “fabricated financial statements and fictitious management executives” the sentencing submission states. Haddow did not use the money raised for investing in Bitcoin.

In 2015 and 2016, Haddow launched a “new massive international Ponzi scheme in a coworking space company called Bar Works”. The Ponzi scheme ran until June 2017. 800 victims worldwide lost more than US$57 million.

Haddow was charged in June 2017. He fled the US before he could be arrested. In July 2017, he was arrested in Morocco. He was imprisoned for one week in Tangier Prison. Then he was moved to Sale Rabat for four months, followed by five months in Argent I Rabat.

The prisons were infested with rats and cockroaches. Haddow shared a small cell with about 20 other men. In Argent he injured his leg in a fall but was denied medical care.

Initially, Haddow contested extradition to the US. But while in prison in Morocco, he agreed to cooperate with the US government’s investigation. He was extradited in April 2018.

He spent almost two years in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haddow was placed under house arrest, allowed to leave his apartment twice a week to buy food and other necessities. From June 2021, he was allowed to work, with an 8 pm curfew, which was lifted in December 2022. He lived in Far Rockaway, New York.

On 23 May 2019, Haddow pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy regarding the Bitcoin Store and Bar Works scams. Since then, he has cooperated with the US government investigation, including giving nine hours of evidence against James Moore, his co-conspirator in the Bar Works scam.

In July 2024, Moore died in prison.

Several of Bar Works’ victims lived in the United Arab Emirates. One of these, Jocelyn Houghton, spoke to The Nation before Haddow’s sentencing. She worked in Dubai as cabin crew for Emirates airline. She saved US$50,000 to put towards buying her first home. She lost everything when she was conned into putting the money into Bar Works.

“I genuinely believed it was all legit,” Houghton told The Nation. “Then the money disappeared.” She said her life after Bar Works became “a complete nightmare”.

“I had a total loss of confidence, and felt a complete failure. I rebuilt my life because I had to. I had no choice. There’s not a day that I don’t think about Bar Works. We are still waiting.”

The UK scams

“Prior to launching Bar Works, Renwick Haddow led multiple widely-publicized Ponzi schemes in the U.K. in which investors lost money,” the sentencing submission from US attorney Southern District of New York notes.

Haddow acknowledged at trial that he had a “very bad reputation in the U.K., for a number of financial misendeavors which was covered on the internet, and it meant that I couldn’t really operate further in the U.K.” He moved to the US for a “fresh start”.

The sentencing submission states that Haddow testified at trial, “that the carbon credits investments generally, and his scheme in particular, were all ‘scams’ and what ‘worked’ in that scheme was that ‘[i]t was very successful in terms of selling to investors.’”

As part of the cooperation deal with the US government, Haddow described his UK scams. Under the “rule-of-specialty” Haddow could only be tried for offenses in the extradition proceedings — the US case against Haddow therefore excludes the UK scams.

Here’s what the sentencing submission states about Haddow’s UK scams — James Moore was also involved in the Room to Invest scheme:

As testified to by Haddow at trial, Haddow participated in various U.K.-based schemes that raised investor money typically through misrepresentations and omissions, and usually resulted in investor losses. These included his operation of an investment company called Catalyst Investment Group Ltd beginning in 2001 which raised money for about 20 companies, including some controlled by Haddow or a family member. One such company was Branded Leisure, which Haddow controlled and that operated bars, restaurants and beauty stores. On December 10, 2008, the U.K. Insolvency Service issued a news release announcing Haddow’s disqualification as a director for eight years due to misrepresentations made to investors in Branded Leisure. Haddow agreed to a stipulation that said that he caused or allowed Branded Leisure to make an inaccurate and misleading announcement as to the progress of the company’s building work, sales performance of the company, and the financial performance of the company, causing investors to lose £500,000.

As Haddow also testified at trial, in approximately 2009, Haddow and Moore partnered on a hotel investment scheme called Room to Invest. Room to Invest offered investors fractional interests in hotel rooms. Investors would buy these interests and then receive returns supposedly from customers using their hotel rooms. During the trial, Haddow testified that Moore wanted Room to Invest to sell interests in a hotel in Barbados, even though Moore had not actually built the hotel and thus would have no way of paying investors returns for a long time, if ever. Haddow turned down selling the Barbados property but invited Moore to partner up with him to sell investments in two real hotels in Slovenia and Morocco. Moore agreed and helped to restructure the investment to make it more attractive to investors by adding a guaranteed return for buying multiple units. Moore also brought in agents to actually solicit investors. In return, Moore received half of Haddow’s profits from the operation. Room to Invest solicited about 300,000 to 500,000 pounds after Moore partnered with Haddow, before collapsing, resulting in investor losses.

As mentioned above, from 2009 to 2013, Haddow participated an African Land/Carbon Credits scheme in which he and others raised approximately £16.9 million in part through fraudulent misrepresentations to investors. Haddow was the main architect of these schemes.

The British authorities, of course, could have prevented the Bar Works scam had they conducted the necessary investigation and taken appropriate action before Haddow moved to the US in search of a “fresh start”.

It remains to be seen whether the British authorities will now take any further action to recoup the money from Haddow’s multiple UK scams.

World Rainforest Movement has launched a new booklet for communities and activists about the threats that carbon projects present to their territories and ways of life. The booklet is titled “REDD and Carbon Projects: Communities on Alert.”

World Rainforest Movement writes that,

REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and the Degradation of forests) and carbon projects have been presented as a quick and cheap way to help solve the climate crisis. But in reality, these projects neither help solve the climate crisis nor do they halt deforestation. Even worse, they create conflict and threaten the ways of life of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities.

The booklet is written in three parts. Part one provides background information on what’s wrong with carbon projects, what they are, and the organisations that benefit from them. Part two gives 11 alerts, highlighting the dangers that come with carbon projects. The alerts are based on the experiences of communities and illustrate how carbon projects create conflicts and pose threat to communities’ food sovereignty and autonomy. Part three looks at the actions that communities have taken to oppose these projects.

In 2012, World Rainforest Movement published a booklet with the title, “10 things communities should know about REDD”. The aim was to alert community activists and grassroots organisations about the growing threat of REDD. “Since then,” WRM writes, “communities, organizations, networks, researchers and journalists have exposed the contradictions, violence and colonial ideology of REDD and carbon markets. Despite this, more carbon projects are being set up, and carbon markets are expanding.”

Fossil fuels and REDD

The new WRM booklet starts with a fundamental critique of REDD and carbon trading. Although carbon trading proponents present REDD as a solution to the crisis, the reality is that carbon projects are not a solution. “To avoid even more severe climate chaos, the extraction and burning of fossil fuels must end,” WRM writes.

That is not what is happening.

WRM points out that,

The big beneficiaries of capitalism – corporations, industrialised countries and elites – refuse to drastically cut their fossil fuel consumption. To do so would reduce the power and profits they derive from this destructive system, especially in the Global North. There, factories, cars, trucks, big container ships, and planes consume enormous quantities of oil and gas. Ending fossil fuel burning would put this business model at risk.

REDD is one of the tactics that the beneficiaries of capitalism use to delay the end of the fossil fuel industry. By buying carbon offsets, corporations and governments can give the appearance of taking action to address the climate crisis, while in fact they are continuing business as usual — based on continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Of course, fossil fuel companies such as Shell, TotalEnergies, Eni, and Chevron are amongst the biggest buyers of carbon offsets. Along with mining companies, the aviation industry, agribusiness companies, and Big Tech and AI companies. These corporations use carbon offsets to greenwash their polluting and destructive activities.

Warning signs

WRM highlights a series of early warning signs that developers are setting up a carbon project on a community’s land. These include:

• Talk of ‘carbon’ or of carbon credits in the community, and new people who are not from the community coming to talk regularly with some individuals in the community.

• People from outside the community meet with community leaders who, all of a sudden, are going to more meetings without telling others much about these meetings. Sometimes, these meetings are taking place outside the village and, generally, women do not attend them.

• People talk about carbon, but no-one can explain well why the carbon project is taking place in your community or what the carbon project really is about.

• When meetings with the wider community are held, project promoters say that the project will bring ‘development’, jobs, and that people in the community will be paid for taking care of the forest as they have always done. But when people ask what carbon credits are, or who is paying for them, they get no straight answers and the carbon company may even start to isolate the ones who make questions, saying that they want to keep ‘development’ and jobs from the community.

• The carbon company may at first only talk about an ‘environmental project’, say that they want to help the community ‘take care of the environment’, or that they want to plant trees to ‘help save the climate’, or to restore land they call ‘degraded’. Some communities have said that they were left in the dark about the project being a carbon project, that carbon was not even mentioned in the first meetings.

The report is a valuable overview of what’s wrong with REDD and how communities can resist proposed REDD projects on their territories. It includes many concrete examples of where REDD has gone wrong.

WRM concludes that,

Collective experience with carbon projects for more than 20 years has shown that the beneficiaries of REDD and other carbon projects are rich countries, polluting companies, elites, and a group of climate crisis profiteers – not communities.

The good news, WRM writes, is that resistance to carbon projects and carbon trading is growing. The report ends with a series of links to recommended materials. The first is WRM’s 2024 documentary, “NO to REDD and Carbon Markets”:

Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about a decision the World Heritage Committee will take at this year’s meeting in South Korea regarding the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. Ngorongoro is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the Maasai Indigenous People living there are facing mass evictions.

Last week’s post featured a petition from Survival International with the message to the World Heritage Committee that,

Ngorongoro is Maasai land and they have protected it for generations. No place where such abuse occurs deserves the title of World Heritage Site. Delist NCA now. Stand with the Maasai.

The post also featured a letter from the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance to the World Heritage Committee, calling on them to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and international law.

On 19 July 2026, the Oakland Institute published an open letter to the World Heritage Committee. The Oakland Institute points out that Ngorongoro cannot be a World Heritage Site and an eviction zone.

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The letter is posted here in full:

Open Letter to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee Ahead of its 48th Session in Busan, Republic of Korea | July 19–29, 2026

The Oakland Institute, 19 July 2026

Dear Members of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee,

Ahead of the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee, the Oakland Institute calls upon the Committee to confront the ongoing human rights violations against the Maasai in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

The NCA continues to enjoy World Heritage status while the Indigenous Maasai people – whose stewardship preserves this globally celebrated landscape – face dispossession, coercive relocation, and systematic violations of their rights. If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians, then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.

The Oakland Institute has extensively documented how the Tanzanian government has used “conservation” as a cover to restrict Maasai livelihoods and deny access to essential services, to force Indigenous residents from their ancestral lands, turning their heritage into a playground for safari tourists.

UNESCO maintains that “forced evictions are unacceptable and incompatible with international human rights law and related international obligations,” in Ngorongoro. Yet, the Committee’s draft decision for its upcoming 48th Session once again falls far short of upholding Indigenous land rights. While it calls for “full and effective consultation” before moving away from the Multiple Land Use Model, it does not require the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the Maasai. By failing to reject relocation and treating consultation as sufficient, the draft decision effectively legitimizes the continued forced displacement of the Maasai.

For years, Committee decisions have portrayed the presence of Indigenous pastoralists as a threat to conservation, endorsing measures to reduce the resident population while allowing the construction of luxury lodges and the increase of safari trucks and tourists entering the area by millions. In doing so, the Committee has lent international legitimacy to policies that have steadily stripped the Maasai of their rights. The Tanzanian government has publicly stated that its campaign against the Maasai in Ngorongoro results from UNESCO recommendations. UNESCO cannot continue to oversee a World Heritage Site while ignoring violations against the Indigenous custodians.

Despite mounting international criticism, the Tanzanian government continues to pursue mass relocation. This year, two Presidential commissions – established after widespread Maasai protests in 2024 – purported to investigate the crisis. Instead, they endorsed the government’s relocation policy, relied on demonstrably false claims that Indigenous pastoralism drives environmental degradation, and ignored evidence that expanding tourism infrastructure – including luxury lodges, roads, and commercial development – poses far greater ecological pressures. The Oakland Institute has exposed that these land commissions were neither independent nor impartial; they rubber-stamped continued displacement while ignoring coercion and intimidation tactics, restrictions on essential services, and the denial of meaningful community participation. The Tanzanian government’s latest goal of total displacement – under the excuse of World Heritage Site – is a profound indictment of UNESCO’s approach against Maasai people in Ngorongoro.

The Maasai have made their position unmistakably clear. As their representatives have stated:

“If respect for human rights and coexistence cannot be ensured, the continued existence of Ngorongoro as a World Heritage Site should be conditional upon respecting Indigenous communities in Ngorongoro as the legitimate and primary rights holders of Ngorongoro.”

The Oakland Institute fully endorses this position. For years, the Committee has failed to use its influence to prevent escalating human rights violations. Any heritage status that requires the removal of Maasai Peoples from their ancestral lands to preserve a landscape they helped create and sustain stands in direct contradiction to the principles of human dignity, equality, and justice.

The continued pursuit of the mass displacement of more than one hundred thousand members of a protected population constitutes a violation of international human rights law. UNESCO is bound by its obligations under international law to ensure that such violations are neither enabled nor perpetuated in its name.

Allowing Ngorongoro to retain its World Heritage status despite the ongoing dispossession of its Indigenous custodians lends legitimacy to the Tanzanian government’s actions. The World Heritage status of Ngorongoro must be grounded in the inherent dignity, human rights, and continued existence of the Maasai in Ngorongoro. Unless these rights are fully respected and protected, the Committee should remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.