A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

lessons unlearned 169identified in the plan for 99 years from the date you countersign thisletter.’ While the agreement specified that CNC did not thereby acquireownership of ‘individual trees’, it did ‘entitle’ CNC to ‘individualseparable enforceable…carbon sequestration rights in the land.’The land could not be sold during that 99-year period unless thebuyer also agreed ‘to observe the terms of this agreement’:…this agreement shall be treated as a burden on the land and willaccordingly be binding (so far as legally possible) on your successorsin title to the land. 381In 2002, meanwhile, the Western Australian government introduceda Carbon Rights Bill governing biological carbon sequestration as a‘first step’ toward setting up a carbon trading regime. The bill defineda ‘carbon right’ as separate from other rights in land and specified thatit ‘can be owned by a person unrelated to the owner of the land’. 382But what do the British voluntary off set market and domestic Australian tradingarrangements have to do with the international Kyoto off set market?They work by the same principles – and appropriate people’s land andfutures in similar ways. And they can provoke some of the same reactions.Local people in Minas Gerais, Brazil, for example, explicitly opposethe way a plantation charcoal project helps obliterate possible futuresthey wish to build:The argument that producing pig iron from charcoal is less bad thanproducing it from coal is a sinister strategy… . What we really need areinvestments in clean energies that at the same time contribute to thecultural, social and economic well-being of local populations… . 383Indigenous Peoples’ organisations were among the first to spot theland grabs and mortgaging of the future involved in Kyoto’s carbonsink projects. The Indigenous Peoples’ Statement made at the NinthConference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Milan in December2003 noted that:Sinks projects do not contribute to climate change mitigation andsustainable development. The modalities and procedures for afforestationand reforestation project activities under the CDM donot respect and guarantee our right to lands, territories, and selfdetermination.384In May 2006, representatives of all of Ecuador’s indigenous nationalities,meeting at Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon with other indigenousgroups and national and international NGOs, declared: