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

236 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingbut crucial savings of peasant communities have been transferred toa private firm for production of a new commodity which, althoughlargely notional, has the material effect of shoring up an anachronisticpattern of fossil fuel use in The Netherlands. While claimingto ‘absorb’ carbon, PROFAFOR has in fact been absorbing Andeanwealth while helping to enlarge the North’s ecological footprint inthe South. Indirectly, it is also transferring wealth from future generationsto the present, through its failure to address climate change.The mechanisms that have done the real work in making this transferpossible are not the abstract, benign ‘wealth-creating’ trade mechanismsof economics textbooks. On the contrary, they are mechanismsthat compel, discriminate, narrow choices, increase dependence, reducetransparency, and centralise power and knowledge in bureaucraciesand expert institutions – just the sort of thing that ‘markets’are commonly seen as combating. These mechanisms include:• Unfamiliar tree species planted in exclusive monocultures and requiringextensive technical intervention.• Non-transparent and exploitative written legal contracts backed byhistorically-ingrained unequal power relations, through which aprivate company retains 100 per cent of the carbon sink credits fromplantations while local communities take on debt and responsibilitiesfor maintenance and managing environmental impacts.• An internationally disseminated discourse, according to which thelands to be used for plantations have been ‘degraded’ by excessiveuse and cannot be ‘profitably’ used for subsistence activities such ascattle-raising.• Expert procedures of ‘verification’ of carbon flows that by theirnature are resistant to public scrutiny.One last technocratic mechanism that makes PROFAFOR’s manufactureof carbon credits possible is ‘forest certification’, a seal of environmentaland social approval that was granted to 20,000 ha ofPROFAFOR’s plantations in 1999 by the Forest Stewardship Council(FSC). The FSC is an independent international body with membershipfrom both industry and NGOs, but the actual job of decidingwhether a plantation meets FSC standards falls to private firmshired by the plantation company. In PROFAFOR’s case, this wasthe Societé Générale de Surveillance (SGS), which has also certifiedPROFAFOR’s carbon sequestration.These certifications reassure buyers who will never visit the Andesthat PROFAFOR’s product is a valid, environmentally-friendly commodityfrom plantations that ‘strive to strengthen and diversify theThe section on Ecuadoris extracted from theresearch of PatriciaGranda, who studied theFACE-PROFAFOR projectfor Accion Ecologica, anEcuadorian NGO, and theWorld Rainforest Movement.