RFUK at United Nations Climate Change Conference in South Africa

Next week, RFUK will be sending a small delegation to COP17, the UN climate change conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, as part of our Climate Change and Forests Programme. The two-week meeting of governments and observers from around the world is the latest in a string of meetings from Cancun to Copenhagen, that has so far failed to agree a fair, ambitious and binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The main focus of our work at the conference will be to ensure that forest peoples voices are heard in discussions related to the future of the rainforests, under the negotiations on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

One member of staff from RFUK will attend, and we are supporting the participation of one representative of civil society from Cameroon (from NGO Centre for Environment and Development) and one representative of civil society in Central African Republic (from NGO Maison de l'Enfant et de la Femme Pygmées). Both representatives are working with other civil society groups and forest communities in their countries, to push for higher social and environmental standards for national REDD plans, and ensure that these plans benefit the traditional inhabitants of the forest and not powerful extractive industries such as industrial logging.

The main elements of discussions in Durban related to forests are likely to be focused on:

1) designing a system to share information on the respect of safeguards, agreed at COP16 in Cancun;

2) an agreement of how to tackle international drivers of deforestation, such as consumption in developed countries;

3) a decision on whether the REDD mechanism will be funded with the creation of a new forest carbon market.

RFUK will be launching a new briefing paper in Durban that shows that alternatives to the forest carbon market would be a better bet for the future of the forests and forest peoples. We are also helping to launch a new case study report from the Accra Caucus - a loose network of southern civil society from Africa, South America and Asia and northern NGOs - which includes a case study on REDD in the Central African Republic written by our national partner organisation. More here on both of these soon.

RFUK and partners will be holding meetings with governmental delegations, networking with likeminded groups and helping to shine a light on issues, such as land and resource rights, which are often marginalised in international negotiations. We will be working with established networks such as the Accra Caucus and Ecosystems Climate Alliance (ECA) to amplify our message.