8th March 2011: Women say no to REDD

Climate change, one of most serious problems facing the world today, will have disastrous consequences for everyone, and especially for women. What is most tragic is that women will also suffer especially from the false solutions for climate change that are being negotiated internationally.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day we invite you to reflect on these issues and to participate in the following actions:

Watch and share the video on Women and Climate Change: False solutions
http://wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/Women_and_Climate_Change.html

and Read and sign the position on Women and REDD.

If you would like to sign the position as an individual or on behalf of an organization or network, please send an email to: mujeresporjusticiaclimatica@gmail.com

For further information on WRM International Women's Day, please visit:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/women_day_2011.html



REDD+ as currently designed will contribute to a global land grab of communities' and Indigenous Peoples' lands and territories,which will particularly affect women, states a position signed by women and organizations that denounces REDD as another false solution for climate change.

The position, which follows at the end of this message, is the result of intensive discussions in the Women’s Caucus during the COP 16 UNFCCC meeting in Cancún in December 2010. After several days of debate, the Caucus agreed that while the position would not be disseminated as a Women’s Caucus position paper, but it would be open for signatures, particularly by those who participated in the conference.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the Women for Climate Justice Network (GenderCC), the WorldMarch of Women (WMW), World Rainforest Movment (WRM), the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA) , the Global Forest Coalition (GFC), Carbon Trade Watch (CTW), Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJA), and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) are launching a wide-open invitation for organizations to adhere to this position, denouncing REDD as a mechanism that not only fails to solve the problems of climate change, but will also pose more and greater threats to society in general and women in particular.

If you would like to sign the position as an individual or on behalf of an organization or network, please send an email to: mujeresporjusticiaclimatica@gmail.com



Women and organizations at the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place in Cancun, Mexico from Nov 29 – Dec 10, 2010,  in order to promote and advocate for the recognition and protection of the rights of women and girls within climate change policies, and particularly those women and girls in vulnerable situations and impacted communities, would like to express the following joint concerns regarding proposed policies and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhance carbon stocks (REDD+).

As women from diverse parts of the world, living in diverse conditions and circumstances, we affirm that it is of utmost importance to safeguard the rights of women, including those enshrined in the UN Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). We fully acknowledge the rights of indigenous peoples as referred to in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs).

In solidarity with affected communities and peoples, we, women and organizations at COP 16 UNFCCC meeting in Cancún, Mexico find:

1. REDD+ as currently designed will contribute to a global land grab of communities' and Indigenous Peoples' lands and territories, which will particularly affect women. Industrialized-country governments and corporations will only pay for the preservation of forests if they get rights over the carbon in those forests in return. This will have a particular impact on women as their property rights are less secure.

2. REDD+ initiatives, as they are currently designed, create perverse incentives and inequities. Women play a differentiated and key role in forest conservation and restoration. The current REDD+ design is that actors will receive carbon credits for reducing their deforestation. Women are, overall, less responsible for deforestation and forest degradation and therefore, according to this set-up, they would be less eligible for forest carbon credits.

3. REDD+ as an offset mechanism will not address climate change as it takes away the responsibility for mitigation from the North and shifts it to the South. Contracts to provide pollution licenses for fossil fuel-dependent corporations will potentially harm communities elsewhere who are suffering from the fossil fuel extraction or pollution for which those corporations are responsible. Women and girls in these communities carry a disproportionately higher amount of this burden. For that reason, forest carbon offsets do not only impact indigenous communities in the South.

4. The commercialization of life and carbon markets are incompatible with traditional and indigenous cosmologies and a violation of the sacred. (1) Women, as holders of at least half of all traditional knowledge, are integral to the preservation and living practice of this knowledge. Many indigenous tribal traditions in their historic responsibility protect the sacredness of Mother Earth and are defenders of the Circle of Life which includes biodiversity, forests, flora, fauna and all living species.

What Is Needed

What is needed is the implementation of projects that are women's rights-based, strengthen gender justice, and are people centered. These projects should bring environmental and social benefits to all women and men. We want gender sensitive, equitable and just mechanisms that do not repeat the mistakes of the past by promoting monoculture tree plantations.

We recognise the need for industrialised countries to focus on new economies governed by climate justice, the absolute limits and boundaries of ecological sustainability and the carrying capacities of the earth. Such economies should strengthen and promote gender equality and the equitable sharing of global and local resources, and promote the encouragement and support of self sustaining communities..

Real alternatives to REDD+ already exist and should be promoted:

·        To recognize and guarantee women's rights to land and territories, which includes collectively demarcating and titling Indigenous Peoples’ territories, where most of the world’s forests are found. This has proven to be one of the most effective measures for reducing deforestation and supporting the livelihood and rights of forest-dependent women, girls and communities;

·        To ensure compliance with CEDAW and other human rights instruments, including UNDRIPs;

·        To halt deforestation and forest degradation, which is key to secure women's livelihoods. Efforts to stop forest loss must address the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation and climate change, including:

-       fossil fuel extraction, mining and large-scale hydro-electric dam construction

-       demand-side drivers like the demand for beef, pulp, lumber, palm oil and industrial bioenergy; and

-       the need to abandon all forms of support to large-scale monoculture tree plantations and logging concessions, which jeopardize the ecosystems women depend on.

Funds should be invested in programmes that directly support alternative rights-based forms of forest conservation and restoration that are already known to work. These include Indigenous territories and community conserved areas that incorporate and ensure gender justice

(1) See also the political position of the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change for the first week of negotiations of the 16th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Organizations up to March 4, 2011

Academy of the Medical Sciences/ International Women's Forum  Russia

Advocates for Environmental Human Rights            USA

Amigos de la Tierra             Argentina

Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD)            Thailand

Asian Pacific Environmental Network         

Black Sea Women's Club             Ukraine

Bus Riders Union   USA

Carbon Trade Watch  UK

Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy            USA

Center for Women Policy Studies USA

Centre for 21st Century Issues (C21st)             Nigeria

Coastal Women for Change            USA

Deep South Center for Environmental Justice  USA

Ecological Society The Phillipines

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth             Nigeria

FASE  Brazil

Forum de Mujeres/Espirito Santo            Brasil

Fundaexpresión             Colombia

Gender and Disaster Network            UK

Gender, Environment and Climate Action Network            Nigeria

GenderCC/ Mujeres por Justicia climática            International

GenderFocus            Sweden

General Counsel / International Indian Treaty Council            USA

Global Forest Coalition             International

Global Justice Ecology Project USA

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance            USA

Indigenous Environmental Network            USA

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy   

IRDANA            Netherlands

K.U.L.U.-Women and Development            Denmark

Kemitraan             Indonesia

Labor/Community Strategy Center  USA

LIFE - Education, Environment, Equality            Germany

Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas            Brazil

Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas Espirito Santo             Brazil

MUGEDE-Mulher, Genero e Desenvolvimento            Mozambique

Otros Mundos             Mexico

Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de árboles (RECOMA)   

REDES Amigos de la Tierra             Uruguay

Redmanglar             International

Rural Women's Movement            South Africa

Savia - Escuela de Pensamiento Ecologista            Guatemala

Sebastian Heilmann, Member of the German Green Party            Germany

The Gertown Revival Initiative            USA

The Human Impacts Institute            USA

Vice President of the Thuringian state parliament            Germany

World Rainforest Movement            International

World March of Women        International

Youth for Climate Justice            USA