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UN/World Bank plans to support logging ancient primaryf forests is NO climate change solution  (link)

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REDD+ logs primary forests, privatizes indigenous forests and will be corrupt

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Dr. Andrew Steer, Special Envoy for Climate Change, World Bank Dear Mr. Steer, I am writing to express grave concern with how World Bank and United Nations supported REDD+ forest carbon financing has developed to include supporting logging ancient primary rainforests for timber and their conversion to agricultural plantations. Old forests are our home, and we and many species are utterly dependent upon their carbon storage, biodiversity, soil, water, wildlife, rain and other ecosystem processes. Primary forests logged for the first time are permanently ecologically destroyed in terms of composition, structure, function and dynamics. It is appalling neither the World Bank nor United Nations have learned – despite going on four decades of failed reform efforts – that primary rainforest logging is inherently ecologically unsustainable and corrupt. Ancient primary forest logging has no place within international efforts to address climate change, and the Cancun climate talks must ensure REDD does not subsidize destroying primary forests as a climate solution. REDD+ perpetuates the myth that primary and old growth forests can and should be harvested using "Sustainable Forest Management" (SFM) techniques. REDD+ proposals now read like 1980s Tropical Forest Action Plan (TFAP) documents, claiming that institutional reform, finance and capacity-building can somehow make primary forest logging environmentally and socially beneficial. This has been tried repeatedly, and failed. The reality is that tropical rainforest logging remains plagued with systematic corruption despite four decades of reform efforts. Look no further than Papua New Guinea, where the government is a REDD+ booster, but is virtually owned by foreign logging interests who are stealing forests from customary landowners. REDD should drop the plus, in order to focus upon maximally using primary forests to address climate and biodiversity crises, and only pay for strict protections of primary forests, ecological restoration of natural forests to old-growth status and small scale local community development based upon standing old forests. Climate solutions and global ecological sustainability must focus upon ending first time industrial logging of primary forests, while providing local peoples alternative incomes based upon fully intact standing old forests. Good REDD is still possible – but it must ban first time industrial primary forest logging in all recipient countries, and include careful international monitoring to avoid expected widespread corruption. This requires full prior and informed local consent and the vast majority of benefits flowing back to local forest dependent peoples. I and others will not cooperate with, and will seek to obstruct, REDD+ payments for old forest logging. Please ensure that the COP 16 in Cancun defines REDD as free of any primary rainforest loss or diminishment. With grave concern,

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