Sengwers Feeling the Heat in the Embobut Forest

By Dean Puckett - First published on redd-monitor

When Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, visited Kenya earlier this month, he reportedly urged the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to sort out Kenya’s historical land injustices once and for all, specifically mentioning the plight of the “Sengwer of Cherangani Hills.” But despite the World Bank having ‘a word’ with its ‘client’, the plight of the Sengwer of Embobut forest has worsened dramatically. An indigenous community is being evicted from their ancestral land in the name of conservation.

I am currently filming a documentary about the Sengwer. As I write this I am sitting in a small town on the edge of Embobut forest. On Sunday 23rd November, I was heading up into Embobut from a settlement called Tangul which sits on the edge of the contested forest area.

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To reject REDD+ and extractive industries

To confront capitalism and defend life and territories

COP20, Lima, December 2014 - On the occasion of the UN climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru - known as COP20 - we warn that rejecting REDD+ and 'environmental services', under the 'green economy' umbrella, is a central part of our struggle against capitalism and extractive industries and in the defense of territories, life and Mother Earth.

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FOEI New Report: The great REDD gamble

Note from the NRAN: The No REDD in Africa Network is pleased that La Via Campesina's landmark case study on the N'hambita Project is cited in Friends of the Earth's report "The Great REDD Gamble".

In this brief report Friends of the Earth looks at three specific case studies, but there are already numerous examples of ‘REDD going wrong’. FOE eventually selected the N’hambita Pilot Project in Mozambique, the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) in Indonesia, and the implementation of REDD+ in Peru, as three case studies that demonstrate a range of issues and problems relating to REDD.

The N’hambita project in Mozambique—quoted as a model project by the UN, and partly funded by the EU—is a clear example of a forest carbon/REDD project that has failed to deliver on most of its social, economic and environmental objectives. It has experienced severe methodological difficulties, including with respect to lack of baselines and poor accounting. Most of the farmers that have been contracted to grow trees do not understand that they (and their descendants should they die) have signed up to a 100-year obligation to look after the trees, even though payments will cease after just seven years. Indeed, when questioned many of them stated they may cut down all but their fruit trees after the seven years, and some even think that the timber is one of the intended benefits of the project. Families have also found it increasingly difficult to secure enough food because of the time spent tending saplings.

Download the report HERE.

World Bank accuses itself of failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers

NOTE BY THE NRAN: The No REDD in Africa Network reminds the world that the World Bank project in the Cherangany Hills included REDD and that the forced relocation of the Sengwer People is indicative of the grave human rights violations, including threats to the cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples, that REDD projects can cause.

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A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by the Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evictedfrom their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation.

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

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