carbon offsets

The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack shook up the negotiations on REDD Wednesday when he announced that the United States would release $1 billion over the next 3 years to help tropical countries slow the rate of deforestation.

The move, he told us, was intended to signal a new American commitment to forests and climate change. "The United States and the Obama administration is very interested in sending a clear message that we are engaged aggressively in climate change," Vilsack said.

"Where there are forests, there are indigenous people. Where there are no forests, there are no indigenous people."

Onel Masardule, a Kuna leader from Panama, smiled at the simplicity of his statement. You could read this as part fact, or depending on the results of the current negotiations, part prophecy.

During the last 24 hours of negotiations, a bloc of countries led by Papua New Guinea, with support from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia, have resisted efforts to impose a package of safeguards to ensure the credibility of forest offsets.

The three countries -- each with substantial amounts of uncut forests and a questionable ability to oversee them -- are objecting to three major provisions, according to Greg Picker, a former member of the Australian climate negotiating team and now a consultant on forest issues to the delegation.

On route to Copenhagen, Mark Schapiro’s first blog post follows a surprising mid-air announcement.

On Democracy Now!, CIR's Mark Schapiro discusses his reporting trip into the heart of the carbon offsets market on the Atlantic coast of Brazil–where a tree owned by General Motors is given an offset value of $1.

Schapiro's report is part of a joint project between CIR and FRONTLINE/World that launched this week: "Carbon Watch: Tracking the New Currencies of Global Warming"

Today, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and FRONTLINE/World launched "Carbon Watch," an investigative collaboration that will track the evolving, soon-to-be trillion-dollar global carbon market. The project will take an ongoing, in-depth look at the often hidden interests behind the proposed solutions to the climate change crisis.