German millions for logging make mockery of Peru forests protection plan
KfW Development Bank due to promote timber industry under initiative supposedly intended to reduce deforestation
In January this year, some 330 days after receiving the first of two letters from Peruvian indigenous federation AIDESEP raising human rights concerns about plans to disburse up to 60 million euros to promote supposedly “sustainable” logging in Peru, Germany’s KfW Development Bank finally replied. No doubt about it, the most interesting thing in the bank’s response, amidst vague claims about respecting indigenous peoples’ rights and “international social and environmental standards”, was the clarification that the promised millions are part of an almost-10-year-old, much-publicised tropical forest conservation initiative involving all of Peru, Germany, Norway and the UK.
Of course, it is one thing - that’s to say, preposterous - to be still harping on about “sustainable” logging as if it was somehow possible, not least in tropical forests, and especially in a country like Peru where corruption in the timber sector is rampant and the quantities of illegally-sourced wood so huge as to be barely believable, and where biodiversity is so rich and no national forests inventory has ever been completed. This is 2023, after all! It has been years and years now that obviously deceptive terms like “sustainable forest management” have been thrown around by the timber industry, and so who at KfW could sincerely say, if they really knew what they were talking about, that this was still something worth aiming for?
However, it’s even more preposterous that KfW should be trying to do this through an initiative ostensibly and primarily intended to stop forests from being cut down, as revealed in its ever-so-tardy reply to AIDESEP earlier this year. That initiative is formally - and somewhat awkwardly - titled “Cooperation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and promote sustainable development in Peru.”
The basic premise of the initiative, dating from 2014, was that Norway and then maybe Germany would channel money to Peru to protect its forests. The Norwegians promised the spectacular sum of $US300 million, while the Germans named no numbers and said their potential contribution depended on “Peru’s progress and verified results.” When the UK joined in 2021, without making any upfront financial commitment either, Lord Zac Goldsmith, the FCDO’s Minister for Pacific and the Environment who signed the agreement on the UK’s behalf, said he was “delighted the UK is taking steps to strengthen our partnership with Peru to work together on halting deforestation and protecting biodiversity.”
True, the initiative’s third stated purpose is “to contribute to the sustainable development of Peru’s agricultural, forestry, and mining sectors”, under which this KfW program no doubt falls, but the first stated purpose, echoing the title, is to “contribute to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in Peru” - my italics. If this is really mainly about reducing deforestation, then why is a bank poised to loan US$54 million and give away a further $US6 million to boost the logging trade and knock yet more forest down?
There are any number of reasons why this shouldn’t happen, but if the “sustainable” logging fallacy, conditions in Peru or the absurdity of an initiative apparently intended to reduce deforestation being used to encourage, er, deforestation isn’t convincing enough it’s worth reflecting on at least one other issue. The Peru-Norway-Germany-UK initiative insists that indigenous peoples’ rights to give or withhold their “free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC) regarding operations on their land must be respected, and yet the Peruvian state institutions lining up to pocket KfW’s money, such as the national forests agency SERFOR and regional governments, have systematically failed to ensure such rights are respected and/or even actively violated them themselves.
There is arguably no starker example of this than the way the government in Loreto, Peru’s largest region, has established dozens of logging concessions in areas reportedly inhabited by indigenous peoples living in “isolation”, and the way SERFOR has refused to annul them, as I’ve reported previously. Those indigenous people have, by definition, not given their consent to their territories being opened up to loggers. Indeed, it was this precise issue that led to AIDESEP first writing to KfW almost exactly a year ago, more than 10 months before the bank eventually got around to responding.