Excluded carbon voices

Private companies have been authorized by the Amazonas state government to generate and sell carbon credits in conservation units. In the Rio Negro RDS, community members were ignored in the discussion phase for the implementation of the projects drawn up between the state of Amazonas and the company Future Climate. The rush for profit is so great that it has generated a rush among companies to close deals with traditional peoples, including indigenous peoples. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples and other agencies are concerned about the agreements that each state in the Legal Amazon is making.

Por Nicoly Ambrosio

Manaus (AM) – When you enter the boundaries of the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), it’s impossible not to be amazed by the number of lakes, beaches, igarapés and dark-water igapós. The mosaic of 103,000 hectares of fauna and flora, native to the interfluve of the Negro and Solimões rivers, forms a preserved public land that crosses the Amazonian municipalities of Iranduba, Manacapuru and Novo Airão. This region of the lower Negro River, full of biodiversity, is coveted by the advancing carbon credit market in the Amazon. This could be good news, but the RDS river dwellers are not convinced.

Some 78 kilometers from Manaus, the reserve is home to a population of 600 river dwellers in 19 traditional communities. The RDS are a type of conservation unit that does not prevent the presence of traditional residents. But they are almost always concerned about environmental preservation. In August, Amazônia Real visited the Rio Negro RDS to talk to those who live in the communities. They claim to have been excluded from drawing up the public notice and from the carbon agreements made by the Amazonas government with private companies.

“I’m still very uninformed, I only know what I’ve heard on TV,” says Marlene Alves da Costa, 65, a community leader and artisan. The carbon market that has reached Marlene’s ears has been sold as a solution to the environmental and ecological crisis in the Amazon, which is facing its worst moment with the acceleration of deforestation, fires and the climate crisis.

Prompted by COP 30 in Belém, Pará, the discussion of the “green economy” and “bioeconomy” carbon credit market is far from certain. On the contrary, local populations, who are the key to making this environmental compensation mechanism work, still have many doubts.

The Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro community, where leader Marlene lives, is the largest in the Rio Negro RDS. Around 85 families live on the shores of Lake Acajatuba, most of them pensioners, fishermen and farmers who lived there before the reserve was created in 2008. The place is known for its ecological tourism, which sustains most of the communities economically. Tourists from Brazil and around the world travel to the RDS to see the Amazon, the resorts and the local inns.

Marlene makes jewelry alongside 30 women artisans from other communities. She also helps sell the items in her store. A female leader in the reserve’s creative economy, she was unaware that between March and April the Amazonas government, through the State Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA), announced the approval of projects to generate carbon credits, in the REDD+ modality (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), in 21 state Conservation Units (UCs), including the Rio Negro RDS.

The REDD+ project was formalized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. These carbon credit projects should encourage the conservation and sustainable management of forests, as well as increasing plant carbon stocks.

The execution of carbon projects in Amazonas has been awarded to five private companies, including Future Climate, formerly known as Future Carbon. As intermediaries, they will negotiate the sale of credits on the international and voluntary market from environmental compensation projects carried out in the Rio Negro and Juma RDS, in the municipality of Novo Aripuanã.

The call for tenders, launched in June 2023 to hire the companies, is a cause for suspicion within the Rio Negro RDS. Leaders and residents say they were not consulted about the choice of company, which violates the terms of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which requires prior, free and informed consultation for any intervention in traditional territories.

A year later, in June 2024, Sema announced the signing of a pre-contract with Future Climate to begin the phase of prior, free and informed consultations with communities, under the terms of ILO Convention 169. But these consultations are actually about the implementation of carbon credit generation initiatives. The prior agreements were made without consulting the communities. In other words, for the riverside communities, the process has already begun in a nebulous way.

“When a decision like this comes to a reserve, our rulers have already decided without consulting us. It’s a lot of investment in our Amazon, but they don’t remember that there are people here, that in Amazonas there are also river dwellers,” says Marlene. According to the notice, the companies only need to prove that they have carried out the consultations in the last phase of the process, after the proposals have been sent and approved.

Three billion reais

Lago do Acajatuba na RDS Rio Negro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade de São Francisco do Bujaru (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade 15 de Setembro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro no Lago do Acajatuba (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Praia particular dentro da RDS Rio Negro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Placa de demarcação da RDS Rio Negro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Placa de demarcação da RDS Rio Negro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade 15 de Setembro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro no Lago do Acajatuba (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade 15 de Setembro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade de São Francisco do Bujaru (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro no Lago do Acajatuba (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro no Lago do Acajatuba (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade 15 de Setembro (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).
Comunidade Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro no Lago do Acajatuba (Foto: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).

Future Climate was founded in 2021 by Fábio Galindo, former chairman of the board of Aegea, one of the largest private sanitation companies in Brazil. It operates the water distribution and basic sanitation concession in Manaus. Four other carbon credit companies have projects approved in units in Amazonas: Ecosecurities, Carbonext, Permian Brasil and brCarbon.

The carbon credit market allows large polluting multinationals such as Amazon, Microsoft, Shell, Meta and Latam to buy and invest in projects to “offset” their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They continue to pollute the air, but finance initiatives that keep carbon on Earth. Under the current system, these companies have to buy credits from intermediary companies.

According to the Amazonas government, the projects in the Rio Negro and Juma RDS could generate more than 3 billion reais in new carbon credits. Half of these funds will be invested in the conservation units, focusing on activities that encourage production chains, strengthen community-based associations and improve infrastructure. The other 50% will go to the State Fund for the Environment and Conservation Units (Femucs), to improve environmental management and guarantee the financial sustainability of the Forest Guardians Program.

In the Rio Negro RDS, the government estimates that the generation of carbon credits could reach 1.1 million tCO2e (tons of CO2 equivalent and other greenhouse gases converted into CO2), with funding estimated at 132 million reais.

The notice does not specify how much the intermediaries will receive for developing the projects or whether they will have exclusive rights to negotiate the credits generated. The biggest concern for leaders like artisan Marlene Alves is simply knowing what a carbon project is and how it will work.

“What are the consequences? All progress has two parts, the good and the bad. We have to know how to prevent it and learn to live with it, because there’s no way of canceling anything,” she says.

Almost canceled

_{Marlene Alves da Costa, 65, community leader and artisan (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

The path of no return imagined by Marlene and other community members from the Rio Negro RDS is not real, precisely because the whole process is still questionable. At least it is with this understanding that, in August, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) recommended the suspension of all REDD+ projects in Amazonas until the communities have been properly heard.

Two months earlier, the Federal Police had carried out an operation in the south of Amazonas, where businessmen were arrested for fraud in the carbon credit market. The investigation, bluntly named “Greenwashing”, revealed that around 530,000 hectares of public land belonging to the Union had been grabbed, with an estimated value of 800 million reais.

The MPF’s recommendation was sent to the governor of Amazonas, the Secretary of the Environment and representatives of companies, institutions, non-governmental organizations and certifiers. The document emphasized the need for scientific proof of the effectiveness of carbon credit and REDD+ projects in reducing climate impacts.

In the document, the MPF demanded that prior and informed consultations be carried out, in accordance with ILO Convention 169, and that appropriate regulations be put in place to guarantee legal certainty and the application of the principles of prevention and precaution in the implementation of these projects that are in their initial phase, in progress or finalized.

In response to Amazônia Real, the MPF said it had identified irregularities and risks in Sema’s project in the PAs in Amazonas covered by the public notice. In addition to not having been heard, the traditional leaders reported friction within the communities. They would prefer to discuss this issue at another time, as they are now facing fires and drought.

Community members in debt

_{Residents of the Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro Community, in Lago do Acajatuba (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

There is also an ongoing complaint at the 15th Office of the Attorney General in Amazonas about the payment of scholarships for the Guardians of the Forest program, which is run by Sema and the Sustainable Amazon Foundation. The scholarship payments were suspended, leaving the community members in debt. It was because of the program that they had to open bank accounts and were charged fees, even though they hadn’t received the promised amounts.

Sema now says it needs the funds generated by the carbon credits to resume payments. “Either they accept or they don’t get paid by Guardians of the Forest, since the project was conceived before the carbon credit. Such an argument is hardly credible, considering that a carbon credit project takes a long time to get off the ground and usually has a financial return,” said the MPF.

In a twist to this imbroglio, in September, the National Council of Public Prosecutors (CNMP) granted an injunction to suspend the effects of recommendation.the MPF’s The justification is that the projects cannot be suspended because they are aligned with a global program developed by the United Nations Framework Convention, which has become part of national environmental policy.

“What about the ongoing violations against the peoples? Would it no longer be possible to investigate them in Amazonas? Is it the CNMP itself that should decide this, or the natural prosecutors in the states designated by the Constitution to do so?” the MPF asks.

Still in August, Future Climate issued a statement on the MPF’s recommendation, assuring that it supports the participation of control bodies, such as the Public Prosecutor’s Office, “as it believes that this guarantees greater legitimacy, being an important layer in the construction of the intended carbon market 2.0, based on high integrity, high quality, transparency and concrete social benefits”.

Future Climate also stated in the document that community consultations were already a requirement of Sema/AM Public Call Notice 002/2023. The company said that it will await the outcome of the talks between the state and the control bodies and that, in accordance with its compliance policy, it will only start developing projects when all the social and environmental safeguards have been duly respected, and after a consensual position has been reached between the state bodies.

When contacted by Amazônia Real, the company stated that the REDD+ project has not yet begun in the Rio Negro RDS and that consultation with the communities will only begin after the Amazonas government has given its approval. Future Climate claims that the consultations will obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), in accordance with the guidelines of ILO Convention 169 and the Verra standards and requirements of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCB) and the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).

Future Climate said that the project should benefit the riverside communities with forest protection and development programs, in line with the UC Management Plan and CLPI agreements. The company said that no social implementation will be carried out without the consent of Sema and the communities.

The company also guaranteed transparency in the conduct of the process, in accordance with conflict management mechanisms aligned with the VCS and CCB standards, as well as oversight of the funds by the State Court of Auditors.

No transparency

_{Nonato Carlos da Costa, known as Vicente, president of the Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro community (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

Viceli Costa, 35, a community leader and president of the Association of Sustainable Communities of the Rio Negro RDS, emphasizes that the residents of the 19 communities were only called to participate in the announcement of the results of the government’s public notice. They didn’t find out about the signing of the pre-agreement in June. “Building together with the implementations? I, as a leader, wasn’t invited. Nothing has happened yet, everything is at a standstill and there is no information,” said Viceli.

Nonato Carlos da Costa, known as Vicente, is 68 years old and president of the Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro community. He said that, in general, the residents were excited about the possibility of the project being developed in the RDS, but that there hasn’t yet been a meeting with all the leaders to decide on the proposal. “We always believe in improving not only our community, but the entire conservation unit.” Vicente is now waiting for the date of the consultation meeting to make the project official and “take the people along so that we can really understand what this is and what it’s for”.

In the São Francisco community of Bujaru, residents live on aid such as the Bolsa Família, which pays 684.27 reais, and the Guardians of the Forest Program, a restructuring of the old Bolsa Floresta, which for 14 years paid residents of state conservation units 50 reais a month. In practice, traditional populations who make a formal commitment to zero illegal deforestation and participate in activities that promote conservation will be rewarded for the environmental service they provide. The value of the Forest Guardians benefit is 12 installments of 100 reais per family.

This post is sponsored http://www.swisswatch.is by our partners.

The government of Amazonas released the final batch of the program’s first payment in September 2023, retroactive to 12 months. Wilson Lima’s government claims that 8,207 families benefited from a total of 9.8 million reais.

In 2024, 2,992 families received the payment, also for 12 months, totaling 3.6 million reais. The initiative is part of the Amazonas 2030 Program, to be financed through the sale of carbon credits.

Improving conditions

_{Young environmental activist and leader Yane Araújo (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

The community members of São Francisco do Bujaru work in tourism, sawmills and family farming. The president of the community, Juliane Silva de Oliveira, 36, says that the money from the carbon credit project could help build a health center, improve basic sanitation infrastructure and provide jobs for young people and women.

In the drought of 2023, the community, which is more centrally located in the RDS, suffered from the lack of a health unit. “When it’s dry, we walk for two and a half hours with a fainting child. There was no way of leaving your house to get to the city,” recalls the leader.

Oliveira claims that a meeting should have been held with all the leaders of the Rio Negro RDS communities to go over the details of the implementation. “What will it be like? Will there be monitoring to see if they are really preserving the forest? Will the money be passed on correctly? It’s not clear,” he said.

In the quiet 15 de Setembro community, where 55 families live, tourism is the main source of income. The high season for visitors is between May and August. The residents also make a living from subsistence crops such as manioc.

Young leader and environmental activist Yane Araújo, 25, says she has doubts about how the resources generated by the carbon credits will be distributed and whether they will really benefit local populations. “Will these carbon credits really be invested correctly within the unit and for the purpose for which they are really intended?” she asks.

The perception in Yane’s community is that the carbon market will boost entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the leader, who was born on 15 de Setembro, demands that the company and the government consult the 19 communities of the Rio Negro RDS, “because we have a population that needs to be aware of all the actions that are going to be taken, what is going to be invested, what is going to be withdrawn,” she says.

Harassment of indigenous people

_{Indigenous people from Acre in the Raimundo Vale Village (Photo: Paulo Henrique Costa/OPIRJ).}

Carbon projects have become a fever for companies, which are rushing to close deals directly with traditional peoples, including in indigenous villages, such as those now taking place with the Ashaninka and Munduruku peoples. In April, in the face of growing cases of harassment of communities, the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) published a note reinforcing guidelines for indigenous leaders not to take part in carbon credit negotiations in their territories.

Last year, native peoples and traditional communities from the states of Acre, Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Rondônia launched a manifesto in which they repudiated “green economy” models such as REDD+. “These projects presented as ‘green’ are models of false solutions to the climate crisis, which disrespect the rights of peoples established in the constitution and in international conventions and declarations, such as: the right to free, prior and informed consultation and the self-determination of peoples. These companies and governments present an unrealistic image of how the projects would be implemented, in order to deceive and harass our peoples and leaders into accepting them as the only possibility of defending nature,” says an excerpt from the manifesto.

No regulation

_{Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro community, in Lago do Acajatuba (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

The carbon market was created in 1997 as a mechanism that is part of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that established the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. Carbon credits are the emission quotas for these gases, which can be bought and sold by governments and companies.

Each credit represents one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is no longer emitted. There are two types of market: regulated and voluntary. The regulated market is managed by governments and aims to meet emission reduction targets set by the country. The voluntary market includes companies that buy carbon credits to offset their emissions or resell the credits to other private companies and countries.

In Brazil, the carbon market is not yet regulated. In October 2023, Bill 412/2022 to regulate it was approved by the Senate and went to the Chamber of Deputies for consideration.

The model adopted by the Amazonas government differs from other projects in the Legal Amazon.

In Acre, the decision was made to create a mixed-capital public company to trade creditscarbon , with the structuring of CDSA (Companhia de Desenvolvimento de Serviços Ambientais). Global Environmental was hired to offer the credits on the national and international markets.

In Tocantins, the government has reached an agreement with Mercuria Energy Trading S/A, a Swiss energy company, to sell carbon credits on the international market. The action, which is part of the Tocantins Jurisdictional REDD+ Program, structured an SPE (Special Purpose Company) between Companhia Imobiliária de Participações, Investimentos e Parcerias (Tocantins Parcerias), the state government and Mercuria. Tocantins Carbono will be responsible for conducting the certification processes and making the state eligible to generate carbon credits.

In September, Pará, host of COP 30 in 2025, announced the sale of carbon credits to the LEAF Coalition for 180 million dollars.

Preservation under threat

_{Construction material enters the RDS (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/ Amazônia Real).}

Scientists warn that carbon credit activities could intensify other threats facing the Rio Negro RDS, such as real estate speculation, deforestation, illegal land sales and illegal logging. In 2020, a joint operation by environmental agencies in Amazonas dismantled a criminal group that was involved in illegal deforestation within the reserve.

Researcher Aretha Guimarães, from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), has been working in the reserve for two years and is conducting studies on the impacts of climate change on tropical plants, with a particular interest in the carbon dynamics of the forest.

Guimarães points out that one of the risks identified in carbon credit projects in the Rio Negro RDS may be the implementation of insufficient planting in terms of biodiversity. Most of the time, projects plan to plant six to ten species of trees, which, on an Amazonian scale, is completely insufficient.

Although native plants are used in this process, it is unlikely to reflect the biodiversity of the region, which is home to between 400 and 60 thousand species. This results in a homogenization of the environment, compromising the ecology, fauna and flora, as well as impacting the way of life of local communities. The occurrence of the same tree species throughout the forest is not a natural pattern in the Rio Negro RDS.

“Standing native forest has other ecological functions for animals, people and the climate, not just carbon sequestration. There is a risk of homogenization of what was once a diverse environment and this has a series of consequences for the environment, such as the loss of biodiversity, the beginning of trees and animal species,” he explains.

The researcher also points to a series of social problems associated with the arrival of the social development promised by the carbon market, which could lead to threatening situations for riverside dwellers.

“These issues are affecting biodiversity and the way of life of the traditional communities in the RDS. They are beginning to be unable to walk freely and interact with nature in the same way, because they are afraid of people coming in illegally,” says the researcher.

The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MMA) told us that the National REDD+ Commission (CONAREDD+), chaired by the MMA, is responsible for coordinating this policy and is updating the National REDD+ Strategy. The aim is to establish guidelines for the development of multiple approaches to these types of projects, generating climate mitigation and protecting and guaranteeing the territorial rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

At the CONAREDD+ Executive Secretariat, the MMA said it was directing discussions to define rules and guidelines for jurisdictional REDD+ programs and private forest carbon projects that follow the National REDD+ Strategy (ENREDD+).

The Ministry explained that, at the federal level, the REDD+ strategy is focused on payments by results, which involve cooperation between countries, but without direct commercial agreements for the sale of carbon credits. In other words, the federal government is not directly involved in carbon market projects.

Strategies involving voluntary carbon credit market projects, such as REDD+, are managed independently by states and other organizations. This means that it is up to the state governments, such as Amazonas, to implement and manage their own REDD+ projects, consult with and benefit local communities. The Ministry acts indirectly in these projects, leaving the responsibility for implementation to the states.

“Climate finance”

_{Governor Wilson Lima signs the pre-contract to start public consultations in REDD+ project areas. In the photo: State Secretary for the Environment Eduardo Taveira; representatives of the company Future Carbon Holding S.A and state representatives Adjuto Afonso and Felipe Souza, (Photo: Alex Pazuello/Secom AM /05/06/2024),}

The Amazonas government defends the project as a strategy for preservation and generating resources. The Secretary for the Environment in Amazonas, Eduardo Taveira, says that the carbon credit market is essential for the “climate finances”.state’s

In May, Governor Wilson Lima presented the projects to Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit certifier, at a meeting with representatives of the World Bank in Washington, United States.

“The Amazonas government reaffirms that there are no REDD+ projects contracted or underway in any State Conservation Unit,” declared the State Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA). In response to a report by Amazônia Real, the agency said that the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process will begin when the drought eases and the rivers return to levels that allow river traffic between communities. The first meetings with community leaders should take place from November onwards in the Rio Negro RDS, with the aim of mobilizing residents for the consultations, scheduled to begin in February 2025.

The state agency stressed that all the residents who use the Rio Negro RDS will be included in the public consultations, under the terms of ILO Convention 169, observing the peculiarities and normative and cultural requirements of the traditional peoples and communities in the area covered. The meetings will have a schedule widely publicized by the Secretariat and with the support of grassroots leaders and associations, “in order to guarantee socio-environmental safeguards and the fair sharing of benefits for the traditional populations of the localities in question”.

The final implementation contract will only be signed after the CLPI, with the approval and consent of the communities in plenary. The environmental agency stressed that the actions related to carbon credits and REDD+ in Amazonas follow all the legislation applicable to the voluntary and jurisdictional market, “in a technical and legal construction that has been taking place since 2019, being done in a careful and judicious manner”.

The communities of the Rio Negro RDS, on the other hand, are resisting. For them, the forest is not a commodity and preservation is already part of their daily lives. Degradation of the forest would not only put an end to the eco-tourism economy, but also to the main source of survival for the riverside communities that depend on the RDS ecosystem.

“The death of the forest is the death of our life, we live in the forest and the forest brings us the benefits so that we can sustain ourselves,” says young riverside activist Yane Araújo, amid the feeling of uncertainty and struggle that permeates the banks of the River Negro.

Marlene Alves da Costa is hopeful about the new generation and calls for the community’s young river dwellers to be trained in courses to inform them about the procedures of the carbon credit market. “Today we have water and good air, but what about the future? My concern is that they train my children and other young people so that they can acquire this knowledge and preserve the future of this reserve.”

The text was translated by Deepl. Original version, in portuguese, is here.

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