Jennifer Marohasy

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WWF & The REDD Menace in Tanzania: Christopher Booker

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“LAST November, Prince Charles, as president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) UK, flew to Tanzania to hand out Living Planet awards to five community leaders involved in WWF projects around the delta of the Rufiji River, which holds the world’s largest mangrove forest. Part of their intention has been to halt further damage to the forest by local farmers, who have been clearing it to grow rice and coconuts. This is because the mangroves store unusual amounts of carbon (CO2), viewed as the major contributor to global warming…

“Shortly before the Prince’s arrival, it was revealed that thousands of villagers had been evicted from the forest, their huts in the paddy fields torched and their coconut palms felled. This was carried out by the Tanzanian government’s Forestry and Beekeeping Division, with which WWF has been working. But Stephen Makiri, the head of WWF Tanzania, was quick to insist that WWF had never advocated expelling communities from the delta, and that the evictions were carried out by government agencies”.

Read more here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9246853/How-climate-change-has-got-Worldwide-Fund-for-Nature-bamboozled.html

How climate change has got Worldwide Fund for Nature bamboozled
The Telegraph, May 5, 2012 by Christopher Booker

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Robert says

    This is reminiscent of Nehru building and populating – at great expense – a safe village for a visiting Eleanor Roosevelt, who had expressed a desire to live amongst the Indian poor, preferably “untouchables”.

    Let’s assume this reportage on Tanzania is true. First, some mangroves get ripped up – already not good. Then the crops and palms are wasted – getting worse. Then we have the waste and expense of relocation from the delta. Then Prince Charles chews up a bunch of aviation fuel, probably on a private flight. Some hands get shaken, some photos are taken. Prince Charles burns up another bunch of aviation fuel to get out of the bloody place.

    Of course, to avoid economic desperation and to afford things like mangrove conservation, Tanzania needs coal and gas power to supplement its hydro. Instead, they throw away food to attract sympathy dollars (and pounds). Maybe they’ve taken inspiration from the Maldives and those eleven new airports authorised by its aqualung government. (Well how else are people going to get to all those new waterfront hotels?)

    It’s a good thing that CAGW is a beat-up, because we totally couldn’t afford the carbon emissions for our Green Betters.

    And God Save the Queen – for a long as possible.

  2. Ian Thomson says

    We already know this is happening. How can anyone catch the attention of the ABC, let alone advert TV ?

  3. Ian Thomson says

    Once upon a time, about 600 or so years ago, a bunch of European investors sent uglies to the Amazon Basin in search of profit.
    They drove the locals out of their Garden Cities into the forest. (Through slavery ,gold lust and disease.) The jungle took it all back.
    After hundreds of years they are coming back- and yes, it is a lumpy process.
    Now a new wave of foreign investors is doing it again, only this time it is based on the
    fairytale ,imaginary, virgin forest there and the damage done by these poor locals.

    The WWF investors are probably naive, but the “operators” are just as knowledgeable as the Conquistadors, where profit is concerned.

  4. Tony Price says

    Booker’s piece (331 comments at the mo.) is incisive and shocking, but isn’t news to me. I’ve been following REDD schemes for some time, and I’m appalled at the waste of money, corruption (third-world countries, any surprise?), abuse of power, and ineffectuality (is that a word? It is now!) of these misguided schemes. I’d even go so far as to suggest that it’d be better to do nothing; the results would cost less in the long term, would do less environmental damage, and wouldn’t see villagers thrown out of their houses and huts and their land being seized with no compensation. REDD needs the attention of OXFAM and other such bodies to manage consequent refugee and food problems. Unintended consequences again, but it’s human tragedy we’re talking about here, not some misguided flood-control or “cash for clunkers” scheme.

  5. kuhnkat says

    Ian, the only fairy tale is that small bands of Europeans travelling up and down the Amazon River killed millions of natives. I might buy plagues killing them off, but, not starving, sick Europeans running out of ammunition.

    One of the minor problems with the Spanish conquest of the Middle Americas is that in actuality they had numerous suppressed tribes aiding them against the Aztecs who had been heavy on the human sacrifice trying to buy the Gods favor to get them out of Climate problems!!! Kinda like Gorebull Warmers sacrificing Civilization at the foot of the God CO2!!

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  6. Ian Thomson says

    Hi Khunkat,
    I didn’t mean that the Europeans directly slaughtered the natives, sorry if it read that way.
    Disease, slavery and the breakdown of their own society, would have done that.- As it would today.
    At the height of the goldrush, some places were virtually depopulated in the search for labour or in some cases for ‘not knowing God’, which made them non-human, thereby exempt from “Thou Shalt Not Kill” .
    The poor folks on Easter Island had nowhere to run and were decimated. Alexander Selkirk did not hide from Spanish up a tree because he liked the view. He was terrified that as a Scotsman he would be enslaved.

    I would have taken my kids and bolted into the scrub too.
    This is what I was talking about-
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_de_Carvajal

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery

    It was then and is now all about well meaning people, pushing their religious beliefs on people they know little about, in far places . Be it God or AGW or Gaia .
    And of course, those who will profit from the crusade, be it gold or carbon credits.