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Australian firm linked to PNG's $100 million carbon trading scandal
Sydney Morning Herald - September 4, 2009
Marian Wilkinson and Ben Cubby – An Australian company has been swept up in a $100 million carbon trading scandal in Papua New Guinea after claims fake carbon certificates were given to landowners to help persuade them to sign over the rights to their forests.
The scandal threatens to undermine efforts by the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, to win support at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen for a global carbon trading scheme to include forests in the likes of PNG and Indonesia. She declined yesterday to answer questions on whether the scandal had been raised at UN climate talks last month or whether she had discussed the matter with the PNG Prime Minister, Michael Somare, or his officials.
An investigation has begun and the head of PNG's Office of Climate Change, Theo Yasause, has been removed.
Dave Sag, the chief executive of the company involved, Carbon Planet, admitted yesterday that his PNG partner, Kirk Roberts, had used mocked-up carbon certificates signed by Mr Yasause as "props" when negotiating with landowners. But he denied media reports in PNG the certificates were stolen or were intended to mislead.
He said the documents, which purport to represent a million tonnes of "voluntary carbon credits" issued by the UN under the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation – or REDD scheme – were created by PNG officials simply to explain the scheme. "Those certificates are worthless.... No one who knows anything about carbon would take them in any way seriously," Mr Sag said. "They ended up in Kirk's hands because they would have been produced as a prop to be taken out and waved in front of people in order to provide some physicality to what is essentially an ephemeral thing."
Carbon Planet, which has acquired a publicly listed company, told investors recently it had $100 million in potential REDD projects in PNG. Mr Sag said this figure was "estimates based on contracts we have in place". But as the scandal escalated, PNG's acting climate change director, Wari Iamo, warned landowners on Monday against signing carbon trading agreements over their forests. Dr Iamo said PNG had no laws or policy that covered carbon trading.
The talks in Copenhagen in December will decide whether the REDD scheme will get official recognition. The scheme, backed by Australia, is designed to allow developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by saving forests from logging. In exchange, landowners would earn "carbon credits" they could trade with greenhouse polluting industries for money.
But since discussion over the scheme began, scores of carbon traders, Carbon Planet among them, have been active in PNG and Indonesia trying to sign landowners. Tim King, from the Wilderness Society, said there had been "a tsunami of carbon traders spreading across PNG. Carbon finance and REDD have triggered a 'gold rush' mentality."
Environmental groups are increasingly concerned UN negotiations have failed to address the vexed issued of corruption and landowners' rights.
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