No WTO! No REDD!
No to using Rice for Carbon Markets!
December 6, 2013 ● Bali, Indonesia
We, the undersigned Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisherfolks, immigrants, women, youth, cooks 
and civil society of the world gathered in Bali to protest the WTO, know that rice is a sacred staple crop which feeds billions of peoples worldwide. We, who courageously resist efforts to impose the use of genetically modified so-called “Golden Rice” of Monsanto, now unite to defend rice from being used as a part of capitalism of nature and carbon markets – “REDD Rice”.
Since 2007, the United Nations, World Bank and fossil fuel polluters like Shell and Chevron and mining company Rio Tinto, have been pushing a carbon trading regime called REDD** (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). REDD uses agricultural land, soils, forests and tree plantations as sponges for greenhouse gas emissions. Now these climate polluters want to use rice as an offset for their pollution instead of reducing emissions at source. Market-based solutions for addressing the climate crisis are a false solution.
We do not want our rice paddies or rice beds to be excuses for more pollution which causes global warming and typhoons. For peasant farmers, REDD+ constitutes a worldwide counter-agrarian reform and perverts the task of growing food into “farming carbon.” The UN and northern industrialized countries have introduced other false solutions to climate change such as “Climate-Smart Agriculture”. In Africa, where climate-smart carbon credit projects are being promoted, peasant farmers are starting to resist the use of their lands and soil for carbon sequestration, which is a carbon market scheme of capitalism. These new soil carbon markets are opening the door for more GMO crops and land grabs.
“Climate-ready” seeds and other supposed GMO climate fixes like “REDD Rice” are just more attempts of the biotech industry and agribusiness to deform, patent and control our seeds, grab our fields, privatize our soils and turn us into landless, indentured servants of capitalism.
Slated for next spring 2014, California may include rice cultivation as carbon offsets in its climate change law known as California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32). The proposed rice cultivation offset protocol will pretend to reduce emissions through a cropland agricultural protocol using for the first time, a BIO-GEO-CHEMICAL model, which supposedly “emulates” soil processes. One of the methods for supposedly cutting emissions is to replace wet seedlings with dry seedlings. This will include growing GMO rice and the use of genetically modified “soil nutrients”.
China and California would be working with biotechnology companies that would privatize, patent and sell genes that supposedly allow rice plants to use less fertilizer. As part of economic globalization, this gene-knowledge and rice offsets would be sold to the highest bidder to meet their emissions reduction targets on the emerging global market for carbon credits.
If applied on a massive scale, genetically modified REDD Rice could contaminate rice farmers’ lands and seeds with enormous adverse environmental, social and cultural consequences.
- No to Privatization and Commodification of Rice!
- No WTO of our RICE!
- No WTO of Nature, Food and Life!
- NO REDD Rice!
Honoring our martyrs who have fallen for defending our land and territories, we commit to defend rice as Life and part of our movement for food sovereignty. We oppose using rice as part of the carbon market. We oppose the corporate genetic manipulation of our rice. We oppose the Green “Greed” Economy being pushed by the WTO that privatizes Nature as “environmental goods and services”. Defend our Mother Earth and say NO! to the trading of Life and the air that we breathe and the food that we eat.
**REDD is a global initiative to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests to compensate governments and companies or owners of forests in developing countries not to cut their carbon-rich forests or to reduce their rate of deforestation and forest degradation as a market mechanism to avoid GHG emissions. REDD+ (plus) expands REDD to develop methods for carbon sequestration through forest, wetlands, agricultural systems, soil, carbon stocks, “sustainable management of forests” (logging) and “enhancement of forest carbon stocks” in developing countries. For more information visit www.no-redd.com
No REDD Rice Manifesto Sign-ons
1. Indigenous Environmental Network
2. La Via Campesina – Indonesia, Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI)
3. WAHLI Nasional
4. Indonesian Peoples Alliance – Northern Sumatra
5. GRI – Indonesian Peoples’ Movement
6. GRAIN
7. JAPI – Indonesia
8. FMN Surabaya
9. Sevalanka Foundation – Sri Lanka
10. South Asia Alliance for Poverty Reduction (SAAPE) – Nepal
11. No REDD in Africa Network
12. Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change against REDD and for Life
13. Amigos da Terra Brasil
14. JA! Justiça Ambiental/Friends of the Earth – Mozambique
15. Innabuyog – Regional Alliance of Indigenous Women – Cordillera, Philippines
16. Regional Formation of Indigenous Peoples – Kalumaran – Mindanao
17. Gerakan Mahasiswa Nasional (GMN Borneo) – Indonesia, Borneo
18. Fron Mahasiswa Nasional
19. Humanitarian Action – Indonesia
20. Baffel – Indonesia
21. The Rules
22. Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism
23. Biofuelwatch
24. UE local 255, Vermont, USA
25. SANIPLAN, Baltimore, USA
26. Southwest Workers’ Union, San Antonio, Texas
27. Grassroots International
28. Ironbound Community Corporation, New Jersey, USA
29. Timberwatch, South Africa
30. Carbon Trade Watch
31. COECOCEIBA – Amigos de la Tierra Costa Rica
32. Asociación ANDES, Peru
33. Global Justice Ecology Project
34. Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
35. Dewan Adat Papua
36. Organización Indígena Wayuu Maikiralaasali, Venezuela
37. PUSAKA, Jakarta
38. Censat Agua Viva Colombia
39. Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment’s (IPCCA) REDD+ Working Group
40. Asian Pacific Environmental Network
41. Movement Generation, USA
42. Labor/Community Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union – Los Angeles, USA
43. Food & Water Watch
44. Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nigeria
45. AKSI – gender, social and ecological justice – Indonesia
46. Women Solidarity for Human Rights – Indonesia
47. SPKS : Serikat Petani Kelapa Sawit (Oil Palm Smallholders Union)
48. WALHI – Central Kalimantan
49. Corner House, UK
50. Just Transition Alliance, USA
51. INDIES, Indonesia
52. WAHLI NTT
53. KSBSI
54. WAHLI Eknas
55. Agra Indonesia
56. GSBI
57. Anak Bayan-USA
58. SERUNI
59. AKTI – Indonesia
60. Sinak Bayan – Philippines
61. Agra Sulawesi
62. COUREG, Philippines
63. ATKI – Taiwan
64. Sawit Wats
65. PB-PMII
66. RAG – Indonesia
67. ABMM – Hong Kong
68. WAHLI – Northern Sumatra, Indonesia
69. earth in brackets
70. Migrants Rights International (MRI)
71. PKSK – Philippines
72. FIELD -Farmer’s Initiatives for Ecological Livelihoods and Democracy – Indonesia
73. KRUHA – Indonesia
74. Women Health Philippines
75. Taiwan Farmer Union
76. SBMI (Migrant Workers Union)
77. Swarna Hansa Foundation- Sri Lanka
78. Friends of the Earth – Latin America and the Caribbean