In a report released on October 15, 2009, entitled, "Carbon Scam: Noel Kempff Climate Action Project and the Push for Sub-national Forest Offsets", Greenpeace asserts erroneously that the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project (NKCAP) failed to meet its commitments in terms of reducing emissions, improving the living conditions of the local communities affected by the project, and using appropriate monitoring and accounting methodologies for addressing leakage and proving the additionality and permanence of its emissions reductions.

In its report, Greenpeace uses questionable reporting methods and relies on information that is irrelevant, disorganized, out of context, or simply false in order to discredit the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project (NKCAP) and its achivements. This is done, we believe, for the political purpose of undermining global support for a carbon market approach to REDD in order to bolster support for Greenpeace's own proposal for a REDD fund called the Tropical Deforestation Emissions Reductions Mechanism (TDERM) or Forest for Climate. The principle problems with Greenpeace's report include the following:

• Greenpeace bases its findings on preliminary reports of the NKCAP rather than the main Project Design Document (PDD), which is the only official document approved by all of the project partners. By using preliminary reports instead of the official document, Greenpeace's findings should be considered baseless and invalid.
• Greenpeace uses false information to justify its erroneous findings about the project's leakage and additionality. For example, the report cites an interview with a worker from a logging company that was not indemnified by the NKCAP, yet Greenpeace does so clearly implying that it was one of the forest concessionaires indemnified by the project. The report rejects the project's additionality by claiming that the indemnified logging companies are still operating. This assertion is false. To further support their claims of ongoing logging, the report employs photos and captions below photos that show and describe logging activities in areas that have no relationship to the project site.
• Greenpeace also attacks the validity of the additionality of the project, by incorrectly comparing the project-specific baseline with circumstances at the country-level.
• The report cites anonymous interviews and uses unrelated documents in an attempt to demonstrate that the project has been left unattended and without day-a-day manager for over 3 years. This is false. Since its beginning, the NKCAP has continuously and without interruption provided support for the project site and park protection and monitoring activities as established in the PDD's comprehensive monitoring plan and annexes. The report's authors evidently confuse not only the project area and the national park area, but they also misunderstand the distinct roles of the national park administrator and the project manager. Both roles have been clearly differentiated through two separate comprehensive.
• Regarding the local communities, the report underestimates the NKCAP's efforts and the benefits that the 7 local communities have received as a result of the project. Instead of using a systematic and credible impact assessment approach to evaluate the project's impacts in these communities, Greenpeace instead bases its findings on anonymous interviews carried out in just one of the seven communities, and thus picks a few isolated anecdotes to make sweeping conclusions about the project's alleged failure to deliver benefits or improve local livelihoods.

These and other errors throughout the report demonstrate a lack of professionalism on the part of the authors. Their supposed investigation distorts information and facts in order to damage the reputation of the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project in a feeble attempt to justify the interests and position of Greenpeace on REDD.

Complete Report in PDF y PPT, English and Spanish version available.

• FAN position-Greenpeace Report.pdf
• FAN position-Greenpeace Report.ppsx
• Posicion FAN Reporte Greenpeace.pdf
• Posicion FAN Reporte Greenpeace.ppsx