Post from Wildlife Alliance – Wildlife Alliance

As you might be conscious, Wildlife Alliance, with the help of our companions, has been participating with Human Rights Watch (HRW) in relation to a report HRW has been making ready on the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Venture (SCRP).

We’ve learnt from third events that HRW will publish their report within the coming days, which is prone to be accompanied by a destructive article in The Guardian.

We wished to make you conscious of those developments as quickly as we may and share the data under. 

HRW’s allegations towards the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Venture

HRW has not but shared a replica of its ultimate report with Wildlife Alliance, nonetheless, we perceive lots of the allegations are according to these outlined by HRW in a letter dated 6 November 2023. 

HRW’s allegations are primarily targeted on the session course of with and land tenure state of affairs for six villages (of 29 whole throughout the mission) composed principally of Indigenous Chorng folks within the Areng Valley – essentially the most distant space of the mission.

Whereas we respect and worth HRW’s position and mission, we broadly take difficulty each with the majority of HRW’s allegations (made by letter on 6 November 2023) as a result of essential factors of truth and context are excluded. With out that context, HRW’s feedback current a basically deceptive and distorted image of the mission, particularly in regard to the overwhelming help that the neighborhood has freely expressed.

All through the preparation of the report we now have engaged in good religion, offering in depth, complete, evidence-based data, pushing for transparency and clear communication to attain an goal and complete take a look at our work based mostly on the complete details and context.

On the entire, we consider HRW has been participating in good religion too and are motivated by an earnest intent to make sure that the rights of native folks, notably Indigenous folks, are totally protected and enhanced by the work of SCRP. In fact we share this objective, and HRW has verbally acknowledged to us that the mission is producing optimistic impacts and praised our dedication to steady enchancment.

Due to this fact, we encourage everybody to learn Wildlife Alliance CEO Dr. Suwanna Gauntlett’s open letter, which addresses HRW’s considerations in full and offers this significant context.

Notably, lots of the points raised by HRW tie again to the truth that six villages within the Chhay Areng Valley had been going to be flooded by a long-planned, beforehand authorized hydropower dam. All neighborhood members would have been forcibly displaced.

When the hydropower firm began its engineering preparation in 2014, bringing on website heavy tools, the local people boycotted the incoming vehicles, and prevented them from conducting any drillings/borings. Due to a coalition of native communities and NGOs, together with Wildlife Alliance, the dam’s development was cancelled in 2015. As a result of the dam was not cancelled till this time, the Chhay Areng villages didn’t profit from the early participatory land use planning (2003-2012) or land measurements that had been performed for the opposite villages in 2012-2016 by Order 01BB. The prolonged land delineation and neighborhood boundary delineation course of needed to begin from scratch. 

Most of the points raised by HRW in the end relate again to this essential piece of context, and are based mostly centrally on its declare that neighborhood engagement conferences solely started going down in August 2017. That is factually incorrect. The timeline outlined in Wildlife Alliance’s open letter summarizes their lengthy engagement with the six Chhay Areng villages each to start out delineating their neighborhood lands and to prioritize, plan, and implement SCRP-related actions.

Neighborhood help is communicated by the native Commune Chiefs within the type of letters to the mission (see two examples from Chorng communities, Russey Chrum and Chumnoab, out of 11 which have just lately been obtained), by villagers and native authorities officers in interviews, and in neighborhood voting throughout FPIC (web page 2) the place over 98% of neighborhood members all through the mission indicated ongoing help for the SCRP.

The omission of those essential contextual factors, in addition to the details famous above, makes HRW’s feedback factually inaccurate and deceptive.

There isn’t a query that with out the engagement of the Cardamom Forest Safety Program (CFPP) and the presence of the REDD+ mission, the communities within the Areng Valley can be in a far worse state – a truth that’s brazenly and broadly acknowledged by the neighborhood itself, which has from the beginning of the mission by right this moment expressed help and consent for the mission.

In our open letter, you will notice Wildlife Alliance has a lot to be happy with in SCRP’s multi-decade monitor report of advancing human rights, sustainable improvement and forest safety in some of the difficult working environments on this planet.

Wildlife Alliance does acknowledge there may be house for enchancment on this multi-decadal effort to rework the connection between folks and the forest. As a part of its dedication to steady enchancment, we’ll deepen the mission’s relationship with Indigenous Chorng neighborhood in Chhay Areng Valley. We additionally decide to help their efforts to finish the formalization and safety of their land rights, help their long run sustainable neighborhood improvement targets, and be sure that the boundaries of neighborhood and guarded space lands are unambiguously understood by all.

Wildlife Alliance is taking up board HRW’s suggestions, and as a dedication to greatest follow shall in reality go additional, taking a lot of particular steps each throughout the Chhay Areng Valley and all through the mission. These embrace:

appointing a brand new devoted, full-time Conservation Communication Officer
creating a further open discussion board for airing and addressing grievances
working with the Chorng to determine, practice, and help an Indigenous Neighborhood Patrol workforce within the Chhay Areng Valley, modelled after the Chi Phat Neighborhood Anti-Poaching Unit that has been piloted elsewhere in SCRP
offering formal human rights coaching to all Cambodian authorities rangers at SCRP and Wildlife Alliance workers in alignment with the UN Guiding Ideas on Enterprise and Human Rights
creating a proper Human Rights Coverage, which is being built-in into present Code of Conduct and Commonplace Working Procedures
bettering the Grievance Packing containers and elevated their quantity
dedicating technical and monetary assets, and affect, to help the Koh Kong Provincial Administration with the land registration for Chumnoab commune in Chhay Areng.

HRW’s allegations towards Wildlife Works

HRW has additionally tried to accuse Wildlife Works of contributing to the human rights violations they allege have occurred by Wildlife Works Carbon’s (WWC) technical and monetary help of SCRP. Wildlife Works strongly refute this publicly, and stand behind the impression that SCRP has achieved in a really advanced and excessive menace setting. 

In August 2023, as a part of WWC’s renewed dedication to working with Wildlife Alliance and its wider help for Indigenous peoples and native communities, WWC appointed a Neighborhood Conservation Liaison. In collaboration with Wildlife Alliance, this WWC workers member has assisted in making a community-engagement technique to handle neighborhood conflicts and grievances between Ministry of Setting workers and neighborhood members.

As a part of this collaboration, WWC’s Cambodian workforce has additionally been conducting in depth interviews with members of the Chorng neighborhood to doc their cultural heritage, which incorporates Chorng settlement historical past, language, cultural norms, in addition to former and present management and governance buildings.

Ongoing engagement with Verra

Verra has determined to assemble extra data as a part of their evaluation, which inevitably will add extra time to their evaluation. 

In gentle of the thoroughness of the responses already offered, this resolution is disheartening. We had a name with Verra final week to specific our deep concern for the size of time their evaluation has taken and press for data on the timeline to completion.

We respect that given the exterior stress that Verra is underneath that they should show to all stakeholders the thoroughness of their evaluation. We assert they’ve accomplished all they should make this demonstration; nonetheless, we decide to working with Verra to supply additional data so the maintain could be lifted. Verra acknowledged they would offer extra particulars of their timeline to finish their evaluation within the subsequent few weeks.