Carbon Cowboys in Peru and the Prospects of Local REDD Governance

The paper demonstrates the vulnerability of natural resource governance in locations where future forest carbon emission reduction will be pursued using payment mechanisms like REDD (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The specific case is of an Australian national, David Nilsson who arrived in 2010 in the city of Iquitos, capital of the Peruvian Amazon. Nilsson tried to sign joint venture agreements with multiple indigenous organizations to trade carbon credits on their behalf. The paper analyses in much detail Nilsson's strategy to convince various local actors to sign up for his scheme. It demonstrates how people with responsibilities to represent indigenous interests, including leaders of their organizations, members of local NGos and staff of the regional government, eagerly supported these initiatives, but for ambiguous reasons. <br />Even after Nilsson's treacherous dealings were widely exposed in the national and international news-media, this support did not stop. The case of this Peruvian carbon cowboy was specifically mentioned in "COICA's and AIDESEP's Iquitos Declaration", which is one of the early manifestations of an indigenous discourse that questions UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and REDD (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The paper demonstrates the political, institutional and governance fragility of locations where future REDD projects or similar initiatives to reduce forest carbon emissions are planned. <br />