Source: REDD-Monitor

WWF is embroiled in a two-part scandal over its work in Tanzania. In October 2011, thousands of villagers were evicted from a WWF project area in the Rufiji Delta. This year WWF Tanzania staff were caught embezzling funds.

On 28 October 2011, forestry officials protected by armed police burned down hundreds of farm huts and cut down villagers’ palm trees. The huts were used to plant and harvest rice. The government had announced the planned evictions in January 2011. One of the people affected, was Bakari Wanga, chairman of Kiomboni village, one of three villages in the Rufiji Delta. “What is happening here is absolute madness, our huts are being torched and coconut trees felled by a group of natural resources officials escorted by the police,” Wanga told the Daily News.

WWF denies any involvement in the evictions. WWF’s Country Director, Stephen Mariki, told the Daily News, that “WWF has never advocated the eviction of communities from the delta. The recent evictions were carried out by government agencies.”

WWF’s project in the Rufiji Delta is a mangrove restoration project. According to Jonathan Cook of WWF-US, WWF is “working with the Forestry Division to replant and restore mangrove habitats degraded by illegal rice farming”.

In November 2011, Betsy Beymer-Farris and Thomas Bassett published a paper titled, “The REDD menace: Resurgent protectionism in Tanzania’s mangrove forests”, in Global Environmental Change. The paper is critical of WWF’s Rufiji Delta project and of REDD:

“Within the context of the Tanzanian state and WWF’s climate change ‘adaptation strategy’, mangrove reforestation reduces the ability of Rufiji farmers to cultivate rice for subsistence needs and thus poses a direct threat to their livelihoods.”

Beymer-Farris and Bassett argue that the evictions of the Warufiji, the people living in the Rufiji Delta, is part of a process of creating a REDD project in the Rufiji Delta, where carbon is more important than people:

“The removal of the Warufiji ‘simplifies’ the mangrove forests in order to make levels of carbon sequestration ‘legible’ for carbon markets.”

WWF’s response to the paper is fascinating. After an article based on the paper appeared in Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper, the head of WWF Norway, Rasmus Hansson, wrote a response in which he attacked the research and wrote that it would “make serious researchers blush”. Beymer-Farris and Bassett replied by explaining that there was nothing wrong with their research and that they stood by their findings.

On 3 February 2012, WWF lodged a formal complaint with the journal that published the paper. WWF requested that the article be removed from the journal’s website. →

25/04/2012

Source: Cámara Nacional de Acuacultura

Organizations across continents say the WWF did not involve stakeholders in shrimp farming standards development.

Hundreds of NGOs in Asia, Latin America, Africa, North America and Europe are protesting against World Wildlife Fund, purporting the organization has a lack of concern for the environment and people’s livelihoods in the interest of industry profits from shrimp farming.

They handed an open letter to the WWF on Wednesday in protest of the WWF’s Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue (SHAD) general steering committee and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s (ASC) plans for shrimp aquaculture standards.

“WWF is greenwashing an environmentally damaging and corrupt industry through certification of this luxury product,” said Luciana Queiroz of Redmanglar, representing a network of 254 organizations in 10 Latin American countries.

In the letter, they protest the destruction of mangroves and coastal zones. Three hundred organizations in Latin America, Asia and Africa signed on, as well as 30 in the United States and Europe. The letter is stamped with logos from a host of organizations, including the Food and Water Watch and the Stockholm Society for Nature Conservation.

They claim the WWF has spent four years and at least $2 million (€1.5 million) to develop standards without involving the stakeholders or resource users.

Among their 13 total objections, the organizations claim the standards criteria were developed based upon the desire to ensure that 20 percent of the existing shrimp industry is able to become certified immediately after the standards are released. The standards will perpetuate an unsustainable and destructive system of aquaculture, the groups say.

Some other complaints are:

The conversion of mangroves and coastal zones into ponds for shrimp cultivation for the export industry has caused severe environmental destruction, depletion of coastal biodiversity and wild fisheries as well as shoreline erosion. It increases susceptibility to hurricanes and tsunamis and releases massive quantities of carbon, thus contributing to climate change.

The large scale use of fishmeal exacerbates all these problems. Coastal populations in tropical countries are severely affected by the loss of livelihood, food security and protection from storms. Protests are often met with human rights abuses.

Continued lack of proper legislation and enforcement in producer nations makes adherence to any certification standard unfeasible.

The WWF certification legitimizes this situation by giving a “green stamp” to shrimp cultivation. Their certification standards, recently finalized, will be handed over to a certification company named the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC).

The standards have been developed by WWF and the aquaculture industry through a process called the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue. The WWF says SHAD “brings together a wide range of stakeholders, such as shrimp producers and other members of the supply chain, researchers, NGOs, and government officials to engage in collaborative and voluntary standard setting.”