Carbon Colonialism and REDD with Photojournalist Orin Langelle

Breaking Green interviews Orin Langelle, photojournalist and Co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project, about carbon colonialism and the UN's program, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

REDD allows trading of the carbon stored in forests, mainly in the Global South, to offset emissions from polluters mainly in the Global North. It shifts the burden of these emissions from the polluters to Indigenous and rural communities that lose access to their forests due to REDD deals, and to the communities where the polluter is based who must endure unending pollution.

Langelle talks about his 2011 trip to Amador Hernandez, an Indigenous village in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico. He traveled to the community to document resistance to a threatened forced relocation of the community due to a REDD deal between California and Chiapas, and to explore the deeper social and ecological impacts of unjust false solution schemes like REDD.

His reporting was central to the film, A Darker Shade of Green,  REDD Alert and the Future of Forests.

Breaking Green is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

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