In June last year a 45 minute film ‘Der Pakt mit dem Panda’ (‘The Pact with the Panda’) was broadcast on German TV to a reported audience of 900,000. Made by by journalist and documentary film-maker Wilfried Huismann, it examines the two-faced nature of the World Wildlife Fund (examined briefly in an earlier post here). The WWF in Germany initially prevented the film from being broadcast in its original form from the advertisements for the film.
Tag Archives: WWF
The WWF, REDD and Tanzania
At the peak of the claim and counter-claim thrown around over Amazongate Simon Lewis a forest researcher at the University of Leeds emerged briefly at its centre. Lewis’ defense of the actions of the IPCC helped the organization avoid confronting its use of advocacy and environmental pressure group material from the WWF. A little-examined fact at the time was that Lewis’ parent department was involved along with contributions from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Royal Society, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and other non-governmental organizations in a UN REDD+ pilot project in Tanzania. Called ‘Valuing the Arc’, it was designed to work out putting a ‘price on carbon’ to provide ”input to the policy process, … including PES mechanisms”. ‘PES’, is payment for ecosystem services, i.e., REDD. The most prominent NGO at the the centre of the project? WWF-Tanzania.
The story of ‘a key architect’ of REDD
You hear that Todd Stern, the United States envoy at Cancun is being ‘obstructionist’ and that he is harping on and on about transparency.
In October last year, the Indonesian government warned regents and mayors who have jurisdiction over local REDD programs in that country. It asked them to ‘carefully review all carbon brokerage firms offering incentives such as huge financial benefits from the forestry sector for engaging in carbon trading’, according to this report in the the Jakarta Post.
Who was the person who issued the warning? Wandojo Siswanto, ‘Advisor’ to tne Ministry of Forestry, Indonesia and Indonesia’s lead negotiator at the Copenhagen UN conference.
WWF-signed Media Matters press release creates more Amazon contradictions
We are aware of how entities in the climate change communication and advocacy business frequently direct the media how they should conduct their affairs. Apparently, some of these entities are slightly displeased that media outlets did their job during Climategate and public opinion about climate change advocacy and science tanked.
12 environmental advocacy organizations in the United States, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) signed a somewhat long list of complaints against “editorial boards and journalists” about their “misrepresentations” (that word again) . What interests us however, is a small passage, inserted presumably by the WWF, regarding the use of gray literature and documents by environmental pressure groups by the IPCC.
Here’s the relevant passage:
The Sunday Times also admitted it misrepresented the views of Dr. Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds, implying he agreed with the article’s false premise and believed the IPCC should not use reports issued by outside organizations.
So, per the interpretation of this group, Simon Lewis believes that it is OK for the IPCC to use reports issued by ‘outside organizations’, and somehow the Sunday Times implied otherwise. Is this correct?
