Almost daily, the pledges made at COP26 are being broken or bent.
A politician linked to wide-scale deforestation in the 1990s and his Panama Papers-named associate, a Singaporean shell company, and the owner of an agricultural consultancy in Australia are among the figures behind a carbon trading deal worth an estimated $80bn in Borneo.
The Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA) ostensibly protects 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of jungle in the Malaysian state of Sabah from logging for the next 100 years.
But the deal was made in absolute secrecy and without credible due diligence, a tender process or public consultation, according to Indigenous leaders, activists and NGOs.
The NCA gives 30 percent of Sabah’s revenue from carbon credit sales – estimated to be $24bn over the life of the contract – to a company in Singapore, Hoch Standard, with no history in carbon trading.
An estimated 25,000 Indigenous people live in forest reserves in Sabah, with an undocumented number living on the fringes of reserves making up 39 different ethnic groups. Yet Indigenous leaders in the state, where about 60 percent of the population belong to native ethnic groups, say they were kept in the dark about the deal.
“The whole thing was very hush-hush,” Adrian Banie Lasimbang, a former Malaysian senator and Indigenous activist.
A whistleblower with firsthand knowledge of the deal told Al Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation.
“ Sabah could become the world leader in the monetisation of natural capital and carbon credits. But instead, we created a template other countries can use to pilfer and abuse the system.”
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