"I Will Write a Letter and Change the World". The Knowledge Base Kick-Starting Norway’s Rainforest Initiative

Abstract

In September 2007 two Norwegian NGOs wrote a letter to leading Licensing:All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This means that anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the material as they like, provided they follow two provisions: a) attribution -give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. b) share alike -any remixing, transformation or building upon the material must itself be published under the same license as the original.

Co-Operation or Co-Optation? NGOs’ Roles in Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative

“…FOEN, although instrumental in initiating and advocating for what became NICFI [3,38], has since then taken a rather limited role. After succeeding with their proposal back in 2007/2008, RFN and FOEN have arrived at a sort of division of labour: RFN co-operates closely with government authorities and is actively involved in advising and assisting KOS, occasionally voicing rainforest issues in the public arena.…”

“…The decision came as a surprise to the general Norwegian public and most of the public administration, and was strikingly similar to the proposal from the two ENGOs apart from the sum, which was cut by half from the original proposal-but still extremely large in relative terms [3]. The ENGOs had argued that the funding should not be allocated from the aid budget, but as a political compromise, NICFI was funded by an increase in the Norwegian aid budget, thus simultaneously achieving Norway's political target of allocating 1% of Gross National Income (GNI) to Official Development Assistance (ODA) [38]. Approximately one month after the Bali meeting NICFI was established as a part of the cross-party climate settlement.…”

“…In fact, NICFI originates from a proposal from the leaders of two ENGOs: Lars Løvold from the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) and Lars Haltbrekken from Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature/Friends of the Earth Norway (FOEN) (see [3,38,39] for thorough analyses, including timelines of major events (particularly [39] (pp. [26][27][28][29] and [38] (p. 41)). This heavy NGO influence on NICFIs inception has continued to be a long-lasting characteristic of the initiative and we will therefore devote some space to explain the emergence of the initiative.…”

“…The decision to finance NICFI with aid money (which did not please Brazil) was taken for political reasons; it enabled Norway in achieving the aid target of 1% of gross national income (GNI) [38] (p. 42). There are good arguments against treating global public goods such as REDD+ as development aid [60] (p. 119).…”

REDD og norsk klimakolonialisme i Tanzania

“…Det er etterhvert godt kjent og dokumentert hvordan det norske internasjonale klima-og skoginitiativet (NICFI) oppstod (Egede-Nissen 2014;Hermansen 2015Hermansen , 2016. I desember 2007 lanserte davaerende statsminister Jens Stoltenberg NICFI på FNs klimamøte COP13 på Bali, hvor han lovet å bevilge 3 milliarder NOK hvert år til kamp mot avskoging i tropene fra 2008 til 2012.…”