Oslo says forest plan to help indigenous peoples

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway promised on Wednesday to promote indigenous peoples' rights as part of investments of almost $500 million a year in tropical nations to slow deforestation and combat global warming.

But Environment Minister Erik Solheim rejected calls by some human rights groups for Oslo, the leading international donor on forests, to set stiff pre-conditions for governments to respect indigenous peoples' rights from the Amazon to the Congo basin.

Deforestation is blamed by the U.N. studies for causing about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Trees soak up carbon when they grow and release it when they rot or are burned, often to clear farmland.

"We will do what we can to influence" governments to ensure the rights of indigenous peoples, Solheim told Reuters during an international conference about indigenous rights and deforestation.

"Dialogue is much more likely to succeed than a small nation on the outskirts of Europe ... running around the world setting conditions," he said of the Nordic country.

Some experts at the meeting urged Solheim, whose government in late 2007 pledged up to 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($477.1 million) a year to slow deforestation, to attach more strings.

"We've not been recognizing indigenous peoples' rights," said Andy White, of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a Washington-based non-profit organization.

White said international plans for overseeing forests should include tougher reviews of human rights -- many indigenous peoples fear they could be evicted from forests because they have no formal land rights.

CONGO

"They've never been consulted," Adolphine Muley, of the Union for the Emancipation of Indigenous Women, said of pygmy people in Democratic Republic of Congo.

But Solheim said rich nations were not in a position to preach to developing nations, saying Norway had in the past discriminated against indigenous Sami reindeer herders in the Arctic.

He also said the global financial crunch should not divert attention from a drive to agree a new U.N. climate pact by the end of 2009. Solheim favors use of carbon markets to help slow deforestation.

The U.N. Climate Panel says that warming, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, will bring more floods, droughts and rising seas.

"There can be no excuse from the financial crisis not to solve the climate crisis. The climate crisis is bigger and deeper," he said. Norway has surplus cash partly because of high revenues as the world's number four oil exporter.

A report commissioned by the British government on Tuesday estimated that it would cost $33 billion a year to halve deforestation by 2030.

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(Editing by Richard Balmforth)