WILD

REDD ALERT

The Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognizes that forests and wilderness are vital in the fight against global warming, so it allows developed countries to get emissions reductions credits for planting trees in developing countries. But the Kyoto Protocol has a major shortcoming – it doesn’t provide credits for protecting existing forests from getting cleared, even though logging or burning forests releases millions of tons of carbon. About 20% of global annual carbon emissions come from deforestation. Many people don’t realize that the third and fourth largest emitters of global greenhouse gases are Indonesia and Brazil respectively (after China and the US), largely because of the vast areas of tropical forests they have been clearing.

But the Kyoto Protocol was always intended as a temporary measure: it expires in 2012, and negotiations are under way for a successor agreement. Because of our rapidly worsening climate situation, awarding credits for protecting standing forests is back on the table for the Kyoto Protocol successor agreement: at UNFCCC meetings in Bali at the end of 2007 delegates approved a proposal for awarding credits based on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in tropical forests.

This is a very exciting development: a REDD-type mechanism could provide a massive financial incentive for wilderness protection, generating huge social and environmental benefits around the world as well as contributing significantly to the fight on global warming – a “win-win-win” situation . It’s an absolutely golden opportunity. In fact – it’s probably our only opportunity. There’s no other way to protect our planet’s biodiversity, secure ecosystem services at all scales, sequester millions of tons of carbon, and generate huge socio-economic benefits at the same time. There’s definitely no way to do all of the above as quickly and cost-effectively as protecting wilderness.

But the devil is in the details. What financing mechanism should be used for a REDD scheme? A market-based system? A Fund? Should a ton of carbon from a forest project sold on a carbon exchange be fungible with a ton of carbon emission reductions from a factory? At what scale do you measure forest protection? At a project scale? At a national scale? Should REDD schemes be restricted to tropical forests? Or does it even make sense to limit it to forests when other systems, such as wetlands, are also critically important from a climate perspective? How do you make sure local and indigenous benefits participate so that their rights are fully respected and the financial benefits don’t all get swallowed up by governments and large corporations?

The list of questions goes on and on, the subject is technical, negotiations are fast paced, and as the volume of information becomes larger and more complex, there is even a risk that REDD negotiations could collapse under their own weight. Fortunately, discussions on REDD at the recent climate meetings in Ghana made good progress. Still, the conservation community has a significant challenge on its hands to generate a strong, clear and (relatively) simple consensus on how to implement an avoided deforestation scheme that is truly a win-win-win. We need to generate this consensus quickly so that a united conservation community can speak with a strong voice. We had some room for error last time around, when the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated – we don’t any more.

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