Saving forests

REDD or “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” is a United Nations program founded in 2008 in a bid to save the world's forests and enhance biodiversity – and in turn reduce CO2 emissions.

Forests serve as vast carbon sinks. When trees are burned or chopped to clear land to grow crops, large quantities of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. According to the UN, deforestation and forest degradation account for almost 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gases – more than all the world's transportation emissions combined.

That is why protecting and preserving forests has become crucial to efforts to keep global warming levels under 2 degrees Celsius, the official target reached at the 2010 UN climate conference in Cancún.

Incentives for saving forests

REDD is based on a simple principle – paying developing countries and the communities within them to preserve their forests. This is done by placing a financial value on the carbon stored in forests. In other words, by calculating how much carbon is saved from entering the earth's atmosphere by not cutting down the forest.

That in turn gives communities in developing countries an incentive to halt deforestation. The REDD+ initiative goes one step further, looking beyond land degradation issues to reward sustainable forest management as well as efforts to increase existing forest cover.

Currently, the UN's REDD program involves 35 countries, with 14 receiving direct funding for implementing forest conservation schemes at home. So far, the project is worth some $60 million. But implementation isn't always as easy as it seems.

Critics say the UN REDD program is hampered by the lack of a legally binding global climate agreement. In addition, the REDD initiative itself includes few concrete measures, they say. Instead, the program merely serves as an umbrella for disparate ideas on how to protect forests.

They also argue that REDD must draw clear guidelines on how to prevent a troubling practice in which species-rich forests are disappearing and vast monoculture plantations are springing up in their place. In other words, if three hectares of primary forest land are replaced by three hectares of productive forests, for instance to produce palm oil, there is technically no loss of forest that can be recorded.

But in reality, the land is stripped in favor of planting practices that degrade the soil and threaten native species.

Lots of questions but few answers

Another pressing question is just how REDD will be financed in the future. Some believe the budget should come from the “Green Climate Fund,” which was created during UN climate talks in Cancún in 2010 as a way to support developing countries.

Others believe the emissions reductions generated through forest conservation should in turn be used in carbon trading schemes. That would allow industrialized nations to offset their emissions by purchasing carbon credits in developing countries. The money generated by the sale of these credits is invested into protecting the local forest and improving the lives of local communities living near or in the forest. The aim is that this would give local people enough of an incentive not to cut down trees.

But carbon trading itself is a controversial practice, with many critics arguing that it simply ends up legalizing the pollution of rich countries. The “Durban Group for Climate Change” says carbon trading does not address the real cause of deforestation - high levels of consumption in industrialized nations.

Markus Groth from the Climate Service Center (CSC) at the Helmholtz Center outside of Berlin says UN REDD officials must address basic questions, and fast. “If these questions aren't cleared up soon, I'm skeptical about the future of REDD,” the economist says.

Groth hopes that international leaders will find a solution at UN climate talks in Rio de Janeiro. The conference is set to take place in the summer of 2012, and it will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Groth believes the financing of climate programs needs to be a priority for lawmakers meeting in Rio.

Misuse of funds

The huge sums of money involved in tackling climate change also draw attention to another urgent problem - corruption. International corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) has argued that countries receiving funding for forest conservation projects are the very ones that are prone to corruption – like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia, for example.

In its 2011 Corruptions Perceptions Index, TI reported that many of the 14 countries receiving REDD funding appear high up on the list of corrupt countries. One example of this is found in Laos, where highly-lucrative timber smuggling has become commonplace.

“In Laos, it's illegal to export round timber, that is to say complete logs and large branches. But Vietnamese law doesn't forbid it from being imported,” Julian Newman, campaign director of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in London says. The smuggling industry, he says, pairs together a country desperate for natural resources and one with a blatantly corrupt (and powerless) government.

Laotian toll authorities often accept bribes to allow illegal wood shipments across the border to Vietnam. The communities living on the border remain silent, too, because for many, the wood trade is the only available source of income.

Getting big consumers on board

The EIA believes the only way timber smuggling can be stopped is if the USA and Europe both take responsibility and clamp down on the practice.

“They are the largest consumers and have massive influence. They have to make sure that wood products from Vietnam are not produced with illegal timber from Laos,” Julian Newman says. And Vietnam, he adds, must strictly observe the export ban in Laos, preventing the timber from entering the country.

The UN is well aware of the corruption problems plaguing REDD countries. “The vast majority of UN-REDD partner countries have signed the UN convention against corruption,” program leader Yemi Katerere says.

He says the UN offers workshops in some countries where participants learn to recognize risks and fight corruption. The first seminars were just completed in Nepal and Thailand, and Africa is next.

Author: Po-Keung Cheung/ ss
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar