Tropical Forests guide
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| Primary forest, Brazil, CFU000553 © Roberto Faidutti / FAO |
After decades of endeavour to halt the destruction of tropical forests, the urgency surrounding climate change has created opportunities to embed deforestation targets within international commitments on emissions. However, proposals for reducing emissions from deforestation set out in the 2010 Cancun climate agreement will be challenged by the formidable logistics and by concerns to protect the rights of people living in the forest regions.
updated December 2010
The Value of Tropical Forests
The tropical forest is the jewel in the crown of the biosphere. No other ecosystem delivers more to enrich the natural resources that support life on earth.
Biodiversity is the primary attribute of the tropical forest closely followed by its stabilising influence on regional climate and local irrigation. Water vapour emitted from the trees through evapotranspiration stimulates rainfall whilst the roots store and filter water, reducing the risks of floods and drought.
International anxiety over the degradation of the Mau forest in Kenya illustrates the dependence of a regional economy on forest assets.
Forests around the world also play a valuable role in moderating climate change. They extract about 15% of our carbon dioxide emissions through photosynthesis. The standing trees, forest soil and debris together store more carbon than the atmosphere.
Tropical forests are those located between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, a definition that includes regenerated forests and managed plantations. Whilst these have value, especially as stores of carbon, the most intense biodiversity is found in the narrower category of “primary” rainforests.
A primary forest contains only native tree species and displays no evidence of human intervention. One hectare of Amazon rainforest can contain more plant species than the whole of Europe. Outside South America, the largest rainforests are found in the Congo basin and in Indonesia.
This richness of biodiversity enables people to derive traditional livelihoods from the forests. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 60 million indigenous people live within tropical rainforests, being wholly dependent on them. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 500,000 members of Pygmy groups live inside the forest.
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
This impressive checklist of qualities has not protected the tropical forests from rapacious destruction. The FAO’s Global Forest Resource Assessment 2010 reports that the annual loss of forest cover since 2000 has been 13 million hectares, an area the size of England. Most of this deforestation occurs in the tropical regions. About a fifth of the loss has originated in Brazil which is home to 40% of the Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world.
In addition, an annual average of 4 million hectares of primary rainforest were downgraded due to human interference. The current rate of extinction of plant and animal species through deforestation is believed to be 1000 times greater than that in pre-human history.
Nevertheless, the FAO report strikes a positive note, pointing to the 20% drop in the rate of deforestation compared with the previous ten year period. There is some evidence that the improvement is accelerating; for example Brazil has reported a 14% fall in its rate of deforestation in a single year, ending July 2010.
There are significant programmes of planting and forest recovery under way, especially in China, India and Vietnam. And the use of satellite technology is improving the accuracy of the data.
The FAO considers land to be forest if it has minimum tree cover of 10%. Deforestation is defined for the purpose of these statistics as the complete conversion of an area of forest to a different land use, typically agriculture.
Forest degradation is the term which expresses a less drastic loss of forest cover. Where industrial logging is selective in its approach, it may be assessed as forest degradation.
Tensions on all sides in Indonesia as Greenpeace accuses major palm oil producer, Sinar Mas, of illegal deforestation, from AlJazeera English
Causes of Deforestation
The root cause of deforestation is the failure of the world’s market economy to award any value to the natural assets of the rainforest. This malfunction contrasts with the rocketing prices of timber, minerals, fossil fuels, meat, cosmetics and biofuels, each of which is linked with forest destruction.
The response to these market forces varies in every forest country. For example, the dominant drivers of deforestation in South America are cattle ranching and soy agriculture.
Oil palm plantations are the main culprit in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia supplying 50% of the global market. Palm oil has become the lubricant of consumerism, a core ingredient of 50% of everyday products. Demand in the US has tripled in five years.
The Problem with Palm Oil illustrates the connection between deforestation and common supermarket products, from Rainforest Action Network
In many African countries, deforestation and forest degradation is driven as much by the imperatives of poverty as commercial exploitation. Poor farmers lacking capital and land seek quick returns through “slash and burn” clearance at the forest periphery.
The widespread lack of electricity is an even more potent enemy of the forests. It is very difficult to prevent the use of forest timber for charcoal and wood fuel in the absence of any alternative energy source for poor households. Countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone provide no electricity beyond the major cities.
Forest Governance
Most tropical forests are located in developing countries where weak national governance is often a factor in unsustainable forest management.
Investigative campaign groups, such as Global Witness, have exposed how forest-rich countries have been governed too often by deference to the kickbacks of timber concessions rather than the needs of their people. Laws remain unenforced – most logging in countries such as Papua New Guinea is technically illegal.
In more extreme circumstances of conflict or international isolation, forest protection is liable to complete collapse. The Democratic Republic of Congo is still embroiled in renegotiating logging licences granted without restraint during years of conflict which ended in 2002. The country embraces about 50% of the vast Congo Basin rainforest.
For people living in the forest vicinity, the central issue is land rights. Most tropical forests are owned by the state, with forest people relying on custom rather than legal tenure. Their rights and livelihoods are too easily brushed aside by powerful state-supported individuals or corporations.
The 2010 FAO assessment is again cautiously optimistic, observing that 156 countries have forest laws of which 69 have been updated since 2005. Forest areas wholly or partly under control of local communities are increasing and may be as much as a quarter of the total. Countries such as Mexico and Nepal already have strong traditions of community forest management.
Local governance is no panacea for protection of tropical forests, especially where powerful external incentives for deforestation remain. But it is capable of remedy through support, unlike the wholesale destruction of community rights resulting from clearance for commercial agriculture or logging.
Solutions to Deforestation
The UN Forum for Forests is the global body responsible for driving forward the "management, conservation and sustainable development" of forests. But it has succeeded only in securing a weak non-legally binding international agreement on forest sustainability.
The Millennium Development Goals include a single indicator (number 25) which calls vaguely to reverse the loss of "land area covered by forest". The result is that national poverty reduction strategies, together with the development aid that supports them, have tended to neglect the plight of tropical forests and the people who live there.
A rights-based approach is now a valid tool, thanks to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, this was adopted as recently as 2007 and few governments have prepared new legislation. Indonesia points to the complexity in framing laws to recognise the rights of about 500 ethnic groups.
Global environmental campaigns have therefore played a major role in slowing the pace of deforestation. Three approaches of varying success are consumer boycotts, product labelling and laws banning imports of illegal timber.
The unregulated ravages of oil palm plantations have been met by a flurry of consumer boycott actions, many focused on supply chains linked to improper land use by the Indonesian producer, Sinar Mas, and its subsidiary Asia Pulp and Paper.
In a controversial 2010 campaign linking popular confectionary to the death of orang-utans, Greenpeace forced Nestlé into an embarrassing termination of its palm oil contract with Sinar Mas. Similar sensitivities have persuaded major traders in Brazil to agree on a moratorium in purchasing beef or soy products that originate in forest regions.
How consumer pressure led to the soya moratorium in the Amazon from Greenpeace
Product labelling has struggled to achieve such results. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) trademark is a widely recognised label for sustainable timber products. It involves working relationships between forest campaigners, logging companies, local community groups and retailers. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a similar attempt to reassure the consumer.
In general the rich countries have made inadequate efforts to support these certification schemes. Most imported tropical timber is illegally harvested and only a tiny proportion of the global market in palm oil is certified.
More positively, the 2008 US Farm Bill included the world’s first law banning the import or purchase of illegal timber. And in 2010 the European Parliament approved similar legislation. Bringing public pressure to bear on the world’s other major timber importers - China, Vietnam and Japan - will be more difficult.
Climate Change and Tropical Forests
Destruction of the rainforest releases carbon dioxide through disturbing the substantial residue of carbon in the soil, the decay of leaves and wood, and combustion in "slash and burn" forest clearance. Whilst timber products store carbon, the amounts are relatively very small.
Figures published in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that deforestation contributes 17.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire world transport system. The intensity of forest-related emissions is illustrated by Indonesia which has become the world’s third highest emitter of greenhouse gases, despite its relatively modest industrialisation.
Science is still evolving on how tropical forests will respond to a higher concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and a warming planet. Whilst it seems likely that the trees will sequester greater amounts of carbon, the higher temperatures will stress the ecosystem with aridity and greater fire risk. The two degree temperature rise regarded as tolerable by current climate negotiations may stress the Amazon rainforest, whilst higher temperatures could ultimately transform the forest into a dry savannah.
The prospect of a positive feedback loop between deforestation and climate change has cemented the merger of interests between the two strands of environmental campaigning. There is clear recognition that negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) should rectify the omission of deforestation from mechanisms to reduce emissions in the Kyoto Protocol.
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
The Bali Action Plan agreed at the 2007 UNFCCC conference endorsed the vision of an environment in which the forests have greater value standing than cut down. It initiated studies into “positive incentives” for developing countries – the provision of financial compensation in return for measurable reduction in deforestation.
There has been broad consensus that this approach, known as “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD), should be a prominent feature of any international climate change agreement that extends or replaces the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. However, progress has been much slower than anticipated.
The Cancun climate agreements reached in 2010 add detail but little substance to the Bali document. There is no target date for halting deforestation.
Developing countries are requested to draw up national action plans for deforestation together with systems for measuring progress, an area of significant difficulty. Unspecified “positive incentives” provided by rich countries remain on the agenda.
An initial phase of capacity building to “get ready for REDD” during the period 2010-2012 is under way. Many pilot projects exploring the logistical issues have been sponsored, largely by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the UN-REDD Programme.
This preparatory phase received a substantial boost when the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference agreed to a 3-year programme of “fast start finance” for tackling climate change. The share to be allocated to deforestation activities will be channelled substantially through the Interim REDD Partnership. This initiative, led by Norway and France, was launched in Oslo in May 2010 as a stepping stone to the eventual long term UNFCCC agreement.
Funding commitments so far amounting to $4.5 billion by countries participating in the Interim REDD Partnership are designed to kickstart REDD in the period 2010-2012. In a significant initiative, Norway has offered $1 billion to Indonesia in return for a two year moratorium on new forest concessions from January 2011.
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries from TVE Inspiring Change
REDD Safeguards
This continued delay in international climate change negotiations potentially widens the fissures of disagreement about REDD that unquestionably exist.
The greatest concern from a human development perspective relates to weaknesses in forest governance and vulnerability to corruption. How will REDD payments be distributed, given the competing ownership claims of government, forest communities and holders of mining or logging concessions? How will individual rights to land and livelihoods be protected?
From the perspective of forest biodiversity, environmentalists are uncomfortable that the scope of the programme has been widened. “REDD+” embraces not only actions which reduce emissions but also those which preserve and enhance carbon stocks. Placing these activities under a single banner fails to differentiate the low ecological value of plantations from primary rainforest.
REDD+ also includes “sustainable management of forest”, an emotive concept championed by the timber industry to permit low impact logging. Campaigners tend to view any logging of primary rainforest as degradation.
There are further worries about the the risk of leakage. This occurs when protection of one forest is negated by the loggers moving to the neighbouring region.
This checklist of concerns about REDD is addressed in an Annex to the Cancun agreement described as “safeguards”. These call on countries to allow full participation of indigenous people and local communities in REDD projects, noting the 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The safeguards also warn countries against “displacement” of emissions through leakage and that the goal of REDD is to conserve natural forests rather than convert them.
Whilst the agreement requires that countries prepare reports on how they are observing the safeguards, many negotiators remain concerned that there is no provision for monitoring and no sanctions for non-observance.
Earth Report – REDD Alert. Can the remote world of Pygmy communities connect with international emissions reductions programmes? from TV/E
REDD Finance
Although most developing countries support REDD, they will not enter a binding agreement unless the offer of financial support is commensurate with the opportunity cost of protecting their forests.
A potential goal of halving the rate of deforestation by 2020 has been costed in the range $20-$35 billion per annum. This compares with the current offer of long term climate finance which rises to $100 billion per annum by that date. This support will be channelled through the new Green Climate Fund but has to meet all mitigation and adaptation costs of which REDD is just one part.
However, it is accepted that investment in preventing deforestation is probably the most cost effective method of tackling climate change, quite apart from its contribution to poverty reduction and biodiversity. The cost per ton of carbon dioxide may be as low as $2-$4, very substantially below other mitigation options.
The long term source of REDD finance remains as vague as the overall funding of the Green Climate Fund. However, the Cancun agreement does task climate change negotiators to “explore financing options” before the next UNFCCC conference in November 2011.
These options may prove controversial. In return for their REDD finance, rich countries will expect to be granted carbon credits to offset against national emissions targets. Many developing countries, along with sections of the NGO community, argue that carbon offsets encourage “business as usual” consumption. They recoil from the idea of forest assets might acquire the characteristics of commodities, traded by faceless speculators.
The alternative of relying on foreign aid to finance REDD runs the risk that donor countries will fail to commit sufficient funds in a period of economic austerity. The outcome may therefore see a combination of both public and private sector approaches.
The tropical forest is the jewel in the crown of the biosphere. No other ecosystem delivers more to enrich the natural resources that support life on earth.
|
| Guarana fruit, Brazilian forest, CFU000522 © Roberto Faidutti / FAO |
International anxiety over the degradation of the Mau forest in Kenya illustrates the dependence of a regional economy on forest assets.
Forests around the world also play a valuable role in moderating climate change. They extract about 15% of our carbon dioxide emissions through photosynthesis. The standing trees, forest soil and debris together store more carbon than the atmosphere.
Tropical forests are those located between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, a definition that includes regenerated forests and managed plantations. Whilst these have value, especially as stores of carbon, the most intense biodiversity is found in the narrower category of “primary” rainforests.
A primary forest contains only native tree species and displays no evidence of human intervention. One hectare of Amazon rainforest can contain more plant species than the whole of Europe. Outside South America, the largest rainforests are found in the Congo basin and in Indonesia.
This richness of biodiversity enables people to derive traditional livelihoods from the forests. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 60 million indigenous people live within tropical rainforests, being wholly dependent on them. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 500,000 members of Pygmy groups live inside the forest.
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
This impressive checklist of qualities has not protected the tropical forests from rapacious destruction. The FAO’s Global Forest Resource Assessment 2010 reports that the annual loss of forest cover since 2000 has been 13 million hectares, an area the size of England. Most of this deforestation occurs in the tropical regions. About a fifth of the loss has originated in Brazil which is home to 40% of the Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world.
|
| A gorilla in a DR Congo rainforest © FredR (flickr) |
Nevertheless, the FAO report strikes a positive note, pointing to the 20% drop in the rate of deforestation compared with the previous ten year period. There is some evidence that the improvement is accelerating; for example Brazil has reported a 14% fall in its rate of deforestation in a single year, ending July 2010.
There are significant programmes of planting and forest recovery under way, especially in China, India and Vietnam. And the use of satellite technology is improving the accuracy of the data.
The FAO considers land to be forest if it has minimum tree cover of 10%. Deforestation is defined for the purpose of these statistics as the complete conversion of an area of forest to a different land use, typically agriculture.
Forest degradation is the term which expresses a less drastic loss of forest cover. Where industrial logging is selective in its approach, it may be assessed as forest degradation.
Tensions on all sides in Indonesia as Greenpeace accuses major palm oil producer, Sinar Mas, of illegal deforestation, from AlJazeera English
Causes of Deforestation
|
| Log barge, Indonesia, FO-5709 © Patrick Durst / FAO |
The response to these market forces varies in every forest country. For example, the dominant drivers of deforestation in South America are cattle ranching and soy agriculture.
Oil palm plantations are the main culprit in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia supplying 50% of the global market. Palm oil has become the lubricant of consumerism, a core ingredient of 50% of everyday products. Demand in the US has tripled in five years.
The Problem with Palm Oil illustrates the connection between deforestation and common supermarket products, from Rainforest Action Network
In many African countries, deforestation and forest degradation is driven as much by the imperatives of poverty as commercial exploitation. Poor farmers lacking capital and land seek quick returns through “slash and burn” clearance at the forest periphery.
The widespread lack of electricity is an even more potent enemy of the forests. It is very difficult to prevent the use of forest timber for charcoal and wood fuel in the absence of any alternative energy source for poor households. Countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone provide no electricity beyond the major cities.
Forest Governance
Most tropical forests are located in developing countries where weak national governance is often a factor in unsustainable forest management.
Investigative campaign groups, such as Global Witness, have exposed how forest-rich countries have been governed too often by deference to the kickbacks of timber concessions rather than the needs of their people. Laws remain unenforced – most logging in countries such as Papua New Guinea is technically illegal.
In more extreme circumstances of conflict or international isolation, forest protection is liable to complete collapse. The Democratic Republic of Congo is still embroiled in renegotiating logging licences granted without restraint during years of conflict which ended in 2002. The country embraces about 50% of the vast Congo Basin rainforest.
|
| Forest medicine, Senegal, CFU000354 © Roberto Faidutti / FAO |
The 2010 FAO assessment is again cautiously optimistic, observing that 156 countries have forest laws of which 69 have been updated since 2005. Forest areas wholly or partly under control of local communities are increasing and may be as much as a quarter of the total. Countries such as Mexico and Nepal already have strong traditions of community forest management.
Local governance is no panacea for protection of tropical forests, especially where powerful external incentives for deforestation remain. But it is capable of remedy through support, unlike the wholesale destruction of community rights resulting from clearance for commercial agriculture or logging.
Solutions to Deforestation
The UN Forum for Forests is the global body responsible for driving forward the "management, conservation and sustainable development" of forests. But it has succeeded only in securing a weak non-legally binding international agreement on forest sustainability.
The Millennium Development Goals include a single indicator (number 25) which calls vaguely to reverse the loss of "land area covered by forest". The result is that national poverty reduction strategies, together with the development aid that supports them, have tended to neglect the plight of tropical forests and the people who live there.
A rights-based approach is now a valid tool, thanks to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, this was adopted as recently as 2007 and few governments have prepared new legislation. Indonesia points to the complexity in framing laws to recognise the rights of about 500 ethnic groups.
Global environmental campaigns have therefore played a major role in slowing the pace of deforestation. Three approaches of varying success are consumer boycotts, product labelling and laws banning imports of illegal timber.
The unregulated ravages of oil palm plantations have been met by a flurry of consumer boycott actions, many focused on supply chains linked to improper land use by the Indonesian producer, Sinar Mas, and its subsidiary Asia Pulp and Paper.
In a controversial 2010 campaign linking popular confectionary to the death of orang-utans, Greenpeace forced Nestlé into an embarrassing termination of its palm oil contract with Sinar Mas. Similar sensitivities have persuaded major traders in Brazil to agree on a moratorium in purchasing beef or soy products that originate in forest regions.
How consumer pressure led to the soya moratorium in the Amazon from Greenpeace
|
In general the rich countries have made inadequate efforts to support these certification schemes. Most imported tropical timber is illegally harvested and only a tiny proportion of the global market in palm oil is certified.
More positively, the 2008 US Farm Bill included the world’s first law banning the import or purchase of illegal timber. And in 2010 the European Parliament approved similar legislation. Bringing public pressure to bear on the world’s other major timber importers - China, Vietnam and Japan - will be more difficult.
Climate Change and Tropical Forests
Destruction of the rainforest releases carbon dioxide through disturbing the substantial residue of carbon in the soil, the decay of leaves and wood, and combustion in "slash and burn" forest clearance. Whilst timber products store carbon, the amounts are relatively very small.
|
| Forest burning for pasture, Central African Republic, CFU000204 © Roberto Faidutti / FAO |
Science is still evolving on how tropical forests will respond to a higher concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and a warming planet. Whilst it seems likely that the trees will sequester greater amounts of carbon, the higher temperatures will stress the ecosystem with aridity and greater fire risk. The two degree temperature rise regarded as tolerable by current climate negotiations may stress the Amazon rainforest, whilst higher temperatures could ultimately transform the forest into a dry savannah.
The prospect of a positive feedback loop between deforestation and climate change has cemented the merger of interests between the two strands of environmental campaigning. There is clear recognition that negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) should rectify the omission of deforestation from mechanisms to reduce emissions in the Kyoto Protocol.
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
The Bali Action Plan agreed at the 2007 UNFCCC conference endorsed the vision of an environment in which the forests have greater value standing than cut down. It initiated studies into “positive incentives” for developing countries – the provision of financial compensation in return for measurable reduction in deforestation.
|
| Phaeomeria Magnifica, Brazilian forest, CFU000507 © Roberto Faidutti / FAO |
The Cancun climate agreements reached in 2010 add detail but little substance to the Bali document. There is no target date for halting deforestation.
Developing countries are requested to draw up national action plans for deforestation together with systems for measuring progress, an area of significant difficulty. Unspecified “positive incentives” provided by rich countries remain on the agenda.
An initial phase of capacity building to “get ready for REDD” during the period 2010-2012 is under way. Many pilot projects exploring the logistical issues have been sponsored, largely by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the UN-REDD Programme.
This preparatory phase received a substantial boost when the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference agreed to a 3-year programme of “fast start finance” for tackling climate change. The share to be allocated to deforestation activities will be channelled substantially through the Interim REDD Partnership. This initiative, led by Norway and France, was launched in Oslo in May 2010 as a stepping stone to the eventual long term UNFCCC agreement.
Funding commitments so far amounting to $4.5 billion by countries participating in the Interim REDD Partnership are designed to kickstart REDD in the period 2010-2012. In a significant initiative, Norway has offered $1 billion to Indonesia in return for a two year moratorium on new forest concessions from January 2011.
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries from TVE Inspiring Change
REDD Safeguards
This continued delay in international climate change negotiations potentially widens the fissures of disagreement about REDD that unquestionably exist.
The greatest concern from a human development perspective relates to weaknesses in forest governance and vulnerability to corruption. How will REDD payments be distributed, given the competing ownership claims of government, forest communities and holders of mining or logging concessions? How will individual rights to land and livelihoods be protected?
From the perspective of forest biodiversity, environmentalists are uncomfortable that the scope of the programme has been widened. “REDD+” embraces not only actions which reduce emissions but also those which preserve and enhance carbon stocks. Placing these activities under a single banner fails to differentiate the low ecological value of plantations from primary rainforest.
REDD+ also includes “sustainable management of forest”, an emotive concept championed by the timber industry to permit low impact logging. Campaigners tend to view any logging of primary rainforest as degradation.
There are further worries about the the risk of leakage. This occurs when protection of one forest is negated by the loggers moving to the neighbouring region.
This checklist of concerns about REDD is addressed in an Annex to the Cancun agreement described as “safeguards”. These call on countries to allow full participation of indigenous people and local communities in REDD projects, noting the 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The safeguards also warn countries against “displacement” of emissions through leakage and that the goal of REDD is to conserve natural forests rather than convert them.
Whilst the agreement requires that countries prepare reports on how they are observing the safeguards, many negotiators remain concerned that there is no provision for monitoring and no sanctions for non-observance.
Earth Report – REDD Alert. Can the remote world of Pygmy communities connect with international emissions reductions programmes? from TV/E
REDD Finance
Although most developing countries support REDD, they will not enter a binding agreement unless the offer of financial support is commensurate with the opportunity cost of protecting their forests.
|
| Deforestation for soy production, Brazil © Greenpeace International |
However, it is accepted that investment in preventing deforestation is probably the most cost effective method of tackling climate change, quite apart from its contribution to poverty reduction and biodiversity. The cost per ton of carbon dioxide may be as low as $2-$4, very substantially below other mitigation options.
The long term source of REDD finance remains as vague as the overall funding of the Green Climate Fund. However, the Cancun agreement does task climate change negotiators to “explore financing options” before the next UNFCCC conference in November 2011.
These options may prove controversial. In return for their REDD finance, rich countries will expect to be granted carbon credits to offset against national emissions targets. Many developing countries, along with sections of the NGO community, argue that carbon offsets encourage “business as usual” consumption. They recoil from the idea of forest assets might acquire the characteristics of commodities, traded by faceless speculators.
The alternative of relying on foreign aid to finance REDD runs the risk that donor countries will fail to commit sufficient funds in a period of economic austerity. The outcome may therefore see a combination of both public and private sector approaches.
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