The Amazon River in Brazil. Credit: Jhampier Giron M
 
The 30th "Conference of the Parties" (COP30) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place from 6-21 November 2025 in Belém, Brazil. It will bring together world leaders, scientists, non-governmental organizations, and civil society to discuss priority actions to tackle climate change. COP30 will focus on the efforts needed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, the presentation of new national action plans (NDCs) and the progress on the finance pledges made at COP29.

By Keith Tuffley
VILLARS, Switzerland, Nov 3 2025 (IPS)

As the world prepares for COP30 in Belém, all eyes are on Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)—a bold plan to reward countries for keeping forests standing. It represents a vital part of the long-term vision we need for global forest protection.

But while TFFF builds the architecture for the decades ahead, a proven solution is already delivering results today through large-scale forest protection programs—initiatives that link public policy, community leadership and carbon finance.

Known as jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+), these programmes are designed to mobilize finance now, where it matters most.

The world doesn’t have time to wait. Forests are disappearing at the rate of 10 million hectares a year. To stay on track for 1.5°C, UNEP estimates that tropical regions need $66.8 billion in annual investment in forests by 2030. The good news is that the framework to mobilize that capital is already in motion through the Forest Finance Roadmap and a portfolio approach that aligns multiple, complementary tools—including TFFF, JREDD+, and restoration finance.

The roadmap is clear—and it’s already working

The Forest Finance Roadmap, launched by 34 governments and partners under the Forest Climate Leaders Partnership, provides a practical framework for aligning policy, capital and accountability. It recognizes that no single mechanism can close the gap: we need a suite of solutions that reward both reduced deforestation and long-term forest maintenance.

That portfolio already exists in Brazil. The federal government’s commitment to launch TFFF demonstrates long-term ambition. Meanwhile, states such as Tocantins, Pará and Piauí—among others—are advancing JREDD+ programmes that can channel private finance directly to communities, Indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers—with independent monitoring, benefit-sharing, and verified results under the ART-TREES standard. Tocantins alone covers 27 million hectares across the Amazon and Cerrado, one of the most biodiverse yet threatened regions on Earth.

Why JREDD+ matters now

JREDD+ is a state- or nation-wide approach that rewards verified reductions in deforestation. It links finance directly to government policy and land-use planning, helping entire regions shift from deforestation to sustainable production. Crucially, it also ensures transparency, permanence and equity: credits are issued only after independent verification, and benefits are shared with local communities through Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) processes.

In practice, JREDD+ allows public and private capital to flow into credible, measurable results—the kind of results that investors, regulators, and communities can trust. It also provides the connective tissue between policies like the EU Deforestation Regulation and the voluntary carbon market, helping companies meet emerging disclosure requirements under TNFD and SBTN while supporting real-world impact.

Complementary, not competing

It’s tempting to frame TFFF and JREDD+ as alternatives. In reality, they are complementary—two sides of the same forest finance coin. TFFF will reward nations for maintaining low deforestation rates, creating long-term incentives for forest-rich countries. JREDD+, on the other hand, generates near-term performance-based finance for verified emissions reductions. Together, they form the backbone of the Forest Finance Roadmap’s portfolio approach: one tool builds long-term durability, and the other creates immediate impact.

This complementarity is already visible on the ground. In Tocantins, upfront investment from Silvania, the nature finance platform backed by Mercuria, has helped establish the state’s environmental intelligence center (CIGMA), enabling real-time deforestation tracking, and supported more than 40 consultations with Indigenous and traditional communities. These investments are already helping reduce deforestation pressures and build the systems that will sustain long-term forest protection—exactly the kind of early action TFFF will later reward.

From promises to performance

As COP30 approaches, the conversation about forests must shift from ambition to execution. Brazil’s leadership—from national policy to state implementation—is already delivering a blueprint for others to follow. We have the plan. We have the proof of concept. What’s needed is action—to channel capital into JREDD+ now, while supporting the long-term vision of TFFF. Together, these approaches can close much of the forest finance gap by 2030 and anchor a new era of durable, high-integrity nature finance.

The world will gather in Belém to discuss the future of the Amazon. But the real test is what happens after. Whether COP30 is remembered as a turning point or a missed opportunity depends on how quickly we act on the solutions already in our hands

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Global forests remain in crisis, a new report says. Credit: Dirk Erasmus/Unsplash

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Oct 21 2025 (IPS)

The Forest Declaration Assessment 2025 warns that global forest loss remains alarmingly high, with little sign of improvement.

The report, released on October 14, by a coalition of international research groups and civil society organizations, states that nearly 8.1 million hectares of forest were destroyed in 2024 alone, leaving the planet 63 percent off track to meet the zero-deforestation goal pledged under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration and other global commitments.

The report describes 2025 as a “dangerous midpoint” in the decade of forest pledges. It says, “Global forests remain in crisis. Despite the indispensable role of forests, the verdict is clear: we are off track on halting and reversing deforestation by 2030.” Forests, the report notes, are “non-negotiable infrastructure for a stable planet,” providing livelihoods to more than a billion people and sheltering 80 percent of terrestrial species.

The report says COP 30 is a “pivotal” opportunity to move to concrete action on forests from the mere commitments.

Under Brazil’s leadership, holding the COP presidency, countries are expected to forge stronger links between climate, forests, and biodiversity by expanding commitments across the land sector,” the report states, adding that this includes scaling innovative finance for standing forests, advancing deforestation- and conversion-free supply chains, supporting resilient food systems, and upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

It calls for forest commitments to be embedded in the next round of NDCs so that the Global Stocktake drives tangible national and international progress.

One of the main report authors, Erin Matson, in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, said that the reasons behind the failure to reduce deforestation are many and complex, but they include drastically misaligned finance stemming from an economic system that rewards activities that harm forests over conserving standing forests.

“Both public and private finance are misaligned; for example, USD 409 billion on average per year (2021-2023) is spent globally on environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies versus only USD 1.7 billion spent on payments for ecosystem services by agricultural producers. And in 2024, the 150 financial institutions assessed by Forest 500 had USD 8.9 trillion in active financing to companies most exposed to deforestation risk in their supply chains.”

According to Matson, weak governance is characterized by endemic corruption (which allows well-resourced criminal networks and elites to profit from illegal or illicit forest destruction with impunity), inadequate and mistargeted law enforcement (which often targets small-scale actors who engage in illegal or illicit forest clearing but lets the bigger culprits go free), and insecure land tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities (which severely limits their ability to manage and protect their forest territories).

“Another reason is lack of political will and short-termism. By and large, most leaders in government, business, and finance have, over the last decade, tended to prioritize policies and approaches that deliver short-term wins (like economic growth and increased profits) without tackling the fundamental risks and harms from nature loss that undermine future, medium- and long-term economic and social stability and prosperity,” Matson said.

Rising Losses, Failing Promises

According to the assessment, deforestation rates have barely shifted since 2015, when governments and companies began making strong commitments to forest protection. The 8.1 million hectares lost in 2024 were far above the annual ceiling of 5 million hectares needed to stay on track. Most of this destruction occurred in tropical regions, where 94 percent of all global deforestation took place. The resulting emissions were staggering—4.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, more than the annual emissions of the European Union.

“Every year the curve isn’t bent, we fall further behind. Deforestation continues at the same rate we saw ten years ago. That’s not a slowdown—it’s stagnation,” reads the report.

The hardest hit were primary tropical forests, which store vast amounts of carbon and support irreplaceable biodiversity. About 6.7 million hectares of primary forest were destroyed in 2024, releasing 3.1 billion metric tons of CO₂—nearly 150 percent of the U.S. energy sector’s annual emissions. The report calls this “an ecological and climatic emergency” and warns that much of this loss is irreversible.

“These forests take centuries to form. Once primary forest is gone, no restoration project can bring it back in a generation. The damage is permanent within our lifetime,” claims the report.

The Amazon Basin remains the epicenter of global forest degradation and fire-related emissions. Fires in the Amazon in 2024 released 791 million metric tons of CO₂, exceeding the total emissions of Germany. Bolivia lost 9 percent of its remaining intact tropical moist forests, while Brazil accounted for half of all degradation in the Amazon Basin.

Agriculture Drives Most Forest Loss

The report identifies permanent agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation, responsible for 86 percent of global forest loss over the past decade. Forests are being cleared for crops, pastureland, and plantation commodities like palm oil, soy, and rubber. Mining, infrastructure expansion, and land speculation add further pressure.

Domestic consumption is a major factor. For instance, in Latin America, the region’s consumption of beef and pasture products is the primary cause of deforestation.

In contrast, deforestation in Asia and Africa is tied to a broader range of export commodities. Recent studies cited in the report show that developed nations, especially the United States and several European countries, drive substantial biodiversity loss abroad through imported goods. Between 2000 and 2015, the 24 most industrialized countries caused an estimated 13 percent of global forest biodiversity loss through international trade.

The assessment also notes that “corruption, weak law enforcement, and poor land tenure systems” contribute significantly to deforestation. These governance failures allow illegal land grabs and unregulated clearing, undermining conservation efforts.

According to Matson,  commodity-driven deforestation is complex because it is caused by several factors, including patterns of commodity demand, both for domestic consumption and international trade; trade regulations and tariffs that can shift commodity production areas and flows; domestic land use dynamics like land speculation, where the value of land is considered to increase once forest has been cleared; and weak law enforcement (69-94% of tropical deforestation is estimated to be illegal).

“To change this pattern, we need multiple actions that would complement each other. An investment in just, equitable, and responsive law enforcement to tackle illegal deforestation and make it unprofitable to clear land illegally. Trade regulations that disallow the import of commodities produced on land deforested after a certain date (like 2020), combined with investments in traceability systems and due diligence regulations to ensure that these regulations can be enforced,” she said.

Matson pitched for the adoption and enforcement of due diligence regulations to address deforestation related to domestic consumption of commodities.

“We need efforts and campaigns that aim to shift consumption patterns, where culturally appropriate, for example, reducing meat consumption in high-income, high-consuming countries, shifting to plant-based proteins, and shifting to consumption of certified deforestation-free commodities.”

Fires and Degradation Multiply the Threat

While deforestation removes entire forests, degradation weakens those that remain. In 2024, about 8.8 million hectares of tropical moist forests were degraded, twice the level compatible with halting degradation by 2030. The report calls degradation an “invisible crisis,” often overlooked in policy debates but just as damaging to biodiversity and climate stability.

Fire-induced degradation, particularly in the Amazon, was the primary driver of these losses. Extreme droughts, poor forest management, and deliberate burning for land clearing have made fires more destructive.

As per the report, the Amazon burned on a scale we haven’t seen in decades. These fires are no longer isolated events—they are symptoms of a stressed ecosystem pushed beyond its limits.

The report warns that degraded forests are far more likely to be deforested later, creating a cycle of decline. Data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia shows that once canopy cover falls below 50 percent, the risk of full deforestation rises sharply.

Degradation is a red flag. The report says that when forests start losing structure, deforestation often follows.

Monitoring degradation remains a major challenge due to limited global data. Most national reporting focuses only on tree cover loss, not on forest health or ecosystem function. The report urges governments to integrate degradation indicators into climate and biodiversity frameworks.

“We consider forest degradation a ‘silent crisis’ because forest degradation is extremely widespread and damaging to forest health and resilience, but it often goes unnoticed because it’s harder to detect and track than deforestation. Unlike deforestation, there is no globally agreed definition or standardized monitoring approach for forest degradation. Countries reporting to the FAO’s Forest Resources Assessment can set their own national definitions under the FRA 2025 guidance. This makes it difficult to compare data across regions or to capture the cumulative impacts of logging, fires, and other disturbances on forest quality,” Matson said.

She added that other frameworks have encouraged countries to set forest degradation definitions and monitoring criteria, such as REDD+—so the countries where degradation monitoring is most advanced are the ones that have advanced REDD+ programs.

“Where there are incentives to accurately monitor and report degradation, systems do improve. Forest degradation contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and also impacts biodiversity, so countries should set relevant targets, as a first step, within their NDCs (nationally determined contributions) and in their NBSAPs (national biodiversity strategies and action plans),” Matson said.

Restoration Efforts Show Potential, But Lag Behind

Despite grim trends, the assessment highlights some positive developments. As of September 2025, restoration projects were active across 10.6 million hectares of deforested and degraded land. These efforts include reforestation, agroforestry, and natural regeneration programs, mostly in tropical regions.

However, the figure represents only 0.3 percent of the global forest restoration potential, far below the 30 percent target set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Monitoring continues to be another area of weakness. Much of the available data comes from fragmented or overlapping sources, such as the Restor database and national observatories. The report warns that without unified global tracking, restoration progress will remain poorly understood.

The assessment calls for broader monitoring under the UN’s Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM), which combines quantitative data with qualitative information on project effectiveness and local participation. Governance and Finance Gaps Persist.

The report stresses that progress depends on systemic shifts, not isolated successes. While countries like Brazil have reduced deforestation through strong enforcement and inclusive land-use planning, others have seen gains erased by political change or weak implementation.

Financing for forest protection and restoration remains grossly inadequate. The report finds that forest-positive finance is still a fraction of the funds supporting activities that harm forests, such as fossil fuel subsidies and industrial agriculture. It calls for reforming financial systems to redirect capital toward sustainable land use.

The assessment also highlights that Indigenous and local communities remain underrepresented in forest decision-making, despite managing some of the world’s most intact ecosystems. Expanding legal recognition of land rights and ensuring community participation are described as “non-negotiable conditions” for progress.

“Like most topics covered in the report, barriers to scaled-up restoration are complex and are mainly financial, governance-related, and structural. Restoration is often underfunded because returns are only realized over the long term, and ecological benefits—like carbon storage, water regulation, or biodiversity—are not fully valued in markets. Public funding for restoration tends to be short-term or project-based, while private finance shies away due to high perceived risks, unclear revenue models, or a simple lack of investable projects or initiatives,” said Matson.

She says that on the policy side, many countries lack clear land tenure, long-term incentives, and enabling frameworks for restoration at scale.

“Integrating restoration into national climate, biodiversity, and rural development plans—and aligning finance, tenure, and monitoring systems accordingly—would incentivize and corral collective action to develop overarching, landscape-scale restoration approaches that move beyond scattered, individual projects,” Matson said.

Deforestation and Market Dynamics

With only five years left before the 2030 deadline, the report states that incremental changes will not be enough. “This crisis cannot fade into the background noise,” it states. “Isolated successes will not save the world’s forests. We need structural reform that makes forest protection the rule, not the exception.”

Experts say that reversing current trends will require coordinated action across agriculture, trade, and finance. Governments must close legal loopholes that allow deforestation-linked products to enter markets. Companies must trace and disclose their supply chains. And international lenders must align funding with environmental goals.

“In the medium to long term, we need to make preserving and sustainably managing forests more attractive and more profitable than even legal deforestation. And that requires shifting the financial incentives—subsidy reform; establishing payments for keeping standing forests standing, like the Tropical Forests Forever Facility; and increasing payments for ecosystem services programs for farmers and foresters,” Matson said. “A lot of deforestation is highly responsive to market dynamics—when the price of gold goes up, we see much more deforestation for gold mining. So, counterbalancing those harmful financial incentives with positive ones must be a part of any permanent solution to the deforestation crisis.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Rain forest in Zimbabwe, where the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding, and comes down to the question of land and whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land. Credit: By Ninara/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

The efficacy of attempts to sustainably manage forests and conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in Zimbabwe is increasingly coming under scrutiny as new research warns that the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding.

It all comes down to the question of land and of whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land.

Even where they do “own” land, say researchers, these communities often find themselves competing with other players driven by different economic considerations, nullifying the very ideals being pushed under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

“Carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected … multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers” – Ian Scones
Despite the country’s agrarian reform programme, under which land was redistributed to millions of landless local communities, the state remains the biggest landowner, raising questions about community empowerment and the ownership of forests.

With researchers pointing to a spike in the demand for land based not only on rural population growth but also on people reportedly moving to rural areas, there is no doubt that any increase in the rural population brings with it increased demand for natural resources.

“The demand on natural resources for land is growing year on year at a rate which is not sustainable,” says Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, and this will mean reforestation in the millions, with these trees being planted on plots that do not belong to local communities at a time when some farmers are decimating forest cover by using firewood to cure their tobacco.

The promise held out by REDD+ was that through reforestation and by reducing emissions, communities would then have access to or earn certified emission reduction credits to be sold to or traded with the worst polluters to meet their own emission reduction targets, yet it is clear that like any economic transaction, those who owns the means of production profit most.

Land is still owned either by the state or big business, with little cascading to the “bottom billion” as some economists have called the world’s poor, and landowners and the rich industrialised countries benefit at the expense of rural communities.

According to Ian Scoones, co-editor with Melissa Leach of a recently published book titled Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa, “carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected.”

Scoones says that “multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers. Achieving a neat market-based solution to climate mitigation through forest carbon projects is not straightforward.”

On Zimbabwe’s REDD+ project, which has covered 1.4 million hectares under Carbon Green Africa, Scoones says that “as notional ‘traditional’ and ‘administrative’ owners of the land, they [rural communities] should have the authority. But they are pitched against powerful forces with other ideas about resource and economic priorities.”

Civil society organisations (CSOs) here argue that this explains why rural communities get the shorter end of the stick.

Meanwhile, a recent brief from Zimbabwe’s climate ministry noted that “rich countries have barely kept the promise” of meeting their pledges, casting doubts on whether rural communities will in fact trade any anticipated carbon credits for cash.

The rural poor could well be saying “show us the money” by 2020, the year targeted in Cancun, Mexico, for emission reduction pledges.

Climate and environment ministry officials agree that land ownership under REDD+ has remained a sticking point in its dialogue with CSOs on how local communities may derive premium dividend from forest carbon projects.

“CSOs represent the interests of local communities and lack of safeguards has made this issue an area of divergence between governments and CSOs,” says Veronica Gundu, acting deputy director in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

“They (CSOs) are pushing for clarity on land ownership and the benefits to the local communities because they view the current regime of implementation to be beneficial only to the project implementers and leaving out the locals,” Gundu told IPS.

However, Wentzel of Carbon Green Africa which is implementing Zimbabwe’s sole REDD+ project in the Zambezi valley, told IPS: “As it stands the people of these districts are the rightful beneficiaries of revenue generated from their natural resources even if they are not titled land owners.”

Edited by Phil Harris 

These Zimbabwean farmers with their harvested sorghum are at the mercy of climate change, while the government struggles with meagre financing and tall ambitions to take adequate action. Credit: UNDP-ALM

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

With the U.N. Climate Change conference later this year in Paris fast approaching, Zimbabwe’s climate change commitments face the slow progress on an issue that continues to stalk other developing countries – climate finance.

As it prepares for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Zimbabwe – like many others in the global South – is grappling with radical climate shifts that have seen devastating exchanges of floods and droughts every year, and still awaits green bailout funds from developed nations, with officials here telling IPS, “this support should come in the forms of technology.”

The country’s halting progress on the climate front is being blamed by local climate researchers on the country’s failure to invest in state-of-the-art climate monitoring technology. More still needs to be done as the country heads to Paris, says Sherpard Zvigadza, Programmes Manager, Climate Change and Energy, for the Harare-based ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO)."The country [Zimbabwe] needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies" – Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa

“Zimbabwe should strengthen systematic observation, ensuring improved real-time observations and availability of meteorological data for research,” Zvigadza told IPS.

These concerns arise from what is seen here as repeated failure by the poorly-funded Meteorological Services Department to adequately monitor climate patterns and put in place effective early warning systems for disaster preparedness.

However, these constraints have not stopped Zimbabwe, which for the past two decades has seen a wilting of international financial support for crafting ambitious climate change interventions.

Recurrent climate-induced disasters have shown that this not the time to treat anything as “business as usual”, says Elisha Moyo, principal climate change researcher in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

And these efforts have brought together civic society organisations (CSOs), farmers and ordinary Zimbabweans in what is expected to shape the country’s negotiations in Paris.

CSOs point to the fact that Zimbabwe has been identified by GLOBE International, which brings together legislators from all over the world, as having on the most comprehensive environmental laws in southern Africa, and say that this should be a stimulus for helping the country make greater strides in climate governance.

According to a climate ministry brief issued last month, Zimbabwe’s climate policy seeks, among others, weather and climate modelling, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, mitigation and low carbon development.

However, as tall as these ambitions sound, the climate ministry has acknowledged that in the absence of adequate financing the country could still be far from meeting its United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) commitments.

“There is a need to expand current projects as well as develop new projects throughout the country for the country to position itself to be able to raise funding for these developments,” said Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, a Zimbabwe-based company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects.

“The country needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies,” Wentzel told IPS.

“If the country is serious about moving away from business as usual, awareness raising is key for all stakeholders, including the general population as well as industry,” Zvigadza told IPS. “A vigorous campaign is needed across the country. More importantly, Zimbabwe’s national climate change response strategy has to be operationalised so that the challenges are addressed according to different local circumstances.”

Yet, by the climate ministry’s own admission, progress has remained slow due to the continuing problem of lack of funds, which Moyo believes should be tapped from the richer nations.

“As Africa, and supported by other developing countries from other regions, we believe the rich countries have not yet shouldered a fair share of the burden and should lead by example, in terms of cutting emissions and also providing financial support to poorer nations as stated in the Climate Change Convention,” Moyo told IPS.

And Zimbabwe certainly does need the money. The climate ministry is already wallowing in reduced state funding after the Finance Ministry slashed its national budget from 93 million dollars in 2014 to 52 million this year.

Meanwhile, domestic economic considerations are one of the obstacles to implementation of the country’s troubled climate change policy. Despite seeking to promote clean energy, power generation is still largely fossil fuel-based, where instead of cutting emissions, relatively cheaper coal feeds power generation.

The climate ministry policy brief says the country needs to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production transmission and use”, but economic hardships have made this a tall order where millions also rely on highly-polluting firewood for fuel.

“We are compiling the “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and have been conducting consultations and data collection around the country especially with reference to the energy sector, which has a high potential of emission reductions through adoption of
renewable energy wherever possible,” Moyo told IPS.

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at COP21 in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September.

For its climate change ambitions to succeed, Zimbabwe must go back to the grassroots, says Wentzel, but unfortunately “there is a lack of knowledge of climate changes issues,” he told IPS.

As Washington Zhakata, Zimbabwe’s lead climate change negotiator put it: “The road to the Paris summit remains unclear with many stumbling blocks on the road.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

High Level Youth Briefing on June 11, 2015 with the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christina Figueres. Credit: UNClimateChange/cc by 3.0

By Kitty Stapp
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11 2015 (IPS)

As climate talks wind down in Bonn, Germany, observers of the negotiations say that despite some progress on a draft text, key issues remain unresolved and will carry over at least until the next round in August.

These pending items include the legal form of the final treaty, how to fairly distribute emission reduction commitments, and also how to generate sufficient public finance for adaptation to climate change.

Athena Ballesteros, director of the Finance Center, World Resources Institute, said, “After two weeks of discussions, there remains much to do to cut the finance text down to a workable size. While G7 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to mobilising 100 billion dollars a year in climate finance by 2020, donor countries have yet to elaborate how they will meet this goal.

“As negotiators head back to their capitals, they need to focus on converging around a robust finance package to deliver in Paris. This package should include establishing regular cycles to scale up funding over time, closing the finance gap on adaptation, and sending a clear message that all investments be oriented towards achieving the two-degree goal and building climate resilience.”

One main area of agreement was on REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation), a concept that was formally agreed to at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bali, Indonesia in 2007.

REDD is intended to reward the preservation of forests with carbon credits which can be sold to polluting companies in the North wishing to offset their harmful emissions. (REDD+, agreed later, extends the concept beyond forests and plantations to include agriculture.)

The deal reached in Bonn resolves all of the outstanding technical issues on REDD+, including finance mechanisms, safeguards and non-market approaches.

REDD has long been a target of criticism by indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers who lack formal land rights and rely on forest resources for their livelihoods – and are all too often excluded from the benefits of international investment.

“Today’s breakthrough was unexpected, and countries should be praised for their hard work over the last decade,” said Gustavo Silva-Chávez, who manages the Forest Trends REDDX tracking initiative.

“While REDD+ is finished on paper, the Paris global deal must provide the policy certainty to implement REDD+ on the ground.”

More than 40 countries also released their national climate plans, and Norway announced that it will divest eight billion dollars from coal in its efforts to accelerate clean energy. Norway’s Statoil was also one of six European oil and gas giants to formally ask the UNFCCC executive secretary, Christina Figueres, for “an open and direct dialogue” on carbon pricing.

But some civil society groups remain sceptical of pledges by the G7 to “decarbonise” the global economy, noting that leaders gave only vague assurances they would work to mobilise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with the worst effects of climate change.

“G7 countries have signalled their agreement on the importance of tackling climate change eventually, but haven’t announced any meaningful action,” said Susann Scherbarth, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe.

“The emission cuts they’ve promised are less than half of what climate science recommends and justice requires. We are on the path to a disastrously empty deal in Paris this December, but ordinary people are making the energy transformation that our governments have failed to.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

“The darker side of green” – plantation at Bukaleba, Uganda. Credit: Kristen Lyons

By Kristen Lyons
BRISBANE, Dec 8 2014 (IPS)

Norwegians know something of life in a climate change world. Migratory birds arrive earlier in spring, trees come into leaf before previously expected, and palsa mires (wetlands) are being lost as permafrost thaws.

Norwegians are currently waiting while geologists try to predict if, and when, Mount Mannen might collapse, destroying homes in its path, after torrential rain in the region.

Kristen Lyons

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this will be just the beginning for Norway – and the rest of the world – unless urgent and immediate action is taken to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

While reducing our dependence on the dirty fossil fuel industries is widely lauded as representing the fastest and most effective strategy to reduce our global emissions, much of the world’s attention – including that of many governments and industry – has been captured by the promise of carbon trade markets.

There are hopes that pricing and selling carbon just might be the magic bullet to solve the crisis, while at the same time generating lucrative returns for investors.

Carbon markets are being established on the assumption that if the ‘right’ price is placed on carbon, private companies and their financial backers will be driven to invest in so-called ‘green’ projects that capture and store carbon, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s atmosphere.“Expecting some of the poorest of the poor to carry the social and ecological burdens of monoculture plantation forestry projects for carbon offset is both socially unjust, and ecologically just does not add up”

Carbon markets are championed by those who believe that carbon emissions taking place in one part of the world can be offset by their capture or sequestration in another. Plantation forestry is a key sector in the carbon market, with many projects established in some of the poorest parts of the world, based on the assumption that they will confer benefits to the environment and the local people.

But does all the hype about carbon markets really stack up?

Research on the Norwegian company Green Resources – engaged in plantation forestry and carbon offset on the African continent – raises many questions about who benefits from the carbon market projects. In-depth research over two years in Uganda, where Green Resources has licence to over 11,000 hectares of land, demonstrates how local communities are the losers of such projects.

A recent report, The Darker Side of Green: Plantation Forestry and Carbon Violence in Uganda,  published by the Oakland Institute, contributes to the critical conversation about the role of carbon markets in addressing climate change.

The report identifies profound adverse livelihood impacts associated with Green Resources’ activities, including loss of land and heightened food insecurity, as well as destruction of sites of cultural significance. It also demonstrates the failure of Green Resources to engage in meaningful community engagement with affected villages, so as to deliver positive community development outcomes.

Yet this REDD [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation] type project (referring to any project that involves forestry carbon credits), and the audit mechanisms to which it must comply, fail to detect and/or challenge the impacts of Green Resources’ activities.

Nor do they detect the extent to which environmental problems – including land clearing for animal grazing and crop cultivation – may simply be relocated from inside licence areas to other, often ecologically sensitive landscapes.

Importantly too, carbon market audits fail to consider the carbon capture enabled by local agro-ecological and organic farming systems, on which most subsistence and peasant farmers rely.

We are faced with a number of options in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, something we all know is urgently needed. Despite the promise by many that the magic of climate markets will solve the current climate crisis, the findings presented in the report discard this fairy dust, shining a light on the structural violence and inequities on which carbon markets are built.

Expecting some of the poorest of the poor to carry the social and ecological burdens of monoculture plantation forestry projects for carbon offset is both socially unjust, and ecologically just does not add up. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Salvadorans Elsy Álvarez and María Menjivar – with her young daughter – planning plantain seedlings in a clearing in the forest. Credit: Claudia Ávalos/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 24 2014 (IPS)

The international community is failing to take advantage of a potent opportunity to counter climate change by strengthening local land tenure rights and laws worldwide, new data suggests.

In what researchers say is the most detailed study on the issue to date, new analysis suggests that in areas formally overseen by local communities, deforestation rates are dozens to hundreds of times lower than in areas overseen by governments or private entities. Anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to deforestation each year."This model of government-owned and -managed forests usually doesn’t work. Instead, it often creates an open-access free-for-all.” -- Caleb Stevens

The findings were released Thursday by the World Resources Institute, a think tank here, and the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global network that focuses on forest tenure.

“This approach to mitigating climate change has long been undervalued,” a report detailing the analysis states. “[G]overnments, donors, and other climate change stakeholders tend to ignore or marginalize the enormous contribution to mitigating climate change that expanding and strengthening communities’ forest rights can make.”

Researchers were able to comb through high-definition satellite imagery and correlate findings on deforestation rates with data on differing tenure approaches in 14 developing countries considered heavily forested. Those areas with significant forest rights vested in local communities were found to be far more successful at slowing forest clearing, including the incursion of settlers and mining companies.

In Guatemala and Brazil, strong local tenure resulted in deforestation rates 11 to 20 times lower than outside of formally recognised community forests. In parts of the Mexican Yucatan the findings were even starker – 350 times lower.

Meanwhile, the climate implications of these forests are significant. Standing, mature forests not only hold massive amounts of carbon, but they also continually suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“We know that at least 500 million hectares of forest in developing countries are already in the hands of local communities, translating to a bit less than 40 billion tonnes of carbon,” Andy White, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)’s coordinator, told IPS.

“That’s a huge amount – 30 times the amount of total emissions from all passenger vehicles around the world. But much of the rights to protect those forests are weak, so there’s a real risk that we could lose those forests and that carbon.”

White notes that there’s been a “massive slowdown” in the recognition of indigenous and other community rights over the past half-decade, despite earlier global headway on the issue. But he now sees significant potential to link land rights with momentum on climate change in the minds of policymakers and the donor community.

“In developing country forests, you have this history of governments promoting deforestation for agriculture but also opening up forests through roads and the promotion of colonisation and mining,” White says.

“At the same time, these same governments are now trying to talk about climate change, saying they’re concerned about reducing emission. To date, these two hands haven’t been talking to each other.”

Lima link

The new findings come just ahead of two major global climate summits. In September, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host international leaders in New York to discuss the issue, and in December the next round of global climate negotiations will take place in Peru, ahead of intended agreement next year.

The Lima talks are being referred to as the “forest” round. Some observers have suggested that forestry could offer the most significant potential for global emissions cuts, but few have directly connected this potential with local tenure.

“The international community hasn’t taken this link nearly as far as it can go, and it’s important that policymakers are made aware of this connection,” Caleb Stevens, a proper rights specialist at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the new report’s principle author, told IPS.

“Developed country governments can commit to development assistance agencies to strengthen forest tenure as part of bilateral agreements. They can also commit to strengthen these rights through finance mechanisms like the new Green Climate Fund.”

Currently the most well-known, if contentious, international mechanism aimed at reducing deforestation is the U.N.’s REDD+ initiative, which since 2008 has dispersed nearly 200 million dollars to safeguard forest in developing countries. Yet critics say the programme has never fully embraced the potential of community forest management.

“REDD+ was established because it is well known that deforestation is a significant part of the climate change problem,” Tony LaVina, the lead forest and climate negotiator for the Philippines, said in a statement.

“What is not as widely understood is how effective forest communities are at protecting their forest from deforestation and increasing forest health. This is why REDD+ must be accompanied by community safeguards.”

Two-thirds remaining

Meanwhile, WRI’s Stevens says that current national-level prioritisation of local tenure is a “mixed bag”, varying significantly from country to country.

He points to progressive progress being made in Liberia and Kenya, where laws have started to be reformed to recognise community rights, as well as in Bolivia and Nepal, where some 40 percent of forests are legally under community control. Following a 2013 court ruling, Indonesia could now be on a similar path.

“Many governments are still quite reluctant to stop their attempts access minerals and other resources,” Stevens says. “But some governments realise the limitations of their capacity – that this model of government-owned and -managed forests usually doesn’t work. Instead, it often creates an open-access free-for-all.”

Not only are local communities often more effective at managing such resources than governments or private entities, but they can also become significant economic beneficiaries of those forests, eventually even contributing to national coffers through tax revenues.

Certainly there is scope for such an expansion. RRI estimates that the 500 million hectares currently under community control constitute just a third of what communities around the world are actively – and, the group says, legitimately – claiming.

“The world should rapidly scale up recognition of local forest rights even if they only care about the climate – even if they don’t care about the people, about water, women, biodiversity,” RRI’s White says.

“Actually, of course, people do care about all of these other issues. That’s why a strategy of strengthening local forest rights is so important and a no-brainer – it will deliver for the climate as well as reduce poverty.”

A Jun. 7 session of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in the Mexican Congress. Nearly 500 legislators from some 90 countries took part in the gathering in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

Latin America’s parliaments have failed to protect the forests and to guarantee their sustainable use, despite the fact that a number of countries have laws on forests, legislators from the region said at a global summit in the Mexican capital.

There are problems in areas such as respect for the rights of local communities, budget allocations for the protection of forests, land tenure guarantees, forest floor carbon ownership, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from sustainable use of forests.

“We aren’t working with the communities, and we don’t have the technical capacity to include international standards; the government is fearful and more worried about bringing in forest investment in activities like mining, without any responsibility for the environment,” Colombian Senator Mauricio Ospina of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole told IPS.

Ospina was one of the nearly 500 legislators from more than 90 countries who took part in the Jun. 6-8 second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in Mexico City, organised by the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International).

The summit agenda focused on the struggle against climate change and efforts to protect forests and natural capital.

Colombia, which has 60 million hectares of forest, is one of the 18 nations of the developing South taking part in the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (U.N. REDD), which was launched in 2007.

U.N. REDD is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. It finances national programmes to fight deforestation, reduce carbon emissions and foment access by participating countries to technical and financial support to combat climate change.

U.N. REDD was launched as a collaborative programme of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

The aim goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

Preventing deforestation is essential because trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into carbon in their trunks and branches and in the soil. When forests are cut down, not only do they stop absorbing carbon, but also the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere as CO2. Moreover, forests are critical to rainfall and play a key role in the water cycle through evaporation and precipitation.

In June 2013, U.N. REDD approved an allocation to Colombia of four million dollars for activities such as the creation of a forest inventory, the development of social and environmental safeguards, and the identification of benefits.

Colombia is carrying out 10 U.N. REDD projects and another 23 forest initiatives. Since 2008, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has approved an additional 3.6 million dollars in funds for the country.

The REDD+ action plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is a platform of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change that incorporates elements like conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks and the sustainable management of forests.

Peru is also moving forward in the design of a REDD+ strategy, facing challenges similar to those of the rest of the region.

“We have to work in the communities, providing them with tools,” Congresswoman Marisol Espinoza, of the governing Peruvian Nationalist Party, told IPS. “Those who take care of the forests are their guardians and should be paid for what they do. We hope the new laws will strengthen this new approach to preserving forests.”

Peru is developing a national REDD+ strategy that has a handicap: it has no mechanism to resolve disputes over land property rights, according to the article “REDD+ Readiness progress across countries: time for reconsideration” published in May in the British journal Climate Policy.

There are currently 19 REDD+ projects and another 18 forest initiatives in that Andean nation, which is set to receive 3.8 million dollars from the FCPF.

The 20 authors of the study published in the Climate Policy journal, who assessed the cases of Peru, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cameroon, found that progress had been made in planning, coordination, demonstration and pilots.

But they said measurement, reporting and verification of forest carbon, audits, financing, benefit sharing, and policies, laws and institutions faced major challenges.

They suggested a “rethink of the current REDD+ Readiness infrastructure given the serious gaps observed in addressing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, linking REDD+ to broader national strategies and systematic capacity building.”

Mexico, which is moving forward in fits and starts in its national REDD+ strategy, has some 65 million hectares covered by trees in the territories of around 2,300 communities, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

“There are still important steps to take to create a legal framework that would provide a sound coherent foundation for the successful application of REDD+,” Mexican lawmaker Lourdes López, cochair of the Globe International forestry initiative, told IPS. “The priority is to support sustainable forest producers and grant facilities to small producers.”

López, of Mexico’s Ecological Green Party, is promoting the reform of the 2003 General Law on Sustainable Forestry Development, to cut red tape surrounding forestry initiatives, foment commercial forest plantations, and step up certification of good management practices.

She also wants to regulate businesses like carpentries and furniture stores, to ensure that the lumber they use was legally obtained.

There are 11 REDD+ projects and another 38 forest initiatives in Mexico. In March, the FCPF and the government signed an agreement for 3.8 million dollars to complete the process of consultation and preparation of the REDD+ national strategy.

The government is about to open up the consultation process in order for the strategy to begin to be implemented next year.

The declaration of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators, to which IPS had access before it was released, only alludes indirectly to the forestry issue, by emphasising the approval of robust laws that support sustainable development, including forests and REDD+.

The parliamentarians urged governments and the U.N. to press international financial institutions for environmental programmes like REDD+ to involve national legislators, in order to “develop capacities and share best legislative practices.”

In response to a question from IPS, Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, predicted significant changes in international financial institutions and the nations with the greatest forest capital with respect to the increase in REDD+, at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Kyte said that since December “we have more than 300 million dollars” to support forest projects.

In Espinoza’s view, it is essential that forest protection schemes do not reproduce poverty.

One country that the rest of the region looks to is Costa Rica, a world pioneer in setting the goal of reaching carbon neutrality in 2021. According to official estimates, the Central American nation will emit close to 21 million tonnes of carbon in 2021, and it hopes to compensate for 75 percent of this total by carbon capture in its forests, which cover 52 percent of the national territory.

By Alejandro Encinas
Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

It is now two years since Mexico passed the General Law on Climate Change, a landmark piece of national environmental legislation.

This was a truly significant move and came at a time when the country had also just approved a far-reaching REDD+ law that has set the benchmark for international best practice on tackling deforestation and forest degradation.

Alejandro Encinas

Passage of Mexico’s far-reaching climate law (which was supported, significantly, on a cross-party basis) highlights the progress on climate change now being made globally. Numerous national economies have passed landmark climate and energy-related legislation over the last few years.

These countries are advancing laws at a pace that contrasts sharply with the U.N.-brokered climate change talks that formally convene again in Peru in November.

This trend comes at a time of pivotal change in international relations with a period of economic downturn in recent years in the West being counterpoised with the increasingly rapid shift of power to some emerging economies.

Mirroring this is a fundamental repositioning of the centre of gravity of the global climate change debate towards domestic climate change legislation. This is nothing less than game changing.“Until now, it [the political debate on climate change] has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimise their share” – Alejandro Encinas

In the last two years, there has been substantive legislative progress right across the developing world.

In the Americas, for instance, Bolivia passed its Framework Law on Mother Earth and Integral Development to Live Well; El Salvador adopted its National Climate Change Strategy; In Ecuador, Decree 1815 established the Intersectoral National Strategy for Climate Change; and in Costa Rica a draft General Law on Climate Change was introduced, and subsequently approved this year.

In the Asia-Pacific region, China published its National Adaptation Plan and made progress in drafting its national climate change law; Indonesia extended its forest moratorium; Kazakhstan introduced a pilot emissions trading scheme; and Micronesia passed its Climate Change Act in late 2013

In the Middle East and North Africa, Jordan passed its National Climate Change Policy; and the United Arab Emirates launched a mandatory Energy Efficiency Standardisation and Labelling Scheme.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya adopted the 2013-2017 Climate Change Action Plan; Mozambique adopted the 2013-2025 National Strategy for Climate Change; Tanzania passed its National Strategy on REDD+; Nigeria’s Legislative Council approved the adoption of a National Climate Change Policy and Response Strategy.

As in Mexico, adoption of such initiatives is – with a few notable exceptions­ – largely cross-party.

One key reason for this encouraging move towards political consensus is that many legislators increasingly recognise the positive co-benefits of climate change legislation. These range from greater resource efficiency and increased energy security to the reduction of air pollution.

All this, in turn, mirrors a crucial shift in the political debate on climate change. Until now, it has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimise their share.

Now, legislators increasingly view the issue as one of national self-interest, with each nation trying to maximise the benefits of climate change legislation.

Indeed, those countries with strong national legislation are in a better position to promote inward investment on low-carbon technologies because there is greater business certainty rather than high regulatory risk.

Encouraging as this shift is, it is as yet insufficient to avoid dangerous climate change of greater than 2 degrees Celsius.

Nonetheless, the national legal and policy frameworks to measure, report, verify and manage carbon that are now being created have the potential of significant tightening.

This will be the more likely as governments experience the benefits of lower energy use, reduced costs, improved competitiveness and greater energy security.

As this happens, the goal must be to translate such progress into a comprehensive, global deal in 2015 in Paris. And, this will be a key focus of the June 6-8 World Summit of Legislators that the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE)is hosting in Mexico City.

Such a deal will be made more likely when even more countries are committed to taking action on climate change because it is to their advantage rather than out of perceived altruism. In other words, such a deal will reflect domestic political conditions, not define them.

The U.N. negotiations should be used as the forum for countries to invest more in climate diplomacy and practical international cooperation.

This will help to expedite the creation of conditions within nations, both developed and developing, as well as its provincial regions, municipalities, specific cities and its metropolitan areas, that will enable them to agree a comprehensive global treaty in 2015.

It is ironic that countries that have found it hard to agree to international action are now outdoing their commitments in domestic legislation.

Having taken those steps at home they will find it much easier to commit to a global agreement which confirms the decisions they have already taken of their sovereign free will. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

Logs stacked in Riau, Sumatra, which has one of Indonesia’s highest rates of deforestation. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

By Sandra Siagian
JAKARTA, May 27 2014 (IPS)

Comprised of over 17,000 islands that are highly susceptible to rising seas, Indonesia is taking stock of its position as the world’s third leading emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China.

Faced with the upcoming GLOBE Summit of World Legislators, scheduled to take place in Mexico City next month to test a new international climate change agreement centered on national legislation, the Indonesian government is in a race against time to evaluate its existing climate change policies, and bring its laws in line with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise to slash carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020.

The international community is largely agreed that the next two years will be crucial in determining the planet’s future vis-à-vis global warming. At the end of 2015, Paris will host the 21^st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an event scientists are calling the “last chance” for world leaders to agree on a global emissions peak.

"What we need [now] is to encourage frank and open dialogue between legislators and the government.” -- Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Center (ICCC)
Indonesia is poised to play a significant role in negotiations, with local initiatives like its Green Economy Caucus (GEC) – a sustainable development model launched last year – offering valuable lessons for the international community.

But environmental experts here say that unless swift steps are taken to boost dialogue between legislators and government officials, the country will not advance far down its path towards sustainability.

Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Centre (ICCC), is hopeful that the GLOBE summit will provide the basis for exactly this kind of conversation.

“The conversations so far [on climate change] have not been very well connected, even in Warsaw last year,” Helmy, who was a lead negotiator with the Indonesian delegation on climate change at the 2013 UNFCCC in Poland, told IPS.

“I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel with less than two years left… What we do need is to encourage frank and open dialogue between the legislators and the government.”

Helmy strongly supports platforms like the GEC, comprised of a team of lawmakers who are plotting the country’s transition to a green economy, including identifying environmentally friendly methods of exploiting natural resources.

According to Satya Yudha, GEC’s president and a member of Indonesia’s House of Representatives who was recently re-elected for another five-year term in office, the caucus also focuses on devising green bills, creating a renewable energy strategy, and implementing the United Nations-backed REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

The latter, Yudha told IPS, is essential for the management of land usage and for monitoring forest conservation and protected areas.

“Seventy percent of [Indonesia’s] carbon emissions come from land usage, and 30 percent from the energy sector,” he said, adding that legislators must push parliamentarians to prioritise environmental policies when setting the government’s annual budget.

Setyo Budiantoro from Prakarsa – the local NGO that helped set up the GEC – told IPS that one of Indonesia’s biggest obstacles was its parliamentarians’ mistrust in the very notion of climate change.

“That’s why there’s no…sense of urgency for parliamentarians to act on a climate change law,” the NGO’s executive director explained. “So that’s one of GEC’s main objectives, to create more awareness.”

The case for a multi-sector approach

Indonesia’s attempts to cut emissions caused by deforestation also serve as an excellent case study on the need for collaboration between lawmakers and various government sectors.

Deforestation has been rampant here in recent years, mainly due to the world’s hunger for palm oil, pulp and paper. According to a 2013 study published in ‘Science’ magazine, the country’s rate of deforestation between 2000 and 2003 totalled roughly one million hectares a year, and doubled to two million hectares a year between 2011 and 2012.

The destruction has led to deadly flash floods, landslides and the loss of habitat for endangered species like orangutans and rhinos.

Last year Yudhoyono extended a 2011 moratorium, which barred new logging and palm-oil plantation permits under a one-billion-dollar deal with Norway.

The extension of the landmark ban on clearing primary rainforests and peat lands will preserve 64 million hectares until 2015. However, environmentalists have been sceptical that some protected areas continue to be exploited due to corruption, illegal fires and logging.

A recent Human Rights Watch report argued that Indonesia’s forestry ministry failed to “accurately map forests, land use, and concession boundaries, and did not fairly allocate use rights.”

Citing an investigation by the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the report, entitled ‘The Dark Side of Green Growth’, found that these “weaknesses were central causes of persistent corruption and lost government revenue, as well as high levels of deforestation.”

Muhammad Farid from REDD+ believes that Indonesia “needs to enforce policies from the top level to monitor all land sectors for unplanned deforestation, illegal logging, encroachment and forest fires.”

“REDD+ can’t fix everything,” he told IPS. “We need support from other ministries within Indonesia to really make a difference. Mining, agriculture, home affairs, they all need to coordinate with the government. This is not an easy task, but it will eventually be done.”

Locally, the jury is still out on Yudhoyono’s voluntary pledge to severely reduce carbon emissions by the end of the decade. Some experts, like Yudha, admit the president is on the right path, but are concerned about balancing an “ambitious” target with savvy economic policies.

Others, like Farid, are more optimistic, convinced that the right policies and incentives could put the country within reach of the goal in six years.

“If we [successfully] reduce encroachment and [improve] the state of our forests, and also…reduce unplanned deforestation and illegal logging, I think this goal can be reached,” he said.

With presidential elections scheduled for July, it remains to be seen whether or not the new government will follow in Yudhoyono’s footsteps.

“My hope is that whoever leads the country understands that we are not alone in [these] efforts,” Helmy asserted, adding that Indonesia is just one of many countries actively participating in global negotiations on climate change.

“I think the stakes for us are quite high… we have small islands and rising sea levels.”

Given that reality, if Indonesia fails to take concrete steps to strengthen its national legislation it will stop being part of the solution and join the ranks of the “troublemakers in the global society,” he added.

The Ajusco forest, one of Mexico City’s green lungs and water sources. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 8 2014 (IPS)

The rural communities of San Miguel and Santo Tomás Ajusco, to the south of Mexico City, are preserving 3,000 of their 7,619 hectares of forest in exchange for payment for environmental services. But the inequality in the communities is far from ecological.

The 484 men and 120 women who own plots of between half a hectare and eight hectares are organised in the Comisariado de Bienes Comunales (“commissioner’s office for communal goods”). To preserve the forest and care for the water, they receive trees, seeds, greenhouses and other supplies from the federal government and the authorities in the state capital.

There are numerous jobs, ranging from guarding the forest to prevent logging or fires to filling out official paperwork.

And the benefits provided are not insignificant.

Since 2012, this group of ‘comuneros’ – peasants farmers who work communal lands – has been participating in the programme for payments for environmental services financed by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) and the private construction firm Ingenieros Civiles Asociados (ICA), who provide 123 dollars a year per hectare for keeping the forest clean, growing living barriers, and planting trees.

The work is not done on all plots at the same time, but in a rotating fashion, so the benefits circulate around a surface area of 220 hectares.

In addition, between 2012 and 2013, CONAFOR granted them around 300,000 dollars for the restoration of micro-basins.

But women only participate in reforestation and garbage collection activities.

“We’re going to reforest up to July, when the rainy season starts,” Alma Reyes, a 42-year-old mother of three who is one of the 120 female ‘comuneras’, told IPS. “The problem is that the jobs available to women are very limited.”

Reyes overcame decades of exclusion in 2010, when she successfully ran for the position of secretary of the Comisariado, one of the organisation’s three highest-level posts.

But her term ended in August 2013, and Reyes doubts that another woman will be elected to the position.

“A sexist majority prevails, and the laws are not enforced,” she said. “Women have no influence over what is done, in the distribution of benefits or in decision-making.”

In 2013, similar payments were approved for 52,000 hectares of forest land around the country. And for a period of five years, CONAFOR earmarked 77 million dollars in environmental services on 471,000 hectares.

At first glance, the projects have borne fruit: most of the children in the communities attend school, people eat three meals a day, and villagers have stopped leaving. But statistics are needed to gauge the improvement in living conditions for both men and women.

The case of the ‘comuneras’ from Ajusco illustrates how the role of women is not taken into account in Mexico’s laws on climate change.

The General Climate Change Law in effect since 2012 makes virtually no reference to participation by women.

The only mention of the subject, in article 71, says the plans drawn up by the states must “always seek to achieve gender equity and the representation of the most vulnerable populations.”

“All laws can be perfected,” legislator Lourdes López, chair of the congressional commission on the environment and natural resources, told IPS. “We are reviewing it, because when the law is applied, details are found. We want to ensure follow-up on the climate change plans and on how the executive branch implements them.”

López, who belongs to the Green Ecological Party and heads the Mexican chapter of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), is one of the advocates of greater reforms.

The law made the target of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020 obligatory, subject to the availability of funding and technology transfer, according to the most comprehensive study on climate legislation, which analysed the laws of 66 countries and was published in February by GLOBE International, a global network of parliamentarians concerned about the environment.

Martha Lucía Micher, a lawmaker from the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), believes laws and decision-making must do a better job of including women.

“How can policies be developed if women are ignored?” asked Micher, chair of the gender equality commission. “How can sustainable projects be promoted if women don’t participate? We aren’t sufficiently represented in decision-making on climate change.”

The two legislative commissions presided over by López and Micher, as well as female activists and academics, set up a working group to propose changes to laws on climate change, with the aim of including a gender perspective.

This country of 118 million people is highly vulnerable to climate change and is already suffering the manifestations of global warming, such as more frequent and devastating storms, severe drought, a rising sea level, and a loss of biological diversity.

Over half – 51.3 percent – of the population lives in poverty, and many women, especially in rural areas, bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, because they are responsible for making sure their families have clean water and food, and for taking care of their families in case of disasters.

The absence of a gender focus in the country’s climate laws contrasts sharply with other areas.

The National Development Plan 2013-2018 stipulates that a gender angle must be incorporated in all government programmes, in order to achieve equality between men and women.

And the National Programme for Equal Opportunities and Non-Discrimination against Women 2013-2018 orders the incorporation “of a gender focus in the detection and mitigation of risks, emergency response and reconstruction in natural and manmade disasters,” and in “policies on the environment and sustainability.”

Leticia Gutiérrez, a policy adviser with the Alianza MéxicoREDD+ (REDD+Mexico Alliance), told IPS that “under the prevailing approach, women are still seen as a vulnerable group and the focus is on the promotion of productive projects without managing to have an impact on the structural causes of gender inequality.”

The Alianza sponsored a study that analyses Mexico’s main laws and policies, as well as public spending dedicated to equality between men and women in relation to the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism.

The document, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Gender Office, concluded that although there is a legal and institutional framework that requires the inclusion of gender considerations, a gender focus is not yet sufficiently included in a cross-cutting manner in forestry, agriculture, environment and climate policies.

Mexico is ranked 21 out of 72 countries on the IUCN Environment and Gender Index (EGI). The top country on the list is Iceland, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is in last place.

The achievements and proposals “sound great,” said Alma Reyes. “I hope they are put into practice, because gender equity is demanded from all sides.”

U.S. Native American leader Tom Goldtooth. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Mar 20 2014 (IPS)

Civil society and advocacy groups are warning that a prominent carbon-reduction initiative, aimed at curbing global emissions, is undermining land tenure rights for indigenous communities, putting their livelihoods at risk.

On Wednesday, an international dialogue here focused on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+) programme, overseen primarily by the United Nations and World Bank.“As the carbon in living trees becomes another marketable commodity, the deck is loaded against forest peoples." -- Arvind Khare

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a coalition of organisations focused on land tenure and policy reforms, presented new research highlighting the lack of legal protection and safeguards for indigenous communities living in forests.

“As the carbon in living trees becomes another marketable commodity, the deck is loaded against forest peoples and presents an opening for an unprecedented carbon grab by governments and investors,” said Arvind Khare, RRI’s executive director.

“Every other natural-resource investment on the international stage has disenfranchised indigenous peoples and local communities, but we were hoping REDD would deliver a different outcome. Their rights to their forests may be few and far between, but their rights to the carbon in the forests are non-existent.”

REDD+ provides a series of financial incentives and rewards for developing countries to reduce their carbon emissions resulting from deforestation.

The World Bank plays an active role in REDD+ through its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the Forest Investment Programme (FIP), both of which are designed to encourage better forest conservation and stewardship.

However, watchdog groups say Latin American, African and Asian indigenous communities living in forests have yet to receive any REDD+ revenue streams from their respective governments.

“There has been no transfer of funds to the [indigenous] communities through the governmental REDD processes,” Khare told IPS. “And therefore, in most of these countries … no money has been transferred to the communities through these two major bodies [REDD+ and FCPF], which are actually piloting REDD in the world.”

RRI’s new research, which examines 23 countries, finds that only Mexico and Guatemala have laws meant to clarify tenure rights over carbon. Meanwhile, none of the countries have a legal framework or institutions in place to determine who receives REDD+ benefits for carbon emission reductions.

One-eighth the deforestation

In order to ensure that indigenous communities receive an appropriate share of the financial benefits from REDD+, many of the participants at Wednesday’s dialogue called on the programme’s overseers to explicitly link carbon rights with land tenure rights.

“Tenure must be a centrepiece of REDD …That recognition of local rights is essential to the viability of carbon markets,” said Alexandre Corriveau-Bourque, a tenure analyst at RRI.

“These observations are based not only on moral or legal grounds but on a growing body of academic literature demonstrating that communities with secure tenure have proven that they promote the permanence of forest carbon” – essentially, preventing deforestation – “often achieving better outcomes than state-protected areas.”

For instance, in areas of the Amazon where the land ownership rights of indigenous communities are respected and legally protected, the rate of deforestation is only one-eighth of the level in areas not under indigenous control.

When land tenure rights are not clearly recognised or legally protected, however, the potential for violent conflict, state repression and heightened deforestation increases.

“It’s also clear that insecure, unclear and unrecognised community tenure rights can lead to conflict and deforesting activities,” Corriveau-Bourque continued. “If governments decide that carbon is a public good and claim exclusive state ownership, as many have with mineral resources … it will add another layer of contestation and conflict in an already crowded field.”

In 2002, New Zealand declared state ownership of its carbon supplies, which actually resulted in an increase in deforestation. As a result, the government has since reformed the law to adapt a policy that gives communities and individuals more freedom to engage in the carbon trade.

According to RRI, 15 of the 21 countries with national planning documents for REDD+ noted that a major cause of deforestation and forest degradation was the absence of clear tenure policies.

Misattributed blame

In addition to the lack of clear land tenure rights, some analysts believe that the implementation of REDD+ will be detrimental to indigenous people as governments seek to misattribute and direct blame for deforestation towards local communities, rather than on the corporate interests operating in fragile forest ecosystems.

“The message coming from forest peoples is that they are being pressed from both sides,” Tom Griffiths, a coordinator with the Forest Peoples Programme, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“On the one hand, their forests are being given out without their knowledge and agreement to foreign companies for agricultural development and oil extraction. And on the other, they’re being pressed by these same climate initiatives, which are actually limiting their access to the forest.”

Griffiths suggested that the industrial sector is largely responsible for driving deforestation in many countries, but that subsistence farmers and poor people often get the blame.

He also notes that some analysts have characterised traditional rotational farming as “slash and burn” agriculture.

“There’s a deep prejudice in forest policymaking, and indeed the forest profession, against so-called slash and burn agriculture,” said Griffiths. “In fact, there’s a large amount of science to show that, with the right conditions, it is a fully sustainable form of land use and in fact can even enrich forest ecosystems.

“We’re very concerned that some of these REDD policies, forest climate policies, are not paying adequate attention to these obligations to protect customary rights to land and crucial customary systems or ways of using the land.”

Earlier this month, indigenous groups from around the world held an international conference on deforestation and local rights in Palangka Raya, Indonesia.

In addition to singling out agribusiness, infrastructure as well as mineral and energy extraction, they called for a halt to “green economy” projects, which they argued prohibit forest peoples’ “fundamental rights”.

In a declaration, the conference organisers directly criticized REDD+ both for its lack of progress on emissions reduction and for the restrictions it imposes on the rights of indigenous forest peoples to use their land.

“Global efforts promoted by agencies like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), [REDD+] and the World Bank to address deforestation through market mechanisms are failing,” states the communiqué.

“Not just because viable markets have not emerged, but because these efforts fail to take account of the multiple values of forests and, despite standards to the contrary, in practice are failing to respect our internationally recognised human rights.”

Furthermore, the declaration indicated that organisations collaborating on initiatives like REDD+ have implemented development programmes that have themselves contributed to deforestation:

“Contradictorily, many of these same agencies are promoting the take-over of our peoples’ land and territories through their support for imposed development schemes, thereby further undermining national and global initiatives aimed at protecting forests.”

COP19 delegates huddle to resolve the issue of loss and damage. Credit: Courtesy of ENB

By Stephen Leahy
WARSAW, Nov 24 2013 (IPS)

The U.N. climate talks in Warsaw ended in dramatic fashion Saturday evening in what looked like a schoolyard fight with a mob of dark-suited supporters packed around the weary combatants, Todd Stern of the United States and Sai Navoti of Fiji representing G77 nations.

It took two weeks and 36 straight hours of negotiations to get to this point."We need those promises to add up to enough real action to keep us below the internationally agreed two-degree temperature rise.” -- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

At issue in this classic North versus South battle was the creation of a third pillar of a new climate treaty to be finalised in 2015. Countries of the South, with 80 percent of the world’s people, finally won, creating a loss and damage pillar to go with the mitigation (emissions reduction) and adaptation pillars.

Super-typhoon Haiyan’s impact on the Philippines just days before the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP19) amply illustrated the reality of loss and damages arising from climate change.  Philippines lead negotiator Yeb Saño made an emotional speech announcing “fast for the climate” at the COP19 opening that garnered worldwide attention, including nearly a million YouTube views

His fast would only end with agreement on a loss and damage mechanism – an official process now called the “Warsaw Mechanism” to determine how to implement this third pillar. Much still needs to be defined. Climate impacts result in both economic and non-economic losses, including the growing issue of climate refugees, people who are forced to move because their homelands can no longer support them.

“This Warsaw decision on loss and damage is a major breakthrough,” said Bangladesh’s Saleem Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK.

“There is a long way yet to go for an effective climate treaty,” Huq told IPS.

Overall, the results from COP19 are mixed, said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ director of strategy and policy, who has attended all but one of these climate negotiations over the past 19 years.

“Loss and damages is big but we have the bare minimum in the rest to keep going,” he told IPS.

The U.N. talks known as COPs are part of a complex and acronym-laden process to create a new climate treaty to keep global warming to less than two degrees C, and to help poorer countries survive the mounting impacts.

In 2009 at the semi-infamous Copenhagen talks, the rich countries made a deal with developing countries, saying in effect: “We’ll give you billions of dollars for adaptation, ramping up to 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, in exchange for our mitigation amounting to small CO2 cuts instead of making the big cuts that we should do.”

The money to help poor countries adapt flowed for the first three years but has largely dried up. Warsaw was supposed to be the “Finance COP” to bring the promised money. That didn’t happen.

Countries like Germany, Switzerland and others in Europe only managed to scrape together promises of 110 million dollars into the Green Climate Fund. Developing countries wanted a guarantee of 70 billion a year by 2016 but were blocked by the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and others.

“Rich governments have refused to recognise their legal and moral responsibility to provide international climate finance,” said Lidy Nacpil, director of Jubilee South, Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development.

The mitigation pillar in Warsaw is even shakier. Japan said they couldn’t make their promised emission reductions and gave themselves a new extremely weak target. Canada and Australia thumbed their noses at their reduction commitments and are increasing emissions.

Today’s reality is that slightly more than half of annual CO2 emissions are coming from the global south. In Warsaw, the big emitters like China and India refused to take on specific reduction targets. Instead they agreed to make “contributions”.  Specific details about reduction amounts and timing was deferred to a specially-convened leader’s climate summit in New York on Sep. 23, 2014.

“We need those promises to add up to enough real action to keep us below the internationally agreed two-degree temperature rise,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said here in Warsaw.

The one surprising success at COP 19 was an agreement on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). This will provide compensation for countries that could lose revenue from not exploiting their forests. Deforestation and conversion of forests to farmland contributes about 10 percent of total human-caused CO2 emissions.

“We now have a system in place to do REDD and reduce emissions,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous representative from the Philippines.

It’s a strong package that includes verification, monitoring and safeguards for local communities. Countries have to put all of this in place before they can access finance either through the Green Climate Fund or through carbon markets, Tauli-Corpuz told IPS.

“Hopefully, it will pump a lot of money into local communities and reduce deforestation,” she said.

Honouring land tenure or land rights of local communities to care for the forests is the key to making REDD work as intended and benefit local people and not corporations or national governments, she said.

Emissions from deforestation have been slowly declining. However, the vast majority of CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels, especially coal, and it continues to grow quickly. Those emissions will heat the planet for centuries and yet governments spend more than 500 billion dollars to subsidise these industries, said Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace international executive director.

“Democracy has been stolen by corporations,” Naidoo told IPS. “While activists and protesters are arrested, the real hooligans are the CEOs of fossil fuel companies.”

The only avenue left to people is civil disobedience and 2014 will be the year of climate activism, he said.

“Now is the time to put our lives on the line and face jail time,” Naidoo said.

In what may be the first of many such actions, more than 800 members of civil society walked of the COP negotiations on the second to last day “in protest against rich industrialised countries jeopardising international climate action” they said.

While international negotiations inch along, climate scientists are growing increasingly alarmed by mounting evidence that climate change is happening faster and with larger impacts than projected.

To have a good chance at staying under two degrees C, industrialised countries need to crash their CO2 emissions 10 percent per year starting in 2014, said Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester.

“We can still do two C but not the way we’re going,” Anderson said on the sidelines of COP 19 in Warsaw. He wondered why negotiators on the inside are not reacting to the reality that it is too late for incremental changes.

“I’m really stunned there is no sense of urgency here,” he told IPS.

Guyana has 12.2 million hectares of state forest. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

Guyana is engaged in a balancing act to save its rainforest, regarded as a living treasure, from the destructive activities of miners digging their way to another kind of treasure buried beneath this fragile ecosystem.

Natural Resources Minister Robert Persaud warns that the country stands to lose about 20 million dollars from the forest conservation fund because it has lost more of the Amazon, mainly to gold and diamond mining."We are fighting for our land rights, we are fighting for our indigenous rights, we are fighting for respect." -- Amerindian leader John Alfred

In November 2010, Guyana and Norway established a partnership that is the second biggest Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) interim agreement in the world. Norway committed to giving Guyana up to 250 million dollars by 2015 for avoided deforestation and degradation.

Guyana met the performance requirements for two consecutive years, earning approximately 70 million dollars which has been transferred by Norway into the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF).

But the preliminary third national report on deforestation did not contain good news.

“We’ve had a change in terms of deforestation rate, the level of 0.079 [percent], and this rate of change is higher than the previous year which was 0.054 percent,” Persaud told IPS.

“But if we look at the total area, it is just a mere 3,600 hectares in a 12.2 million hectares of state forest estate,” he added.

In percentage terms, Guyana has breached the agreement with Norway because it has increased from 0.054 percent in the Year Two assessment to 0.079 in Year Three, which is above the agreed threshold of 0.070.

The report will be finalised by independent auditors for Durham University and Norway by Nov. 30.

The funds earned by Guyana under the agreement with Norway are directed towards low carbon development strategy (LCDS) projects that have a transformational effect on the national and local economy, as well as supporting Guyana’s efforts to adapt to climate change and to increase resilience to future climate change.

However, some native Guyanese feel marginalised by the deal.

“The land, our resources, and keeping the environment healthy for our people and our children are key issues for us,” Laura George, a representative the Amerindian People’s Association, told IPS.

“One of the things we told them is that you need to consult with communities. Government should not pressure our Toshaos [Amerindian village leaders] into endorsing projects that we do not understand, that we have not fully understood,” she said of the agreement with Norway.

John Alfred, a former Toshaos from Region 9, told IPS that for many years their rights have been infringed with the destruction of the forest.

“There are many issues in our villages, in the regions. We are fighting for our land rights, we are fighting for our indigenous rights, we are fighting for respect,” he said.

Despite the latest report, Persaud told IPS Guyana “continues to be the country with one of the lowest rates of deforestation within South America.”

He conceded that 94 percent of the changes stem from mining activity, but said it was conducted “with the knowledge of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), working with legitimate miners, fulfilling their own economic activity while following the national guidelines or laws as well as our regulations in this regard.”

Patrick Harding, the president of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Mining Association (GGDMA), argues that it’s a numbers game.

“We stand maybe to lose about 40 percent of the Norway funds or about 25 million dollars,” he told IPS. “The mining industry, including bauxite, will give the government foreign exchange of about one billion dollars. We have an industry that is providing jobs for tens of thousands of Guyanese.”

He insisted that the GGDMA is also concerned about deforestation. “Our motto is mining with the environment in mind and we are very careful about the environment. We encourage our members to follow the guidelines of the Environmental Act and the Mining Regulations.”

In 2012 the mining industry declared 413,600 ounces of gold and this year its commitment is over 461,000 ounces.

“Of course we are concerned about the environment but you cannot have development without some additional disturbance,” Harding said.

Former Guyanese president Bharrat Jagdeo has been championing the cause of developing countries in the fight against climate change, highlighting the role that the country’s forests play in absorbing carbon emissions.

In 2009, under Jagdeo’s leadership, Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy, commonly known as the LCDS, was developed.

Under the programme, the country receives payment for forest ecosystem services. These funds are used to direct economic activities onto an environmentally-friendly, low-carbon trajectory for its growth and development.

Guyana’s LCDS has received widespread national support and international acclaim.

Credit: Sascha Kohlmann/CC BY-SA 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2013 (IPS)

The tiger population in the rainforests of Sumatra is vanishing at a staggering rate, reducing the number of the endangered species to as few as 400, warns Greenpeace International.

The primary reason is the expansion of oil palm and pulpwood plantations, which are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the destruction of tiger habitat from 2009 to 2011, the most recent period for which official Indonesian government data are available.

In a new study released Tuesday, Greenpeace says such destruction fragments the extensive tracts of rainforest over which tigers need to range in order to hunt.

“It also increases their contact with humans,” the study says. “This leads to more poaching for tiger skins and traditional medicines and more tiger attacks, resulting in both tiger and human deaths.”

The decline of Sumatran tigers is a measure of the loss of rainforest, biodiversity and also climate stability, according to the study titled ‘Licence to Kill’.

This summer, huge fires, both accidental and deliberate, raged across the Sumatran province of Riau, destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforests – including the deep peatland forests that are a last stand of tiger habitat in the province.

The fires released record amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollutants in a haze that stretched as far as Thailand.

There are no estimates as to how many tigers have been killed so far, although the figure could be in the thousands over the last decade.

Asked whether the United Nations is engaged in the protection of tigers, Bustar Maitar, the Indonesian head of Greenpeace’s Forest Campaign and Global Forest Network, told IPS, “I don’t see much U.N. activity on forests.

“The only thing I know is the U.N. Development Programme (UNPD) manages a one-billion-dollar fund from the Norwegian government for the U.N. collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).”

He said REDD was working closely with its Indonesian counterpart to accelerate REDD projects in Indonesia.

Maitar also said the U.N.’s focus is more on general sustainable development and democracy in Indonesia than on protecting the tiger, described as a critically endangered species.

“Or they might not really be clear as to how to fit in with this issue in Indonesia,” he said, adding that the U.N. could provide more technical assistance and capacity building for government and civil society.

The U.N. REDD programme was launched in 2008 and encompasses the technical expertise of UNDP, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

It supports nationally-led REDD+ processes and “promotes the informed and meaningful involvement of all stakeholders, including indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, in national and international REDD+ implementation“, according to the United Nations.

Currently, about 85 percent of Indonesia’s GHG emissions typically come from land-use changes (principally related to deforestation for plantations or agriculture), and around half of this is peat-related.

Even Sumatran tiger habitat in protected areas such as the world-famous Tesso Nilo National Park has been virtually destroyed by encroachment for illegal palm oil production, and government officials acknowledge that protection for such areas exists only on paper, says Greenpeace International.

The study also points out that forested tiger habitat in licenced plantation concessions has no protection at all. One million hectares – 10 percent of all remaining forested tiger habitat – remained at risk of clearance in pulp and oil palm concessions in 2011.

Over the 2009-2011 period, pulpwood suppliers were responsible for a sixth of all forested tiger habitat loss. And during the same period, the palm oil sector cleared a quarter of the remaining tiger habitat in its concessions.

“These failures expose how unregulated and irresponsible expansion, notably of oil palm and pulp wood plantations, undermines the Indonesian government’s commitments to stop deforestation and to save the tiger and other endangered wildlife,” the study says.

Greenpeace also says its investigations have revealed that household names, including Colgate Palmolive, Mondelez International (formerly Kraft), Nestle Oil, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and a host of other companies are linked to Singapore-based Wilmar International Ltd and its international trade in dirty palm oil.

Wilmar is the world’s largest palm oil processor, accounting for over one-third of the global palm oil processing market and with a distribution network covering over 50 countries.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon points out that forests are vital for human well-being.

In a message for the International Day of Forests last March, Ban said forests cover nearly a third of the globe and provide an invaluable variety of social, economic and environmental benefits.

Three-fourths of freshwater comes from forested catchment areas. Forests stabilise slopes and prevent landslides, while also protecting coastal communities against tsunamis and storms.

More than three billion people use wood for fuel, some two billion people depend on forests for sustenance and income, and 750 million live within them, he added.

Ban also said forests are often at the frontlines of competing demands. Urbanisation and the consumption needs of growing populations are linked to deforestation for large-scale agriculture and the extraction of valuable timber, oil and minerals.

Often the roads that provide infrastructure for these enterprises ease access for other forest users, who can further exacerbate the rate of forest and biodiversity loss.

“We need now to intensify efforts to protect forests, including by incorporating them into the post-2015 development agenda and the sustainable development goals,” Ban noted.

“I urge governments, businesses and all sectors of society to commit to reducing deforestation, preventing forest degradation, reducing poverty and promoting sustainable livelihoods for all forest-dependent peoples,” he said.

Michael Kusolo and his wife Mary lost all their four children in landslides that occurred in 2012 on the steep slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda’s Bududa District. Experts say that it is important that climate finance actually reaches Uganda’s communities and addresses the drivers of deforestation and degradation. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA
, Sep 17 2013 (IPS)

As the ink dries on a 3.6 million dollar agreement between Uganda and the World Bank to support the country’s preparations for REDD, some analysts are pessimistic over the mechanism’s potential.

REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) was formally agreed to at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bali, Indonesia in 2007. REDD is intended to reward the preservation of forests with carbon credits which can be sold to polluting companies in the North wishing to offset their harmful emissions. (REDD+, agreed later, extends the concept beyond forests and plantations to include agriculture.)

Uganda’s REDD negotiator, Xavier Mugumya, told IPS that in addition to the 3.6 million dollars from the World Bank, the Austrian government has offered a grant of 650,000 euros (865,000 dollars). But this is only a fraction of the total set out in the country’s Readiness Preparation Proposal (RPP).

“We still need nearly six million dollars to reach our budget as proposed in Uganda’s RPP,” said Mugumya.

Lauren Goers Williams is an associate in the Institutions and Governance Programme at the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) who has been working with civil society partners in Cameroon for the past four years. She admitted to being somewhat of a “REDD skeptic”: “In some ways it’s a very simple idea: create an economic incentive to protect forests.”

“When it first came out, people acted like it was as simple as ‘Don’t cut down the trees, go out and measure some carbon and we’re done.’

“But in reality all of these countries have sort of already been struggling with how to manage their forests or figure out how to protect some of them while also striving for economic development,” she told IPS.

The analyst, who also has experience working with communities in Brazil and Indonesia, said most of her work involves trying to bring attention to governance and social issues in designing and implementing REDD programmes.

“Initially people weren’t talking about indigenous peoples. They weren’t talking about the rights of people who are living in a lot of these forests,” she said. “A lot of [forest dwellers] don’t have formal rights, but they’re still living in these areas, depending on these resources and many of them have customary claims to the land.”

David Mwayafu, from the NGO Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development, has also been involved with implementing REDD projects. He said it was important that climate finance actually reaches communities and addresses the drivers of deforestation and degradation while allowing forest peoples to use forests sustainably.

“There is no clear mechanism for revenue distribution and sharing in Uganda, although it’s likely that it will require multiple approaches depending on the needs of the communities and location since the needs of the communities differ,” he told IPS.

But Ugandans are willing to conserve forests because they understand the importance of this, Mwayafu said.

“They have been doing this in the knowledge that the environment provides various ecosystem services such as timber, medicines, building materials, fuel wood [charcoal and fire wood], wind breaks and habitats for animals,” he said.

Goers Williams said one of the key messages to emerge from her experience in Cameroon was that policy makers must find ways to engage with local communities over REDD on local people’s own terms and in ways they understand.

“There can be a lot of fatigue and a lot of suspicion,” she said.

“So there’s definitely a real need for sensitivity and training to really understand where these groups are coming from and how their needs might be different from the needs of someone sitting in the capital, and really trying to work with them to sort that out.”

Mwayafu stressed the need for a two-way flow of information.

“If you implement a project in the community, sensitise them about the opportunities, challenges and importance of the project; provide an opportunity for them whereby they will be able to ask questions at the present and in future through a forum or dialogue, so that it’s not a one-way flow of information but an interactive approach,” he said.

“When talking about REDD, we are really talking about ‘humanity with their needs’,” Mwayafu said.

“If we don’t address those livelihood questions, we’ll be working against the communities whose livelihood is dependent on the forest resources,” Mwayafu said. “There’s so many complex issues that come up, social and environmental ones in addition to economic ones.”

Goers Williams added: “I’m not sure we will ever see a REDD mechanism that is a huge international mechanism, run by the UNFCCC that easily compensates people for reducing their emissions.

“But I think there are a lot of little things that REDD can potentially do.”

The Menchum Falls in Cameroon could be a great opportunity for REDD and ecotourism says Joseph Amougou, from the National REDD Coordination in the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection and Sustainable Development. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
YAOUNDE, Aug 8 2013 (IPS)

Uncertainty over property rights and access to forest land is potentially a major stumbling block for implementing the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in Cameroon.

In Adjab, an indigenous village in the southern region of Cameroon, Chief Marcelin Biang told IPS he feels the present regulations are pushing locals to damage the forest in order to establish their claim to it.

Following a land dispute between Adjab residents and a timber company, a piece of their land was given back to them – but on condition that the villagers “show proof” they are using the land to sustain their livelihoods.

Biang said that they depend on the forest for hunting, growing vegetables and collecting wood. Farming large plots of land is not part of their culture, but now they must learn to grow oil plams and rubber trees to be able to keep their land.

“We are confused about what to do,” said Biang. “They ask us to conserve the forest, but when we do, timber exploiters come in.”“Even if REDD+ doesn’t bring the money, let it bring good governance.” -- Augustine Njamnshi, of the NGO Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme Cameroon

Cameroon’s plans to implement and successfully carry out REDD projects will hinge on the country resolving long-standing challenges in managing forests and other natural resources.

In January, this Central African nation’s plans for REDD programmes were approved by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).

“Forest countries can receive payments for stocking carbon, but this must result from effective planning and implementation of the Readiness Preparation Proposal (RPP),” Serge Menang, senior environment specialist with FCPF in Cameroon told IPS.

The FCPF granted Cameroon 3.6 million dollars towards implementation of its RPP, which sets out the national strategy.

Countries in the global South hope to receive significant payments from polluters in the North in exchange for conserving and expanding forest cover. Trees hold stocks of carbon, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, where it would contribute to global warming through the greenhouse effect.

REDD schemes are meant to reward preservation of forests with carbon credits, which can be sold to polluting companies in the North wishing to offset their harmful emissions. REDD+ extends the concept of rewarding carbon storage beyond forests and plantations to include agriculture.

“Cameroon’s REDD+ strategy is based on a national vision of making REDD+ a tool for the socioeconomic development of the nation. It must be used to better the livelihood of communities,” Joseph Amougou, from the National REDD Coordination in the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection and Sustainable Development told IPS.

Achieving this vision will require addressing existing governance challenges, including reviewing and strengthening policy and ensuring informed, meaningful participation by forest-dependent communities – particularly by marginalised groups in rural areas such as women and indigenous peoples.

“REDD will not work in Cameroon without development from below. It cannot be implemented without accounting for the activities of the local population who practise agriculture, forest exploitation and livestock farming. REDD should improve their activities and living conditions so that these local communities don’t put as much pressure on the forest,” Amougou said.

“For example, in the northern part of Cameroon where the problem is energy [from firewood and charcoal], REDD must prioritise the energy needs of the people.”

Several platforms are already in place to support this type of participation. The National Steering Committee – which includes representation of indigenous peoples – brings relevant government ministries together with civil society organisations and NGOs, while the REDD and Climate Change Platform provides civil society and local communities with an independent coordinating body.

Haman Unusa is from the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection and Sustainable Development’s National REDD+ Coordination Unit, the body responsible for technical functions including meetings and consultation. He told IPS that indigenous peoples participated in consultations throughout the process of developing the RPP. This will continue in the implementation phase.

“The indigenous peoples will participate through their own various organisations. The indigenous peoples also represent themselves in regional and community branches of the REDD and Climate Change Platform,” Unusa said.

“A roadmap for integrating gender in the REDD+ process has been developed and will be enhanced as part of the development of the strategy. Women are also represented on the national bodies – in fact, one of the managerial positions of the national coordination is reserved for a woman,” said the official.

Unusa added that the communications strategy in the implementation phase will include the use of local languages and visual forms of communication such as posters and billboards. Translators and interpreters will also be used to facilitate two-way communication between REDD+ facilitators and local people.

Yet these plans for enhanced communications may point to shortcomings in the process so far. According to Aehshatu Manu, who has represented indigenous Mbororo women in the FCPF meetings, many local women are still unaware of what REDD seeks to achieve, and fear they will lose access to the forest for such things as building materials, medicinal plants and food.

“Despite the participation of our men and women in meetings,” she told IPS, “effective participation is yet to be achieved through the communications strategy that is in place. REDD is still misunderstood by local communities.”

Amougou said that policy makers are “facing a number of challenges in designing and implementing REDD strategies and policies.”

“REDD is new, but it must be built on existing assets and insights from previous policy interventions. REDD can be realised with the national policies, institutions and actions already in place,” he said.

Another threat to implementation comes from a lack of financial resources. The 3.6 million dollars from the FCPF is welcome, but the total budget for Cameroon’s RPP is 28 million dollars, and it is not yet clear where this money will come from.

“To be able to close such financial gaps, Cameroon’s REDD+ strategies should rely on already existing resources such as forest inventory data, REDD feasibility studies of drivers of deforestation and conservation efforts,” Menang said. “And the government and other development partners must support the process financially.”

Finding the rest of the money required may be a challenge, but Augustine Njamnshi of the NGO Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme Cameroon sees benefits even if those funds are not found. “Even if REDD+ doesn’t bring the money, let it bring good governance.”

Land degradation in Burkina Faso. The country’s forests are under pressure from the expansion of farming areas. Courtesy: Burkina Faso Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development

By Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU , Jul 20 2013 (IPS)

Burkina Faso has just received a grant of 30 million dollars from the Forest Investment Programme to help protect the country’s forests and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with deforestation.

Burkina’s forests are under pressure from the expansion of farming areas and the over-exploitation of firewood and other non-timber forest products. These include harvesting of immature fruit, extensive livestock grazing, bush fires, and – in certain regions – by gold mining, according to Luc Conditamdé, head of Tree Aid, an NGO based in Burkina Faso and Niger.

“Planting (new trees) is no longer as important as properly managing state and communal forests. The government needs to get communities to take more responsibility as forest management is decentralised,” Conditamdé tells IPS.

Improving governance and management of forests is one of the key objectives of the FIP, a programme in the framework of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) implemented by the world’s multilateral development banks.

Eight pilot countries were selected for the FIP, including the three African countries Burkina Faso, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each has been chosen for their potential to significantly reduce emissions from deforestation; conserve, manage or enhance carbon stocks; and incorporate climate finance into their policy frameworks and development activities.

A semi-arid country in the West African Sahel might seem a surprising choice, but Burkina Faso met many of the required criteria, says Mafalda Duarte, CIF coordinator and chief climate change specialist at the African Development Bank.

“Burkina Faso is the only country selected that has a relatively ‘low’ forest cover and a relatively ‘low’ rate of deforestation, which may be interpreted as a low potential for REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).

“Nevertheless, its semi-arid ecosystem makes it a good site to test the relevance and the operationalisation of REDD+ in that kind of ecosystems, which are widely spread worldwide,” she tells IPS. “In addition, Burkina has quite a long experience in participative management of forests.”

FIP has four objectives, including facilitating transformational change in forest policy and practice in developing countries; and piloting replicable models to improve understanding of how policy, forest-related investment, sustainable management and long-term emissions reductions interact.

“The backbone of this programme is the involvement of local communities, who have to be regularly consulted,” Samuel Yéyé, the Burkina Faso co-ordinator for FIP/REDD tells IPS.

Burkina’s FIP programme will work in four regions of the country, each representing a different ecosystem. In addition to reducing emissions and enhancing stocks of carbon-storing forests, it is expected to have significant benefits in terms of poverty reduction, preservation of biodiversity and adaptation to climate change.

According to Yéyé, preliminary studies have already been carried out on the preservation of tree cover in these regions, their capacity to sequester carbon, and into ways to help generate income for locals through the use of non-wood products.

“Communities must make their contribution to forest conservation, and we must create new economic activities so that people do not one day revert to destroying the forests as a means of earning an income,” Yéyé emphasises.

Tree Aid’s Conditamdé says one of the keys to improved preservation and management of Burkina’s forests lies in transferring skills, responsibilities and resources to local authorities.

“Article 77 of the Code Général des Collectivités Territoriales dealing with transfer of responsibilities for the environment and management of natural resources has not been implemented. This causes problems in the management of forest resources at the level of the commune, and contributes to local authorities taking only limited responsibility in managing forests,” he tells IPS.

He also cites challenges linked to poor coordination between various bodies, as well as a lack clarity over the laws and regulations that formally govern land ownership. “These are often poorly understood by most people, for example the process of registration for forests. This situation complicates the handling of management of communal and community forests.”

But Conditamdé sees promising signs that the FIP programme will help.

“Putting transparent and equitable mechanisms in place to allow different actors to participate in formulating policy and implementing activities will help to address (these problems),” he says.

According to the implementation plan for Burkina’s FIP grant, the project will reduce CO2 emissions linked to deforestation and land degradation in Burkina Faso by around 30 to 70 million tonnes over a period of 10 years.

Rasmane Ouédraogo, coordinator for the national Poverty-Environment Initiative, says forests are critical to livelihoods in Burkina Faso, where 80 percent of the population depends on natural resources.

The authorities are expecting that the economic benefits of reduced soil degradation and better protection due to the FIP grant will be worth an estimated at 1.56 billion dollars over the project’s life.

“We had to convince the politicians, particularly those in charge of the economy and finance, that the environment contributes significantly to the national economy.  The contribution rose from three percent of GDP to more than 6.48 percent between 2002 and 2008,” Ouédraogo says.

An economic evaluation conducted in 2009 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Fisheries showed that investments of this nature could lead to an increase in revenue for farmers ranging from 25 to 40 percent.

Uganda’s Mabira Forest Reserve is about 30,000 hectares but is at risk from deforestation. In 2011 the government announced that it allocated some 7,1000 hectares to sugar plantations. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI , Jul 14 2013 (IPS)

REDD – reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – would seem to be a mitigation strategy that perfectly matches Africa’s needs.

Deforestation and agriculture are responsible for a significant part of Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions – though the continent is by no means a leading contributor to global warming. Conserving and even extending Africa’s tree cover – the Congo Basin contains the second-largest rainforest in the world – would both lower emissions and absorb atmospheric carbon.

But the concept has both its critics and defenders.

“REDD is a very good thing for Africa, though you will always get detractors looking for the downside. It is especially good for the countries with predominantly miombo (or savanna) woodlands,” says Sharon Kockott, a director of Conservation Science Africa, a company working on the conservation and rehabilitation of community rangelands in Botswana, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

REDD works by calculating how much carbon is stored in trees in a particular area and issuing carbon credits for maintaining and sustainably managing this sequestered carbon.

Kockott tells IPS that protecting the carbon stocks in savanna woodlands is as vital to mitigating climate change as protecting the rainforests of the Congo Basin.

“The theory behind REDD says that a forest doesn’t exist in isolation – especially the savanna woodlands. Think of it as a dam. The most water is in the deepest part of the dam (the biggest carbon stocks are in the equatorial rain forests) and the savannas are like the edge of a dam – the shallow water actually recedes the quickest,” she says.

But Nnimmo Bassey, the director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation and a member of the No REDD in Africa Network thinks otherwise.

“REDD is a false solution for climate mitigation. When you guard a particular forest without offering an alternative solution, the loggers will definitely move to other locations because the need is still there,” he tells IPS.

“The net effect is that deforestation isn’t halted. Even if it did for a particular location, there is no assurance that it would do so in perpetuity,” Bassey says.

He points out that REDD also allows for various kinds of plantations to be considered as forests. “That position allows those who see trees as mere carbon sinks to replace forests with plantations, thereby decimating biodiversity, cultural diversity and other valuable uses of forests and forests products.”

REDD risks simply barring forest-dependent communities from project areas, Bassey argues, displacing them in exchange for a limited number of jobs as labourers or guards of the forest resources they previously enjoyed.

Billions of dollars have been pledged to develop, implement and expand REDD, but studying a funding tracker like the Overseas Development Institute’s Climate Funds Update, it is clear that relatively little of this has actually been disbursed so far – especially in Africa. Climate change mitigation requires detailed, accurate data and verification mechanisms. Developing REDD has quickly revealed gaps in the administrative capacity of various local, national and even international institutions in Africa.

The challenges schemes like REDD must overcome include the complexity of establishing reference levels – determining things like just how much carbon a given piece of forest holds, and how that will change over time under a “business as usual” scenario – and designing a project that will produce better results. Then once those questions are settled on paper, there is the immense problem of verifying estimates and projections against realities on the ground in often hard-to-reach locations.

The difficulty of credibly accomplishing all of this is reflected in the fact that thus far REDD carbon credits are not part of the compliance market, of credits that count towards meeting formal obligations to reduce emissions. Instead, carbon credits generated by REDD are part of a voluntary market, purchased by companies as part of corporate social responsibility.

The Kasigau Corridor REDD project in Kenya, for example, sold some of its first tranche of 1.45 million voluntary carbon units – representing the same number of tonnes of sequestered carbon – to South Africa’s Nedbank, as part of the bank’s positioning of itself as a carbon-neutral company.

“Due to the international economic downturn which started a few years ago, there is less money being allocated to social responsibility programmes,” says Kockott. “Companies will always first buy emission reduction credits which qualify for the targets they have to meet before they think of the voluntary ones.”

African governments are working to set up the frameworks needed to apply for, receive and manage REDD funds. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a well-established National Coordination for REDD, and is putting a National Forest Monitoring System in place. Kenya is busy with similar processes, as well as considering the creation of a national climate fund to absorb international climate finance and catalyse private funding, and align this with the country’s national priorities.

Philip Mrema, the programmes officer for Forests & Climate Change at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance says that REDD should take a people-centred approach, one that strengthens sustainable forestry management, enhances carbon stocks, maximising environment and social co-benefits, hence improving livelihoods.

Forest in Sierra de Manantlán biosphere reserve in western Mexico.Credit: Comisión Nacional de Áreas Protegidas

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 25 2013 (IPS)

Issues related to the ownership of forest carbon and to prior consultation mechanisms threaten to derail plans for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests (REDD+) in some countries of Latin America, according to experts.

The problems are hindering the design of Mexico’s plan in the framework of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). In Panama, they have prompted the country’s indigenous peoples to withdraw from the programme.

“The previous government let slip the opportunity of concluding the process for fear of social activism, especially on the part of indigenous people and campesino communities,” Gustavo Sánchez, head of the Mexican Network of Campesino Forestry Organisations (Red MOCAF), told IPS.

The administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term began in December, has not said “whether or not it will adopt the current draft” of the national plan, he said.

“When it comes to the plan, Mexico is the second most advanced country in the Mesoamerican region (southern Mexico and Central America), because Costa Rica is already engaged in consultations, after reaching an agreement between native peoples and the government,” Sánchez said.

REDD+ is a climate change mitigation action plan that currently finances national programmes in 16 countries of the developing South in a quest to combat deforestation, reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and promote access by participating countries to technical and financial support.

The initiative was launched in 2008 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), with the goal of promoting conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

In Latin America the participating countries are Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay, while associate members that have not so far received financing are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. A total of 46 countries in the developing South are participating.

Mexico’s forested area covers 65 million hectares in the territories of some 2,300 communities, of which 600 manage forestry enterprises, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

This country of nearly 117 million people emits 748 million tonnes a year of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Close to 16 percent arises from livestock farming, deforestation and other soil uses.

The authorities estimate that 150,000 hectares of forest are lost every year, but environmental organisations put deforestation at over 500,000 hectares a year.

In February, Panamanian indigenous groups withdrew from the pilot programme in their country, saying that the process was disrespecting their right to free, prior and informed consent and their collective right to traditional lands, as well as violating the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The state has marginalised us. The first thing the programme must guarantee is safeguards for indigenous people. Continuing in the programme makes no sense,” said Héctor Huertas of the National Union of Indigenous Lawyers of Panama (UNAIPA), which represents the National Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP).

Huertas told IPS that COONAPIP, a confederation of the seven native peoples in this Central American country, will be bringing a lawsuit in an administrative court against the Panamanian National Environmental Authority in a bid to halt REDD+.

Panama, a country of 3.5 million people, is home to some 417,000 indigenous people, according to the 2010 census, living on 16,634 square kilometres, equivalent to 29 percent of the national territory. Indigenous lands are regarded under the constitution as collectively-owned property that cannot be sold.

The crisis of the plan in Panama has fed suspicion in dozens of NGOs and academic institutes around the world that REDD+ does not represent a viable solution for environmental problems.

But it may serve as a lesson for the countries involved in designing the REDD+ programmes.

The study “Legal analysis of cross-cutting issues for REDD+ implementation: Lessons learned from Mexico, Viet Nam and Zambia”, says that “Mexico’s laws do not specify who owns carbon, but we can presume that forest owners and rights holders will be the direct beneficiaries.

“The clarification of land tenure rights is a crucial component of forest-based approaches to combating climate change and defining related carbon rights,” says the study, published May 2 by UN-REDD.

Another report, “Putting the Pieces Together for Good Governance of REDD+: An Analysis of 32 REDD+ Country Readiness Proposals”, published in March, concludes that few countries involved in the initiative “consider specific design options or challenges related to REDD+ benefit sharing, conflict resolution, or revenue management systems.”

However, the report makes the positive point that “most include plans to address these issues as readiness activities move forward.”

The publication, by Lauren Goers Williams of the U.S.-based World Resources Institute, says: “Relatively few readiness proposals identify specific next steps to address land tenure challenges or establish mechanisms to coordinate with local institutions during REDD+ planning and implementation.”

Although six REDD+ pilot projects, known as early actions, are under way in Mexico, it is unlikely that the national strategy will be completed this year.

“It is worrying to see the progress made with the early actions, because there is no national core concept, which should have come first,” Sánchez complained. ”Less importance is being given to tenure and rights, and more to measuring, reporting and verifying carbon. More progress is being made on the technical side, but there is no criterion for sustainability.”

NGOs involved in the process will ask the National Forestry Commission for clarity with respect to negotiation of the national strategy, for the settling of critical issues.

In the case of Panama, Huertas said that indigenous people “were demanding that indigenous experts be included on the programme, and that consultations be channelled through COONAPIP. Now we want a suspension of REDD+ based on the precautionary principle, because fundamental rights are being violated.”

The precautionary principle states that when potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activities in question should not proceed.

The withdrawal of the native communities is being discussed at the 12th session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, being held in New York May 20-31.

UN-REDD is currently carrying out an external evaluation of the Panama national programme.

The UN-REDD study says: “To ensure the successful and equitable distribution of REDD+ benefits, legislation on REDD+ should incorporate clear and harmonised legal procedures and rules, allowing for open participation among actors at subnational and national levels.”

Cutting trees in Nicaragua. Deforestation is inherent to the predatory economy, whether for the exploitation of the timber itself, the soil beneath the trees, or resources in the subsoil. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By Katelyn Fossett
WASHINGTON, May 7 2013 (IPS)

More than two dozen environmental organisations are urging California Governor Jerry Brown to disregard recommendations from a United Nations task force to include so-called forest “offsets” in the state’s new emissions-trading scheme.

The offsets would serve as a mechanism by which emissions-producing companies in California could continue to pollute if they compensate foreign governments for the protection of their own forests."The carbon market is just proving to be extremely complicated, and not benefiting people at all." -- Bill Barclay of Rainforest Action Network

But critics say the consequences of such a policy would have repercussions that extend far beyond the environment.

“Independent investigations into the promotion of international forest offsets have raised serious concerns related to human rights violations and there is major opposition from indigenous peoples and local communities in both Chiapas, Mexico and in Acre, Brazil,” the groups said in an open letter sent this weekend.

Environmental groups say the move would simply shift the pollution from one country to another, rather than addressing the root causes of deforestation and climate pollution. The scheme would also create another set of economic and social problems for the communities in the regions paid to preserve their forests.

“Offsets are problematic in a number of ways,” Jeff Conant, director of the International Forests Programme at the U.S. office of Friends of the Earth, an activist network, told IPS. “First, they don’t actually reduce emissions. They just misplace emissions.”

The recommendations to include the offsets in new climate change-related legislation in California (known as AB-32) came from the REDD Offset Working Group (ROW), formed to implement a collaborative effort designed by the United Nations called REDD (which stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

As described by the U.N., REDD is “a mechanism to create an incentive for developing countries to protect, better manage and wisely use their forest resources, contributing to the global fight against climate change.”

Although California’s AB-32 already has a domestic offset exchange programme, the move to expand it globally prompted a vehement response last week from groups in Mexico worried about the possibility of “land-grabbing”.

The REDD programme “allows Northern polluters to purchase forest carbon offset credits from the global South,” the 15 groups, from Chiapas, Mexico, wrote in late April.

“This Agreement is underpinned by the logic of capitalist accumulation: it enables the purchase of carbon credits that will legally allow the continuation of the predatory and consumerist model.”

The response recommends instead that the “consumerist countries of the North … implement urgent mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without substitutions or offsets, and with a focus on the reduction goals of their own countries”.

‘Gaming, corruption, error’

“In Chiapas, you have customary titles and [land] rights that haven’t been fully resolved,” Bill Barclay, climate policy advisor at Rainforest Action Network, and advocacy group based here, told IPS.

“It’s a very complicated situation, and when you bring in someone who might come in and impose that and do it quickly and cheaply, it elevates social conflict.”

These critics are also wary of the potential pitfalls that could accompany payments to countries with little oversight and government accountability.

“Once you involve international entities – especially the most impoverished states in the hemisphere – you’re getting to a state … with a lot of gaming, corruption, fraud and error,” Jeff Conant says.

Activists say these problems shine a light on the broader complications that tend to lurk in a system as complicated as emissions trading or “carbon markets”.

“This is about the most complicated way you could come up with to try to bring money into the market to reduce emissions and generate innovations,” Conant says.

“There’s an ideology that says that allowing the markets to fix the climate problem is the most efficient way to go… Unfortunately, [the market] does not work in the favour of the most marginalised communities that are on the front lines.”

In fact, carbon offsets have critics even among pro-market economists. The new letter references the findings of a 2011 report that examined REDD from a “market perspective”, using the authors’ “experience in derivatives trading and systems architecture”.

Known as the Munden Report, it found that “using carbon markets to finance REDD… is likely to be a drain of resources, both in terms of money and time, away from the very serious problems REDD seeks to address.”

The letter from environmental groups also comes just as new reports have emerged on collapsing carbon prices in Europe, where the world’s first and most established carbon market is floundering.

Although the European system decided not to rely on forest offsets, many are still suggesting that the collapse of the E.U. carbon prices could have ripple effects for similar markets worldwide, particularly as advocates push for interlinking these systems down the road.

Both the price collapse in Europe and the social consequences of an international carbon offset exchange have bolstered support for the more direct carbon tax. Although this has been the preferred mechanism by environmental groups, it continues to be thought politically unviable in the U.S., at least for the time being.

“I think there is going to be a greater shift to carbon fees and away from carbon markets,” Barclay of the Rainforest Action Network told IPS.

“The carbon market is just proving to be extremely complicated, and not benefiting people at all. There’s just too much gaming and speculation, and it’s been too poorly regulated.”

Carbon credits can be used to protect forestlands. About 80 percent of Guyana’s forests, some 15 million hectares, have remained untouched over time. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

Nascent carbon emissions-trading exchanges in several countries are increasingly looking at options to interlink with one another, which advocates say would offer investors long-term stability, increase revenues for the development of renewable energy and strengthen corporate support for climate policy.

Yet critics warn that so-called cap-and-trade systems are inefficient and create incentives for polluting industries to continue with business as usual. They also warn that the new systems in the United States are dependent on mechanisms that adversely impact on poor and indigenous communities in developing countries.The law is supposed to be creating incentives for innovations, whereas cap and trade merely allows the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting at historical levels.

“I’ve been incredibly struck at the recent groundswell of interest by countries – including China and Korea – looking to develop carbon markets,” Harinder Sidhu, an Australian civil servant, said Wednesday at a panel discussion here.

“It’s very apparent that the pace is picking up in terms of both interest and action on the part of countries thinking about how to develop carbon markets. This really moves the conversation away from how acting on climate change creates costs to how doing so creates opportunity and economic benefit.”

Carbon trading allows countries to meet emissions reduction mandates under the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force in 2005, offering a certain number of tradable emissions-related “allowances” to polluting companies or governments. Further, as representatives try to negotiate a post-Kyoto agreement, many suggest that such exchanges will likely play a key role.

In part, the idea is controversial because it allows certain countries to maintain high pollution levels while shifting the burden for greater cuts to other countries. Yet proponents point out that revenues from these markets are being ploughed back into research on renewable energy, increased electricity transmission inefficiency and, in some cases, low-income housing.

They also suggest that the cost differentials between markets could motivate business interests to push politicians to institute uniform carbon markets – a key consideration in the new discussion over linking various emissions exchanges.

State action

Sidhu was in Washington to talk about Australia’s carbon market, which began operating last year and is planned to be fully operational within the next three years. In August, Australian officials arrived at an initial agreement to link their market with that of the European Union, which since 2005 has operated the world’s first and largest emissions exchange, the E.U. Emissions Trading System (ETS).

The United States, which is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, already has a nine-state carbon market operating in the country’s northeast. For the past six years, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has operated as an emissions exchange aimed at capping greenhouse gases from within the power sector.

Now, the world’s second-largest carbon market is starting to function in the western U.S. state of California, covering around 85 percent of the state’s emissions. By itself California is the world’s ninth-largest economy, and the value of its cap-and-trade programme is forecast to top two billion dollars by the end of this year.

This week, California and the Canadian province of Quebec arrived at an agreement to link their carbon markets. In recent years, California officials have held similar discussions with E.U. and Australian counterparts.

Advocates say such moves are highlighting the increasingly important climate actions being taken by sub-national governments, even as Washington politicians have remained unable to pass comprehensive legislation limiting greenhouse gases.

“While it’s easy to get depressed about the national-level discussion on action on climate change here in the U.S., we’re seeing some incredible progress being made at the state level,” Tom Perriello, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington think tank, told an audience Wednesday.

“In 2009, the U.S. committed to reducing its emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels, and there had been ample reason to believe that we couldn’t reach that level without national legislation. Now, however, this appears to be within reach, and state action is a cornerstone of that progress thus far.”

Forests impact

Experts here suggest that linking the world’s two largest carbon markets is unlikely in the near future, largely for political reasons. Yet there is also a significant difference of opinion between the U.S and E.U. that may stymie future attempts at interlinking these markets: the use of forest “offset credits”.

Under a mechanism commonly known as REDD – an international tool set up after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol and which stands for “Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” – entities in developed countries are able to purchase or trade credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions in return for agreements from developing countries to protect forestlands.

While both the E.U. trading scheme and the Kyoto Protocol have expressed scepticism about the efficacy of forest credits, the U.S.’s RGGI has decided to use this approach. Further, some groups are now reportedly pushing California to incorporate REDD offsets in its new carbon market, while related agreements have already been struck with communities in Mexico and Brazil.

“One of the primary concerns about REDD is that it encloses forests from access to local communities,” Jeff Conant, an international forests campaigner with Friends of the Earth U.S., an advocacy group, told IPS.

“In numerous cases it has been shown to exacerbate social conflict and to increase incentives for the displacement of indigenous communities from the forests they use or live in. A major concern for California is that state authorities here have no way to deal with these types of injustices, and all just to provide cheap offsets for markets.”

Indeed, Conant says the cap-and-trade system in general is flawed, and that California’s system in particular appears to have already been significantly watered down.

“The state gave away 90 percent of its allowances in the first year, and over half of mandated emissions reductions will be produced by offsets, which are notoriously prone to gaming and displace rather than actually reducing emissions,” he notes.

“After you take these factors into account, they could make up more than 100 percent of the reductions in California – meaning that the cap and trade will result in zero emissions reductions in the state. The law is supposed to be creating incentives for innovations, whereas cap and trade merely allows the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting at historical levels.”

Conant says this is a “roundabout” way of putting money into these technologies. More effective, he suggests, would be to impose a carbon fee on polluting industries, and to use that money to directly stimulate clean energy investment.

The Bank's new approach included the use of industrial logging. Here, lumber from the Amazon's Antimary forest is readied for transport. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report.

The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical of the bank’s use of mass-scale logging concessions as a forest-management strategy and of a lack of projects that promote community involvement in the oversight of forests.

While the full IEG report has not yet been made public, draft copies of both the report and management responses were scheduled to be discussed at the bank’s Washington headquarters on Monday. (Leaked copies of both documents can be found here and here.)

The draft response from the bank’s management warns that the audit “contains a number of inaccuracies and misleading assertions that are based on generalizations about the forest sector rather than on an evaluation of the (World Bank Group’s) own work in this sector.”

In addition to expressing frustration with the IEG’s research methodology, the bank’s responses are particularly vociferous on the charge that its forest governance reforms – particularly regarding concessions – may not have led to sustainable and inclusive development.

The management warns that bank concession policies should not be looked at outside of their comprehensive context as they constitute “one part of a suite of reforms”, and that “an extensive body of literature” already exists on concession reforms, for which further re-appraisals would offer “little added value”.

In addition, the bank says that the IEG missed out on some particularly important reforms, such as a new requirement mandating third-party verification of sustainable forest management prior to any bank investment. Nor does the evaluation substantively explore the contributions of a bank initiative called the External Advisory Group on Forests, aimed at offering monitoring and oversight of the bank’s forest investments.

Both the frankness of the IEG report and the force with which the World Bank management have responded have surprised some observers.

“The evaluation was surprisingly forthright, but it’s important to realise that this issue is particularly touchy as the bank attempts to position itself as a major player in responding to global climate change,” Joshua Lichtenstein, forest programme manager with the Bank Information Center, a Washington watchdog, told IPS.

“The corollary here, however, is that the bank’s approach of focusing on industrial timber concessions doesn’t appear to have worked. While there’s been some progress in improving the legal framework, the IEG is saying that those programmes have led neither to sustainable, inclusive economic development nor to decreases in deforestation or sustainable use of forests.”

Centrality of concessions

As put in place in 2002, the World Bank’s Forest Strategy was aimed at both poverty alleviation and the safeguarding of local environments.

One important component of this new approach is the use of industrial logging, for which the 2002 strategy lifted a previous ban. By focusing instead on reforms such as increased management and certification activities, the policy aims at providing both local employment and national-level revenues.

The IEG evaluation, however, is clear in its view that this approach does not appear to have delivered results.

“We’re in no way opposing World Bank involvement in the forest sector – indeed, the bank has lots of small, community-driven development projects that are successful,” Lichtenstein says.

“But that’s kind of the point: there are other models, good alternatives, available, and the bank now needs to give up on this big industrial logging concession model. That was clearly important and worth trying, but it hasn’t panned out.”

By inserting itself in the logging sector in tropical forests, the World Bank had hoped it could bring its good offices to bear on an already existing industry and make it better. Thus, while the bank is not directly financing these companies, it is providing the legal and policy framework to make the sector function in its current form.

Yet some argue that the bank’s involvement has made certain situations worse, including pushing industrial logging operations into remaining primary rainforests.

“The allocation of large logging concessions, millions of hectares, to mostly foreign companies is still the prevailing model in many countries in the Congo Basin to manage forests,” Susanne Breitkopf, a Washington-based senior political adviser on forest and climate with Greenpeace International, told IPS, referring to the vast tropical rainforests that cover six countries in Central Africa.

“That clashes with local use by communities, and economically the local communities are not benefitting from this. As it turns out, these are often low-paid, low-quality jobs without contracts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we found that over time local communities are often poorer than when the companies arrive.”

There have also been widespread allegations of fraud and illegal activity. Breitkopf says that a recently released report, funded by the European Union and other donors, on logging in Congo found that nearly all major companies in the sector were involved in illegal activities, including logging outside of legal limits, non-payment of taxes and massive fraud.

Meanwhile, many have complained that community forestry programmes in these areas have been either an afterthought or entirely absent. On the issue of participatory forest management, the new IEG assessment suggests that the bank is “neglecting” the informal sector.

In response, the bank agrees that “Effective community participation is essential for improving the management of protected areas … (but questions) the evaluative basis for IEG’s conclusions that the Bank is not already doing this.”

Reassessment opportunity

“The IEG report is a very good starting point,” Breitkopf says, “offering a great opportunity for the bank to seriously reassess its approach and develop new priorities in land rights, livelihoods and protection of ecological systems, especially with regard to the role that forests are playing in protecting us from devastating climate change.”

Yet she is pessimistic that the new evaluation will lead to significant change. She also notes that the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, currently in early talks with a French timber company called Rougier, is currently contemplating re-engagement with industrial logging in the Congo Basin for the first time in three decades.

“Unfortunately, even as the evidence has increasingly mounted over the years, this has not been taken into account,” Breitkopf says. “From what we’ve heard from management, there still seems to be a resistance towards the recommendations from the IEG. And frankly, we don’t understand this, given that this is such a good chance to find better solutions.”

A family walks along the beach in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, in northeastern Nicaragua. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
DOHA, Nov 26 2012 (IPS)

The upcoming United Nations climate talks may have a renewed sense of urgency with a new World Bank report warning that the planet is on a dangerous path to four degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100.

“Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4ºC Warmer World Must be Avoided”, released on Nov. 19, was prepared for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.

But the 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 18) that begins Nov. 26 in Doha, Qatar has become extremely complex.

There is agreement amongst the 194 nations that are parties to the Convention on the need to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to keep the increase in global temperatures below two degrees, to avoid catastrophic climate change.

That target is easy enough to understand, but exactly how this can be achieved has been the subject of intense and complex negotiations for many years, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based NGO.

Last year at COP 17 in Durban it took extra days of negotiations for countries to finally agree to launch a new round of negotiations to create a legally binding international agreement.

That agreement will require carbon emission reductions for all nations by 2015 to meet the two-degree target. It is intended to be ratified and enter into force by 2020.

“No one knows what this new agreement will look like,” Morgan told Tierramérica in a press conference. “Are countries going to show up in Doha with the will to create a solid work plan?”

2015 is only three years off. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires some industrialized countries to reduce their emissions, was negotiated in less than three years. However, it took another eight years to be ratified by enough countries to enter into force, and some key nations like the United States backed out of the Protocol.

One of the major issues in Doha will be “ambition”, said Morgan. Ambition refers to how big the emission cuts that nations are prepared to agree to will be.

Climate science clearly shows that to stay below two degrees of warming, global greenhouse gas emissions must begin to decline by 2020.

To do this, industrialized nations must trim their emissions output by 25 to 40 percent below their 1990 emission levels.

The United States has pledged to make a three percent reduction compared to 1990 levels. The United Kingdom is aiming for a 34 percent reduction and has already reached 18 percent.

“We hope the U.S. will bring a new strategy, including greater ambition, to Doha,” said Morgan.

Most countries’ current reduction pledges are nowhere near what is needed, said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, a non-profit climate science advisory group based in Berlin.

Countries have to find ways to trim another 9 to 11 billion tons of CO2 by 2020 or forget two degrees Celsius, Hare told Tierramérica.

This “emissions gap” between the reductions pledged and those needed to keep the climate under control is growing larger, based on new data to be released this week by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Hare’s group.

“The gap keeps getting bigger… making it ever more difficult and costly to stay below two degrees,” said Hare.

Deforestation is the second largest source of climate-heating carbon emissions after fossil fuels.

To provide a financial incentive for developing countries to reduce deforestation, a controversial programme called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is also being negotiated at COP 18.

Forests are far more valuable than places to store carbon, according to the first comprehensive scientific assessment of REDD+ and potential impacts on biodiversity and local peoples’ livelihoods.

Conserving biodiversity and sustaining livelihoods are essential if REDD+ is going to work, says the new study, “Understanding Relationships Between Biodiversity, Carbon, Forests and People: The Key to Achieving REDD+ Objectives. A Global Assessment Report”.

Coordinated by the world’s largest network of forest scientists, the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO), the report will be formally presented during the meeting in Doha.

“The world’s rapidly dwindling forests are not just carbon warehouses,” John Parrotta, report co-author and scientist with the United States Forest Service, told Tierramérica. “Forests provide a wide range of environmental goods and services that people need.”

Those goods and services include cleaning water, preventing flooding, and providing food and habitat for humans and many other creatures like bees that perform valuable services like pollination.

Deforestation currently gobbles up an area the size of Greece (13 million hectares) every year, and is driven mostly by conversion to agriculture and by the wood products industries. REDD+ is an attempt to reverse this by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in forests.

Trees take heat-trapping carbon out of the atmosphere as they grow and store it for as long as the trees live. Instead of cutting down trees and selling the wood, the carbon trapped in the living trees can be sold as “carbon credits” on an open market.

A steel, cement, or coal-fired power company in the United States or a European country can then buy those credits instead of reducing its carbon emissions. The current price is around 10 dollars per ton, but this fluctuates.

Like any market, the carbon market demands verification of how much carbon is in a forest and how much carbon will remain there over 40, 60 or 80 years. This is both very technical and very expensive to do.

Purchasers of carbon credits also want contractual agreements with forest owners to guarantee the carbon stays in the forest, which may prevent local people from using the forest to grow food, fix a roof or even hunt for generations.

While REDD+ could protect forests and be an annual revenue source for local people, doing it right is very complex and there is much work left to do, said Parrotta. “It is hard to see how there will be much progress at Doha.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt: