Forests

REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is a proposed funding mechanism being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that aims to conserve forests and slow climate change through the creation of financial incentives for standing forest, reforestation, forest management, and avoided deforestation. It is estimated that deforestation in tropical countries produces about 15-20% of global carbon emissions, making it an attractive target for climate change mitigation efforts.

A series of multilateral forest finance mechanisms have been created in order to funnel money into REDD initiatives across the globe. These mechanisms are:

• Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (World Bank)
• Forest Investment Program (World Bank)
• UN-REDD Programme
• REDD+ Partnership

The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the Forest Investment Program (FIP) were both created by the World Bank as pilot programs to help countries prepare for REDD (in the case of the FCPF) and to provide strategic and transformative investments in the forest sector (in the case of the FIP). BIC works to ensure sound environmental and social due diligence in these programs, as well as meaningful participation of forest-dependent communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on national REDD proposals.

BIC has also served as an official NGO observer to the FCPF, and closely coordinates efforts with the NGO and indigenous peoples’ observers of both the UN-REDD Programme (a United Nations-run program with similar aims to FCPF) and the FIP.

Violation of Rights: One the primary concerns is that REDD schemes, and World Bank support to countries for REDD preparedness, will adversely affect forest dwelling indigenous peoples and other forest communities. By creating an incentive to control large swaths of forest land, many worry that these programs will lead to a rush by governments, corporations, and other powerful economic interests to control large swaths of contested forest land in hopes of getting payments. Because many indigenous and other forest dwelling communities often lack clear title to their land or to parts of their land they have traditionally used, and even guaranteed rights have proven precarious in the past, many fear that governments and the private sector will try to usurp these lands in hopes of attaining the REDD payments.

Loss of Livelihoods: A corollary concern is that governments may try to restrict traditional subsistence activities in the name of forest conservation, such as swidden agriculture, harvesting of timber and non-timber forest products for personal use, or restrict access for forest dependent peoples who hunt and fish in forest areas for survival. Rather than target the new drivers of deforestation, governments may find it easier to target politically marginalized populations.

Transparency: A general process concern is that mechanisms to support REDD readiness be transparent and open to the public, as significant public debate about the issues and the definition of national strategies is a prerequisite for reaching broad consensus on the ways forward. With respect to the FCPF, although the presence of observers at the meetings is a step forward, many of the documents submitted by countries have not been made available to the public in a timely manner, undercutting civil society’s role.

Participation: Another general concern is that national REDD strategies will be developed without significant input from civil society and forest dependent communities. It is feared that without ongoing and meaningful participation by all important stakeholders and rights holders, many of the potentially negative impacts of poorly designed REDD strategies will come to pass.

Use of Carbon Offsets and Carbon Trading of Forests: Many NGOs and indigenous organizations are highly critical of the idea of including forests in international carbon trading schemes. The idea of relying on markets to solve a market failure seems unwise, especially at a time when the world is reeling from the impacts of the economic crisis caused by these same markets engaged in highly complex and opaque trading that was poorly regulated. Some analysis suggests that forest offsets could flood the carbon market, lowering carbon prices below what would be needed to create significant changes, or even collapsing the market as a whole.

Some concerns center around trading REDD credits and stem from a number of different rationales, but center around the contention that offsets are unjust, ineffective at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and could lead to perverse incentives. Allowing corporations in the industrialized countries to purchase offsets, especially potentially low-cost forest offsets, which they can then count towards their own GHG pollution cap, is inherently unjust and ineffective, because it moves responsibility for reducing GHGs from the North (countries that are historically responsible for global warming) to the South, and may allow industry in the North to postpone making the hard decisions and costly investments needed to reduce the GHG emissions of their industries. Carbon trading may also cause “regulatory chill” in the South as countries postpone legally mandating actions to reduce deforestation and risk becoming ineligible for REDD credits, which would no longer be “additional” under current Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules.

A further concern is that forest communities will be the losers in carbon deals which give increasing control to carbon trading companies, intermediaries and middlemen in charge of verification and monitoring to the detriment of local actors. Turning forests, and forest carbon, into a tradable commodity also violates the cultural and religious views of many of the world’s indigenous peoples.

Perverse Incentives: REDD schemes that channel monetary payments to the wrong beneficiaries risk rewarding those actors responsible for deforestation, such as logging companies that make pledges to move to sustainable forest management; or those who are responsible for converting natural forests into palm oil plantations or cattle ranches. Creating payments to reduce deforestation, if not carefully regulated and monitored on the ground, could actually lead to the creation of more commercial plantations, which qualify as forests under Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules. The promise of REDD payments schemes could also lead countries to increase deforestation in the short term so as to raise the levels of their reference scenario and thus secure higher payments.

Losing the Multiple Value of Forest: Another general concern is that in the rush to manage forests as carbon sinks, the other important reasons for forest conservation, such as biodiversity conservation, watershed management, and the preservation of other ecosystem services will get forgotten or pushed to the back burner.

Benefit Sharing: The complexities of sharing benefits from REDD across a variety of actors who contribute to actions to reduce deforestation is a serious challenge that many countries with poor forest governance are particularly poorly situated to meet. Most countries do not have legislation defining who owns carbon rights to forests, and there is already evidence that governments are moving quickly to vest all rights in the state. Many communities and local NGOs do not trust the state to make just and transparent decisions about how to allocate benefits, and are thus skeptical about the REDD being a mechanism to benefit local communities who have conserved their forests.