A round up of the news on REDD from last week, in chronological order with short extracts (click on the title for the full article). I’m currently travelling, hence the delay with this post. REDD-Monitor’s news page (REDD in the news) will be updated sporadically for the next couple of weeks. Normal service will be resumed shortly.
CBD, July 2010 | The aim of this e-Newsletter is to inform CBD National Focal Points and CBD partners about biodiversity aspects in relation to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD-plus).
Multi-Donor Trust Fund Office, July 2010 | The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) is a collaboration between FAO, UNDP and UNEP. A multi-donor trust fund was established in July 2008 that allows donors to pool resources and provides funding to activities towards this programme. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the overall greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Forest degradation also makes a significant contribution to emissions from forest ecosystems. Therefore there is an immediate need to make significant progress in reducing deforestation, forest degradation, and associated emission of greenhouse gases.
UN-REDD, July 2010 | Q1. What is the UN-REDD Programme? Answer: The UN-REDD Programme is the United Nations Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The Programme was launched in September 2008 to assist developing countries prepare and implement national REDD+ strategies, and builds on the convening power and expertise of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Press release: Programme launch The Programme currently supports REDD+ readiness activities in nine pilot countries and 13 partner countries across Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America (see Q&A below for the difference between pilot and partner countries). List of pilot and partner countries
The REDD Desk, July 2010 | [Meeting 4-6 August 2010, Bali, Indonesia] The Government of Indonesia, in collaboration with the Asia Forest Partnership (AFP) will host the Ninth Meeting of the AFP and AFP Dialogue 2010 “ Forest Governance Challenges Beyond Copenhagen: An Asia-Pacific Perspective.” The AFP Dialogue 2010 builds on the 2009 AFP Dialogue “REDD and Illegal Logging” by exploring the links between REDD+ and governance. Governance is crucial to REDD+ to ensure long-term, real emissions reductions and equitable outcomes, while many hope that REDD+ will provide new opportunities to strengthen forest governance.
12 July 2010
Jakarta Post, 12 July 2010 | The government initiative to entail a five-year moratorium on peatland conversion is a half-hearted policy if the country still wants to seriously mitigate climate change, activists said Saturday. They said the moratorium to shift the peatland for business use should be permanent since the area held huge stocks of carbon emissions. “If the government wants to end peatland conversions, there is no story about timelines; it must be permanent,” executive director of Forest Watch Indonesia Wirendro Sumargo told The Jakarta Post. “No matter how deep the peatland is, the area should become a conservation area and protected.” Currently, the peatland with a depth of less than 3 meters, can be converted into business purposes, from residential to oil palm or for mining companies. Wirendro said the government should provide financial compensation for the relocation of existing companies in the peatland into other areas.
13 July 2010
World Resources Institute, 13 July 2010 | The LOI demonstrates significant support for Indonesia’s national strategy to reduce emissions from the land use sector. In order to be successful, the forthcoming agreement should include further clarification of institutional arrangements, define key terms such as “degraded land,” incorporate plans for low carbon land management, clarify what will fall under the conversion suspension, and determine which reference level will be used. If these elements are clarified, the partnership between Norway and Indonesia holds great promise for achieving reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
By Beth Gingold, World Resources Institute, 13 July 2010 | A new policy to develop oil palm on degraded land could protect Indonesia’s forests. But what does “degraded” really mean? In May 2010, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared a policy to develop oil palm plantations on “degraded land” instead of forest or peatland. As part of national REDD+ strategy to be developed under a groundbreaking $1 billion partnership with Norway, this policy has the potential to allow the palm oil industry to continue to expand—generating profits, government revenues, and jobs—while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation… Past estimates of the extent of degraded land in Indonesia have ranged widely—from 12 to 74 million hectares—as some studies have used definitions limited to biophysical characteristics such as tree canopy cover while others have included social or economic considerations.
By Richard Black, BBC News, 13 July 2010 | Teeb’s leader, Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev, believes companies will find it easier to invest in biodiversity protection once a mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (Redd) becomes established through the UN climate convention. Many countries favour a variant called Redd-Plus where issues such as biodiversity and forest peoples’ rights would be protected. “We can move to a stage where big companies and countries are able to say ‘we’re meeting 20% of our emissions targets’ or whatever it might be through investing in green carbon,” he told BBC News. “Then we can look at other issues, such as the forest’s water storage function for local people, for example.
By Laurence Caramel, Guardian Weekly, 13 July 2010 | This is based on the hope that industrialised countries will soon compensate countries for not cutting down their forests, either by allocating part of development aid to combating deforestation or by setting up a market for forestry carbon credits, open to western firms. No one can foresee the outcome of the climate negotiations but the prospect of this reward, titled Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd), has raised such hopes that none of the rainforest nations can afford to miss out… To neutralise the main forces driving deforestation, CI recommends slowing down forestry and boosting the creation of natural parks, which would become forest-carbon concessions. Farming should move on from slash-and-burn to more intensive techniques. Each tonne of sequestered carbon is worth an average of $5, so such policies could earn the exchequer an estimated $40m a year, about a tenth of current income.
By David Boyle and Cheang Sokha, Phnom Penh Post, 13 July 2010 | The conservation NGO Wildlife Alliance yesterday criticised plans for the development of a titanium mine in Koh Kong province, saying the project would scare off ecotourism investors and derail implementation of a lucrative pollution-reduction scheme. Suwanna Gauntlett, the group’s country director, said the United Khmer Group had recently obtained a permit from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy for the mine, which she said would cover 15,000 to 20,000 hectares in Thma Bang district. “Now they need a permit from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, but they’re ready to go. They’re building the roads already and redoing the bridges,” she said. Company representative Phorn Thou confirmed his company intended to mine titanium in the province, but said no permits had been granted. “My company is in the process of mapping out the area,” he said.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 13 July 2010 | A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, according to a new study funded by NASA and Tulane University, New Orleans. While storms have long been recognized as a cause of Amazon tree loss, this study is the first to actually quantify losses from a storm. And the losses are much greater than previously suspected, say the study’s authors, which include research scientist Sassan Saatchi of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The work suggests that storms may play a larger role in the dynamics of Amazon forests than previously recognized, they add. Previous research had attributed a peak in tree mortality in 2005 solely to a severe drought that affected parts of the forest. The new study says that a single squall line (a long line of severe thunderstorms, the kind associated with lightning and heavy rainfall) had an important role in the tree demise.
By Marcus Sommerauer, ForestIndustries.EU, 13 July 2010 | “Put the buzzwords deforestation, degradation, indigenous people and local communities, stakeholder process and carbon inventory in the terms of reference of your next forests based project and you can classify this project as a REDD+ project!” It’s amazing to watch the growing number of so called “REDD” projects in the global queue of forest(ry) projects. One couldn’t believe what all those environmental NGO’s, social NGO’s, research institutes, development organizations, investment banks and power companies, to name just a view, must have missed the last years, when not taking care of deforestation and degradation of mother earths rainforests…
14 July 2010
Stabroek News, 14 July 2010 | The fund into which Norway is to funnel forest protection money is to be set up by the end of this month after which Oslo will deliver its first tranche of US$30M. According to a GINA release, President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg yesterday announced the establishment of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) and reiterated that they have invited the World Bank to act as the fund manager. They are in New York to attend the second meeting of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Group on Finance, which has been set up to identify ways to raise US$100 billion in annual climate finance for developing countries by 2020… Norway intends to pay up to US$250 million into the GRIF between 2010 and 2015, based on Guyana’s performance in avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
By JC Tansen, Malay Mail, 14 July 2010 | AS vast areas of forests in Sarawak are being hurriedly cleared to make way for oil palm plantations, there is an urgent need for Malaysia to evaluate the proposed mechanism known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)… It is, therefore, especially urgent for Sarawak to immediately halt the clearing of peatland forests for oil palm which triggers an immense release of carbon dioxide. This will help conserve the forests’ rich biodiversity. Furthermore, coastal forests act as natural breakwater against tsunamis. REDD payment is, in effect, recognition of one ecosystem service that a forest provides, a service which benefits all mankind. Soon, a forest’s other ecosystem services may also be recognised, valued and compensated by the world or a region.
WWF, 14 July 2010 | Civil society has been all but shut out of a crucial meeting intended to move ahead efforts to tackle climate change by halting forest loss. With only one week remaining before the meeting is set to get underway in Brazil, NGOs received an eleventh hour notice that registration was open to them. “If you’re planning a party, you would invite out of town guests well in advance to be sure they have time to pack their bags and make travel plans. That’s just common sense,” said Paul Chatterton, leader of WWF’s Forest Carbon Initiative. “By waiting until the last minute to invite civil society participants to this meeting, the organizers have virtually guaranteed that these invitees will not be able to participate. Organizers seem to have included NGOs as an afterthought.”
By David Boyle, Phnom Penh Post, 14 July 2010 | A FORESTRY Administration official said yesterday that a massive titanium mine proposed for Koh Kong province would threaten natural resources and local livelihoods, and vowed to pass on his concerns to Prime Minister Hun Sen. Vann Sophana, in charge of the Forestry Administration’s Coastal Inspectorate, met with villagers in Thma Bang district who stand to be affected by the mine, which the NGO Wildlife Alliance has said would cover 15,000 to 20,000 hectares. On Monday, Wildlife Alliance Country Director Suwanna Gauntlett said the mine would threaten 144,000 hectares of protected forest in the district, as well as ecotourism projects that support 150 families in Chi Pat commune. She also said the mine would doom plans to implement a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme that NGOs and officials had been hoping to launch in 2011.
europa.eu, 14 July 2010 | What are the links between Forest governance (FLEGT) and climate change (REDD)? The governance and market failures which drive illegal logging are much the same as those that drive deforestation. The constraints to tackling deforestation are the same as those we face in tackling illegal logging: unclear and contested tenure of land and forests, lack of institutional capability, weak regulatory capacity, and corruption. FLEGT and REDD both require multi-stakeholder processes that build a shared commitment; systems for monitoring, reporting and verification that are credible; buyers who have confidence in the products they are paying for. Thus, key to tackling deforestation is establishing good governance and FLEGT can help to achieve this.
Reuters, 14 July 2010 | London’s once high-flying carbon emissions permit brokers have been grounded by the recession and dwindling client volumes, with layoffs and business lost to exchanges clouding the horizon of a once sunny future. The London-based desk at CantorCO2e, one of the many players in the now over-crowded European emissions trading space, was the latest casualty as the firm laid off its last three carbon brokers in the UK earlier this month, sources told Reuters. The company, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Cantor Fitzgerald, would not comment on the move, but calls placed by Reuters to its London emissions desk were re-routed to offices in New York and Houston. This follows cutbacks and closures at other emissions brokers including industry veterans Carbon Capital Markets, which shut its trading desk in April.
By Sunanda Creagh, Reuters, 14 July 2010 | Uncertainty over what will happen to the carbon market after the current round of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 may lead some financiers to hold off on green projects in Southeast Asia, investors said on Wednesday. Such investment is needed to shore up supply of carbon offsets for emissions trading schemes in Europe and other countries which have agreed carbon caps meant to slow climate change. Singapore’s third largest lender United Overseas Bank is adopting a wait-and-see attitude before investing in projects that aim to earn carbon credits under the UN-backed clean development mechanism (CDM), its executive director said at a green investment conference in Jakarta.
By Timothy Gardner, Reuters, 14 July 2010 | Two U.S. business groups opposed on Wednesday the latest version of a climate change proposal circulating in the U.S. Senate, saying it was unfair to power companies and would hurt energy-intensive industries. Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, an independent, have crafted a draft bill focusing on capping greenhouse gas pollution from electric power utilities first. It scales back previous ambitions for a broad attack on emissions. The plan would launch a “cap-and-trade” market in which utilities that cut pollution could sell credits to companies that do not. It expects overall emissions limits would be achieved because the cap on all utilities toughens over time.
15 July 2010
Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Flickr.com, 15 July 2010 | Teluk Binjai, Pelalawan, Riau province of Sumatra, Indonesia. Greenpeace activists unfurl the banner that reads “April stop trashing our future”. Activists blockade the loading of a barge carrying rainforest logs from Kampar’s carbon rich peatland forests destined for APRIL’ s pulp mill in Pangkalan Kerinci. This is the second time Greenpeace activists have taken action to stop APRIL destroying the natural forest of Kampar. After a Greenpeace action in October 2009, the Minister for Forests ordered the temporary suspension of APRIL operations however this year operations restarted without the Ministry conducting the promised legal and legislative review of APRIL’s existing permits or resolving conflicts between the company and the community as promised.
By David Ritter, Global Policy Journal, 15 July 2010 | The Governments of Japan and Papua Guinea chose the week of the football World Cup finals to kick an easily avoidable own goal in the international process designed to tackle deforestation. Readers of this blog will recall that back in late May, a partnership document was signed by around sixty countries in Oslo, formalizing an arrangement among participating countries to support the development of effective action on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) over the next few years. The result was the clumsily named Interim REDD+ Partnership process for rushing fast start finance from developed donor countries to developing rainforest countries to jumpstart REDD.
By Krista Mahr, ecocentric.blogs.time.com, 15 July 2010 | From the department of (mostly) good news, a major study released today by London-based NGO Chatham House offers one of those rare beasts in the jungle of environmental reports: improvement. The report finds that the collective efforts of government, civil society and the private sector in 12 countries have yielded big reductions in illegal logging in the last 10 years. According to “Illegal Logging and Related Trade: Indicators of the Global Response,” the total global production of illegal timber has dropped 22% since 2002. That reduction was particularly dramatic in three supply countries — Cameroon, the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia — where illegal activity has dropped an impressive 50 to 75%, saving some 17 million hectares of forest and avoiding the release of at least 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide if those tropical forests been cut down.
By Emma Marris, Nature News, 15 July 2010 | Patrick Gonzalez, a forestry scientist currently visiting at University of California, Berkeley, says that reducing illegal logging can be considered a kind of REDD programme — the acronym, popular in climate-negotiation circles, stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. “The reduction in illegal logging that they report has already achieved the kind of results that REDD programmes are trying to achieve,” he says. Gonzalez would like to see vigorous “command and control” enforcement of logging rules paired with schemes that give the responsibility for and the revenues from a forest to local people. “People will take care of forest resources when they have a stake in the state of the forest,” he says. “You need both enforcement- and community-based programmes.”
By Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 15 July 2010 | Green campaigning really does work. Illegal logging in deforestation hotspots like the Brazilian Amazon, Indonesia and central Africa has fallen by between 50 and 75 per cent in the past decade, according to a new study by the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London. And pressure from consumers and rich-world environment groups has been the prime reason, concludes the report. But despite the improvements, many forests remain lawless. In both the Amazon and Indonesia, half of all logging is illegal. And there are still open markets for the contraband, with rich nations importing about $6 billion of illegal timber each year. The report’s author, Sam Lawson, told New Scientist of another concern: governments of developing countries are being distracted by REDD – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – a United Nations initiative that promises to pay them to protect their forests as carbon sinks.
By Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth Blog, New York Times, 15 July 2010 | I led an hour-long onstage discussion last week with two conservationists at the Aspen Ideas Festival exploring ways to manage human development to keep the Amazon rain forest thriving in this century. The core questions there now are the same as they were in 1989 and 1990, when I was lucky enough to crisscross the Brazilian portion of that vast river basin for months researching my book on the murder of the forest defender Chico Mendes… My interviewees were Peter Seligman, the founder and head of Conservation International, and Fabio Scarano, a Brazilian ecologist and executive director of the organization’s Brazilian branch.
16 July 2010
OneWorld South Asia, 16 July 2010 | The Baka, Bagyeli and Bakola people in Cameroon have raised objection to the REDD projects for mitigating climate change. They fear it could exclude them from their homes and hence their rights to their forests, and benefits from the projects be shared with them equally. Members of ‘Pygmy’ communities in Cameroon have issued a clear message in the wake of the Copenhagen climate change talks: their rights to their forests must be respected. According to the Forest Peoples Programme , the Baka, Bagyeli and Bakola peoples fear that climate change mitigation projects will further exclude them from their forest homes and that climate change is already affecting their forests.
By Tim Cocks, Reuters, 16 July 2010 | Unlike Asia, African states have been slow to capitalize on climate aid — they account for 2 percent of developing nation carbon projects. But many hope to change that. An African Development Bank fund was established in 2008 for the Congo basin, a forest of half a billion acres (200 million hectares) spanning nine countries and storing, the bank says, 25-30 billion tonnes of carbon, which currently trades at 14 euros per tonne in Europe. The fund aims to harmonize forest tax, share ecological data, cooperate on policing and sponsor community projects that encourage forest protection, like honey-making. “Expectations are extremely high that this will allow us to preserve the forest, restore what’s been degraded and pay these countries for their ecological services,” Patrice Wadja, the fund’s operations officer, told Reuters.
The Himalayan Times, 16 July 2010 | The Project Management Unit (PMU), an office within the premises of the Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bio-resources (ANSAB), has been launched at a function in Kathmandu on “Friday. The PMU has been launched to coordinate and manage the project for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in community forests, said International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in a press statement today.
By Molly Peters-Stanley, Ecosystem Marketplace, 16 July 2010 | A consortium of Colombian banks and NGOs hopes to harness the power of REDD for a more broad-based ecosystem marketplace. Like emerging market exchanges around the world, this one comes with its own education campaign – and starts with trees. First in a series examining emerging-market exchanges in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Colombia’s ecosystems – and particularly its forests – have suffered like those across Latin America… Recognizing that Colombia’s forest stocks present a wealth of untapped carbon mitigation potential for voluntary markets and a future UN REDD mechanism, partners Fundacion Natura, the Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) this week launched their plan of attack on Colombia’s underwhelming carbon market presence. Their weapon of choice is more carrot than stick…
Stabroek News, 16 July 2010 | A framework agreement for the Amaila Falls hydropower project was signed in Shanghai, China yesterday, with President Bharrat Jagdeo in attendance. The agreement formalizes the cooperation between the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated, Sithe Global Amaila Holdings Limited, the China Development Bank, and the China Railway First Group Company Limited. “It sets out the parties’ intention to reach financial closure on the Amaila Falls project within 12 months or ideally sooner”, Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh told the National Assembly yesterday, saying also that it was a “historic moment.” President Jagdeo is in China as part of a Caricom delegation… Singh was, at the time updating the National Assembly on the establishment of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) and the progress on the Low Carbon Development Strategy and he said that in 2010 and 2011, between US$40M and US$60M will be invested as equity in the Amaila Falls hydropower project.
By Adrian Barclay, A Climate For Change, 16 July 2010 | While Labor looks offshore for a politically convenient ETS solution, lingering issues closer to home reveal their green credentials as humbug. Labor’s support of the Gunns Pulp Mill does not inspire much confidence for local environmentalists… Between 1990 and 2005, Australia recorded a net loss of 4.2 million hectares of forest – equivalent to two-thirds of the surface area of Tasmania – according to the World Resources Institute think tank… Gillard would be wise to use the opportunity in Tasmania to remedy Labor’s flagging environmental image. Acknowledgment that REDD is a horrendous fraud would be productive too.
By Johann Earle, Guyana Chronicle, 16 July 2010 | MINISTER of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh says that while a global climate treaty remains essential, the Government of Guyana will support a number of interim measures aimed at combating the effects of climate change, while creating a new economy along a low-carbon path. “Guyana wants to see a legally binding climate treaty agreed under the UNFCCC as soon as possible. However, pending the agreement of such a treaty, the Government supports a number of interim measures,” he told the House yesterday in his ministerial statement on the establishment of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF).
18 July 2010
By Lou Gold, Visionshare, 18 July 2010 | The title is not mine. It belongs to Andrew Revkin’s post at the NY Times blog DotEarth. The post was built around a rather rosy presentation that he facilitated at the Aspen Institute with Peter Seligman, the founder and head of Conservation International, and Fabio Scarano, a Brazilian ecologist and executive director of the organization’s Brazilian branch. When I read Revkin’s sanguine comments they seemed terribly uninformed and I was furious. “I’m convinced that the system of rivers and forests is durable enough — not to mention expansive enough — to persist, and even thrive, as Brazil and its neighbors develop their economies…” I fired back a headline about a recent World Bank (hardly a hotbed of environmentalism) study: “World Bank Amazon Dieback Study Predicts Greater Probability and Severity of Biome Collapse: Zero deforestation is an emergency requirement, although insufficient to avoid catastrophe.”
Guyana Chronicle, 18 July 2010 | Two significant events pertaining to Guyana’s future economic development took place last week — one in New York, the other in Shanghai, Republic of China. They both should have the effect, hopefully, of checking the flow of emotional criticisms, malicious misinformation, and worse, by a combination of frustrated politicians and parties, as well as those propagandists of ‘gutter journalism’ obsessed with ‘bad-mouthing’ the government of this nation. First, there was the joint official announcement in New York by President Jagdeo and Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, on the latest progress in the establishment of the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund, popularly referred to as ‘GRIF’. Under this Fund, Norway intends to contribute up to US$250 million to help in the protection of Guyana’s vast forest resources, consistent with the government’s visionary climate change programme that has attracted much positive international interest.
Daily Independent, 18 July 2010 | Nigeria has taken a major stride in her effort towards developing natural strategies for climate change mitigation via reducing greenhouse gas emission, in the light of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) mechanism. Courtesy of a collaboration involving United Nations (UN) agencies including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN-REDD Secretariat, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and several development partners, the Federal Ministry of Environment a week ago in Abuja inaugurated the National Technical Committee on REDD+.