REDD is the new green (COP 13)

09 Dec 2007 – Geoff Lye

This is a conference of acronyms. The assortment of NGOs is mind boggling: from BINGOs (business) to RINGOs (religious) and TUNGOs (trades unions). By comparison the ENGOs (environmental) sound distinctly boring. My auto spellcheck has gone crazy already: it offers Binges, Gringos, Tangos and Egos (this is a Conference of the Parties!)

And this year we have a new acronym – REDD. Given its full title, Reducing Emissions from avoided Deforestation and forest Degradation, this is a major point of negotiation and disagreement here in Bali. The issue is simple to explain but difficult to resolve. Leaving our remaining forests intact has massive benefits which include leaving the carbon locked in trees rather than adding to other CO2 emissions; providing a major source of and stabilising influence on freshwater supplies; and in protecting biodiversity. In the climate context, deforestation accounts for roughly 25% of annual global CO2 emissions. It is a very poor relation in terms of the attention – let alone value – which it is given.

The problems for the negotiators seem to be around three principles. The first is that this would set a precedent of paying countries to do nothing as opposed to actively reducing emissions; in turn it could led to a huge volume of carbon credits which might swamp the market. Secondly, country envy is playing its role with countries like India which are managing (i.e. avoiding) deforestation more effectively feel that they are being ‘punished’ while others would be rewarded for ceasing to fail to manage the issue. And thirdly, there is a concern among NGOs and countries like Brazil that the non-deforestation carbon credits would simply be bought up by wealthy economies instead of making cuts in their own emissions – and thereby become ‘carbon colonialists’.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that Amazonas’ Environment Secretary had an idea to overcome the impasse, which he shared at the NGO beach party and which I promised to promote on this blog. His proposal is simple: to allow only Annex 1 (developed) countries which exceed their Kyoto commitments to participate in deforestation credits. Actively reducing real emissions would be their entry ticket. It seemed a great idea to me – so watch out for it!

At tonight’s Ecosecurities party, I talked with Andrew Mitchell whom I first met when he was Director of EarthWatch UK. He is now a co-Fellow of Green College Oxford and runs the Global Canopy Programme. His mission here is to ensure that the politics do not take the issue off the table: if that happens, the timetable for the post-Kyoto protocol would be very unlikely to allow it to be included later. Recent media coverage of Andrew and the deforestation issues has been huge and positive. He prefers, as he says, ‘to work quietly in the background’ to achieve his goals – so the media interest has taken him by surprise.

Andrew also developed the Forests Now Declaration which has received huge support from around the globe. He told me that the President of Ghana was so impressed that he offered to gift all of their forests to the protection of the UK!

Talking to the IPS news agency, Claude Gascon, a vice president of Conservation International took the view that ‘Forests are the biggest issue here in Bali’. In spite of the current impasse, the word generally is that we are likely see ‘avoided deforestation credits’ as one of the mechanisms to be negotiated in detail over the next two years. Another major issue is the role of carbon capture and storage: CCS is another acronym which is now firmly in the Bali vocabulary. More on that after tomorrow’s WBCSD Global Business Day where energy moves to centre stage.