Lessons from FLEGT for REDD

Schemes to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) could have serious negative consequences for FLEGT processes, as is explained below.

History

In 2005, the Coalition of Rainforest Nations (led by Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea) initiated a proposal to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that would allow tropical forested nations to be paid to keep their forests standing with the aim of contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Known as 'reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries’, the basic idea behind the proposal was that if rich countries would pay poor countries to keep their forests standing, they would therefore contribute to halting climate change.

Since then however, the concept has snowballed. Countries with a large percentage of degraded forests pushed for the acronym REDD to stand for “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). Then large countries like India and China pushed for REDD to become REDD+ to allow for the inclusion of plantations (claiming that these enhanced carbon stocks), sustainable forest management (which could often mean increased logging) and forest conservation. Since then, others have pushed for the inclusion of improved agricultural practices (REDD++).

At the time of writing, REDD is still being discussed at the international level in the UNFCCC negotiations, but there are several controversial issues that need to be solved before an agreement can be reached.

The co-managers of logging off see two main problems with REDD:

1. That many groups are pushing for REDD to be financed by offsetting, meaning that Northern countries buy emission reductions from REDD countries, and use these permits to continue burning fossil fuels. This would mean that even if REDD projects were successful in reducing deforestation, there would be no global reduction in greenhouse gases and thus no reduction in the risk of catastrophic climate change. Deforestation must be reduced alongside fossil fuel emissions, not instead of, otherwise forests will not be able to survive climate change.

and

1. Huge improvements in forest governance are being achieved with schemes like FLEGT. The promise of the vast sums of money associated with REDD now means that interested groups are already trying to gain control over forests, hampering work towards improved forest governance along the way. But without improved forest governance, schemes to reduce deforestation will not work. Clarifying the collective tenure rights of local communities and upholding rights to free, prior and informed consent, must be preconditions to any initiative to reduce deforestation and degradation.

A statement from the Africa Community Rights Network (ACRN) supports this position: (http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Liberia/Africa_Community_Rights.html)

Although there is as yet no international REDD agreement in the UN climate talks, the World Bank has a Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and a Forest Investment Programme (FIP) that finance the development and implementation of national level REDD plans. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO) have also created the UN-REDD initiative, and national governments initiated by France and Norway have developed an interim REDD+ Partnership, to move REDD initiatives ahead in the absence of an international agreement. Finally, several local forest conservation and community forest projects present themselves as “REDD projects” and are selling or aiming to sell carbon offset credits.

What is of interest to the co-managers of this website is the development and implementation of national REDD plans because in most countries where both REDD and FLEGT processes exist they threaten to undermine the FLEGT process. Furthermore these plans are not being developed with an adequate stakeholder consultation process, violate the World Bank’s own standards for stakeholder consultation, and fail to explain the implications of financing REDD through carbon trading where reductions in deforestation would not lead to overall reductions in greenhouse gas concentrations as the sale of offset credits allows fossil fuel emission to continue in the industrialised countries (see  Cutting Corners: World Bank’s forest and carbon fund fails forests and peoples)