September 30, 2009
It is the key to saving remaining natural forests, top NGOs insist.
Investors around the world have called for a strong commitment and funding for a carbon market, which they say has huge potential to cut emissions and save forests, according to a global survey revealed in Bangkok yesterday.
"If strong policies are put in place to ensure real reductions in emissions and real benefits to forest communities, investors can play a key role in supporting Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)," James Leape said. Leape, head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), presented a survey by the Brunswick Group on behalf of WWF at a press conference at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Bangkok.
The meeting has drawn officials from at least 20 United Nation agencies, hundreds of nongovernment and civil society observers for climate change negotiations ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.By that time, 192 countries hope to agree on the terms for tackling climate change beyond 2010, after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."The investment community is looking to December's UN Climate Change in Copenhagen to add substance to REDD as the overarching policy framework to combat forest related emissions," Leape said.The survey included interviews with 25 senior institutional money, sellside analysts and specialist sustainability investors in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. The survey of investors with about US$7 trillion in assets under management found significant support for an expanded carbon market mechanism which would "address" the estimated 20 per cent of global carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation. It found investors had a high degree of knowledge about REDD and saw big potential in a future carbon market. However, they were also unlikely to invest in the market without clear political commitment, funding, and ontheground implementation by key nations.
The survey also found investors were looking for initial public financing, viable policy frameworks, and more certainty from both international agreements and national legislation, before private funds could be mobilised. Investors believed that a compliฌance market in forest carbon would provide powerful incentives to reverse deforestation in forest countries.
More than a third expected a forest carbon market would evolve from a voluntary to a compliance market over the next five to 15 years if certain conditions for a marketbased approach could be met. This would require action from governments, including public funding, to lay the foundation for the market and support efforts by forest nations to build legal and technical capacity for REDD. Meanwhile, leading forest and climate experts from the Ecosystems Climate Alliance (ECA) warned that talks on the forest component of REDD risked failing to either reduce emissions or to prevent deforestation.
"The rules for REDD are being set now," said Bill Barclay of Rainforest Action Network, "but forest protection is being ceded to carbon cowboys and corporate greed. If we don't act now to prioritise the protection of intact natural forests including their soils, we will lose a unique opportunity to end the deforestation and degradation that is contributing to climate change.
"The international community committed to address deforestation in the 2007 Bali Action Plan, pledging to create: "Policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries." Negotiations to date, however, have failed to deliver on that mandate. Hopes of protecting forests through the UNFCCC process required renewed focus on protecting intact natural forests by avoiding deforestation and forest degradation, and progress had to be achieved here. ECA called on all countries to change the definition of "forest" used in the climate talks, saying the UNFCCC term did not distinguish between natural forests and plantations.
Unless this was changed, measures to introduce REDD into a future climate agreement could have the perverse result of encouraging the conversion or destruction of the world's remaining natural forests.A subtle change of language from the original Bali mandate now framed the entire scope of REDDplus within the context of promoting "sustainฌable forest management," that in practice was closely associated with the logging industry and destructive activities such as industrialscale logฌging of intact natural forests.
"Sustainable forest management is industry speak for logging," said Sean Cadman of The Wilderness Society. "Forests that have been logged or degraded have lower carbon stocks, less biodiversity and less resilience than primary forests. Tree plantations are even worse.
"REDD provides the opportunity to break the cycle of industrials cale deforestation by placing economic value on the role of standing forests in climate change mitigation."Belowground carbon stocks (organic soil carbon) in forests also had to be accounted for to prevent plantations on drained peatlands from receiving credits for what would, in fact, be ongoing emissions. Good governance and comprehensive systems for monitoring REDD, including independent "ontheground" monitoring, would be vital to effective implementation of REDD. Since an estimated 1.6 billion people in developing countries are dependent on forests for their basic needs and livelihoods, REDD had to benefit local communities and indigenous peoples, and respect their rights/ tenure. Agricultural commodities, biofuels, and wood and paper products - often produced in illegal or unsustainable ways - were killing forests around the world.
"Without policies and measures to reduce market demand for illegal or unsustainable commodities, countries around the world will be consuming in ways that undermine the same REDD activities their dollars are going to support," said Andrea Johnson of the Environmental Investigation Agency.
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September 30, 2009 10:57 pm (Thai local time)www.nationmultimedia.com
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