Citola Blog
REDD Is Colour of Bonn's Low-Hanging Fruit
Whisper it gently – very gently indeed – but there are signs of life in the political world. Some even say there are signs of leadership. Whatever next?
Some news on reforestation and avoided deforestation (REDD) schemes seems to be the answer. After the much-criticised outcome of the COP 15 Copenhagen climate conference, there’s real desperation among the political classes to be seen to do something.
So what they’re doing at the Bonn UN climate talks – a preparatory meeting for the next big talkfest in Mexico – is to reach for (if you’ll forgive the management-speak cliche) some low-hanging fruit.
The outcome of the Oslo climate and forest (basically, REDD) conference we featured in a recent blog, was an increase in the financial package offered by developed countries to encourage developing countries to grow in a sustainable way. There are a few ifs and buts, as there always are when large sums of money are involved, but the broad thrust of things is that, after the REDD-plus Partnership Agreement, some $4 billion is now available to encourage developing economies to prevent deforestation.
A junior minister of the new UK government attended the Oslo conference, and got all excited about it: Greg Barker is Britain’s climate change minister: “The interim REDD-plus Partnership Agreement puts the world on course to delivering scaled up early action to tackle deforestation and represents a real breakthrough in making progress on keeping global temperatures below 2C,” he said.
“The onus is now on all of us to support real action on the ground in rainforest nations to stop vast acres of forests disappearing. This means that finance must also be scaled up in the long term and that this can only be achieved in partnership with the private sector.”
This will feature prominently in the UN talks at Bonn, where a serious attempt to get a tightly worded, binding agreement is being prepared, judging from the papers now being tabled for discussion in Mexico.
But not all the developing countries like what’s being offered. The already mighty and fast-growing economy of India is probably not really a “developing” economy any more. However, with a gross domestic product increase of seven per cent for the last year, it’s certainly expanding fast. A popular view in India appears to be that the country has had enough of colonialism. The British relinquished political control after the Second World War, and many in India simply do not want economic imperialism in the form of being told when and how they can develop their own industry – even if the developed countries are happy to pay to have their policies implemented.
A middle view of the way forward is the plea for a two-tier REDD development plan, as clearly delineated in this Times of India article.
The transition towards a
The transition towards a viable and sustainable funding model for conservation and avoided deforestation needs to be driven by a carbon 'commodity' price or attributed value of the bio-diverse ecosystem. The intangible 'feel good' factor doesn't register in a commodity market and I feel this will drive the voluntary carbon markets towards a new funding regime.
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