Better off REDD

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions that interfere with the atmosphere’s capacity to regulate temperature, leading to global warming. REDD is touted as the means to stopping the rot. Hana Miller reports.

“What is this REDD?” asks Jajang Kurniawan, the farmer from West Java who features in a short film by LifeMosaic, one in a series intended to give a voice to indigenous people at the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. “What kind of animal is it?” he continues, “We just don’t know.”

There is a relatively simple answer to this question, though it requires a fair bit of technical and political background. REDD is the acronym for projects with the goal of “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”. When REDD was devised during the COP13 in Bali in 2007, it marked an important step in acknowledging the value of forest conservation in dealing with the increasing dangers of climate change.

What REDD really means to the world is far more complicated. There is a tangled web of questions, concerns and considerations that underlie the discussion of climate change at all levels, not to mention the seemingly cryptic terms, theories and equations that we have to juggle to stay updated.

Kurniawan’s question, and its telling uncertainty about the lack of information available at local levels, brings up the specter of what we might define as the realities of climate change: from the consequences negotiated by indigenous people living close to the land in remote areas of the planet, to the formal negotiations between global representatives at conferences far removed from nature.

Regardless of distance or ignorance, none of us can escape the environmental and economic consequences of climate change. Especially not in Indonesia, an economically poor country rich in natural resources, a nation of islands with low-lying coastlines, home to many of the rainforests now being viewed as valuable stores of carbon dioxide, and the host to a number of REDD pilot projects.

Even for those most familiar with REDD, there are still many unanswered questions about how exactly it will work. One of the most important steps in this process is to involve the people whose lives and livelihoods are closest to the forests in question, those who need to see proof that they can earn a living from not cutting down their trees. This includes local communities, businesses and organizations, as well as all levels of local governments whose commitment and mutual investment is critical for enforcing legitimate REDD practices.

By now we have come to the nearly unanimous understanding that there is hardly any time to spare for careless mistakes when it comes to the environment. But at this formative stage for REDD, there is still time to learn from our mistakes, and there is still the opportunity to make it as fair and efficient a scheme as it aspires to be.

During negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that binds participating industrialized countries to reducing their national greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, the “cap and trade” system was introduced as a means of achieving this goal.

The idea, which would ultimately have a similar effect as a carbon tax, is that carbon gases – most of which are emitted from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas – be made a commodity that can be sold by those whose emissions are below the legal limit and bought by those whose emissions are above it.

In this model, forests that are left standing not only become valuable carbon sinks, as trees are needed for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but they also gain the financial value of carbon credits funded by investors on the basis of preventing deforestation, stopping emissions and storing carbon in the forest instead. These credits can then be sold as offsets to conscientious individuals seeking to compensate for their personal carbon emissions from their airplane travels, for instance. Or more profitably, sold to companies, and even to countries, to compensate for going over their emission limits.

In theory, REDD projects would bring forest conservation into the financial market with enough benefit to compete with industries that support deforestation, such as logging, farming and mining for coal, minerals and oil. As it is, however, without a decision on the source of funding for REDD or an assured system that would deliver that funding to the necessary recipients, there is no such guarantee.

The world’s first commercially financed REDD project, and the first to meet the standards of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) – criteria for identifying projects that “simultaneously address climate change, support local communities and conserve biodiversity” – is in Ulu Masen, Aceh, where Bank of America Merrill Lynch has purchased carbon credits from 7,690 square kilometers of protected forest.

“Our motivation for being involved in this is that we believe the financial sector has a pivotal role to play in financing decarbonization,” says Abyd Karmali, the company’s global head of carbon markets, “and that it was important to develop experience early in REDD, given that it is a new and evolving mechanism.”

While the investment by such a large international firm bodes well for the project’s apparent financial viability, the project in Ulu Masen has raised one of the main concerns with REDD and the cap and trade system in general: that of “carbon leakage”, or an increase in emissions or deforestation in one area as a result of a decrease in another, effectively moving the problem rather than solving it.

According to landscape ecologist Dr. David Gaveau, “There is a contradiction between the establishment of the prominent Ulu Masen REDD project and the continuing expansion of roads and industrial oil palm plantations in the region. As such, one can question whether REDD in its present form will be able save northern Sumatra’s endangered lowland rainforests from logging and conversion to oil palm plantations, as the risk of leakage will be high.”

These are the kinds of oversights that risk accomplishing exactly the opposite of REDD’s intentions by rewarding the wrong people for the wrong actions. In a country like Indonesia, these loopholes also point to weaknesses in local and national structure. For some, these faults are golden opportunities for improvement.

Dr. Suyanto is in charge of a project with the World Agroforestry Center that aims for fair, efficient and sustainable emissions reductions from land use in Indonesia (FESERLUI).

“REDD and the expectations of carbon markets have brought up new issues on rights,” he says, referring to the key issues of land ownership that complicate questions of who has the right to sell carbon credits from avoided deforestation, and how the revenues earned will reach the right hands. “These issues demand clarity and procedural justice on resolving land tenure and forest management rights and stakeholders’ rights over forested land and resources. This clarity does not exist yet in many areas.”

This brings up the main concern voiced by critics of REDD, those who think there is no way this supposedly win-win scheme could work to the benefit of indigenous people, who have thus far been largely left out of the loop in discussions about these projects.

“The Forestry Ministry has passed three sets of regulations on REDD,” says Chris Lang, who runs the REDD-Monitor website to facilitate public discussion and awareness about the subject, “but these are based on the 1999 Forest Law, which fails to recognize the rights of indigenous people in ‘state forest zones’ – which cover about 70 percent of Indonesia’s total land area.”

There can be no improvement as long as there is a gap between what is being said and what is being done.

“My concern is that very little has actually changed despite all the talk about REDD,” continues Lang. “According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, the Indonesian government loses US$2 billion each year as a result of corruption, illegal logging and mismanagement in the forestry sector.”

The transparency and international accountability REDD will require to fulfill its environmental potential just may be the chance for developing countries to improve clarity at the national and local levels. As long as conditions are not imposed in a legally binding global agreement, however, it is up to those involved – investors, scientists, politicians and civilians – to contribute in an unofficial system of checks and balances.

The end of 2009 marked the end of a two-year consultation period for REDD projects, one of the few initiatives many were hoping developed and developing countries could reach some kind of agreement on at the recent COP15 in Copenhagen. Without set targets for emissions reductions and funding, however, there is still a long way to go. But as Lou Verchot, a principal scientist from CIFOR, has pointed out, there is another of looking at it: “On the positive side, the decisions clarify some of the technical points and will provide the support necessary for countries that are interested in getting experience now.”

Several of the concerns circulating over REDD appear on the draft agreement from the COP15, a sign that at the very least, bridges are being built between policy makers and representatives of local communities. As for the standoff between individual countries hesitant about giving up their financial security for the security of a future, “Climate change will damage every economy,” says Verchot, “and, in this case, those who are not part of the solution really are part of the problem.”

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