Globally, deforestation accounts for up to 17-20% of greenhouse gas
emissions, or about 5.8 billion tons of CO2 equivalent released into
the atmosphere, each year. This is more than global transport and aviation
combined. The reality is that an estimated 30 million acres of rain forest
disappear every year, destroying biodiversity and pouring billions of tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Therefore, emissions from deforestation and forest degradation must be
reduced or they may undercut reductions in energy-related and industrial
greenhouse gas emissions and undermine efforts to solve climate change.
The 1997 the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions excluded policies
related to deforestation and degradation. The rise in deforestation,
particularly in Brazil after that exclusion resulted in the formation of the
Coalition of Rainforest Nations. Participant nations included Papua New Guinea,
Costa Rica and other nations with large tropical forests.
The Coalition of Rainforest Nations initiated for the first time in 2005 a
request to consider “reducing emissions from deforestation in developing
countries," at the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP-11) of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 2007, during the 13th
Conference of the Parties (COP-13) of the UNFCCC in Bali, an agreement was
reached on “the urgent need to take further meaningful action to reduce
emissions from deforestation and forest degradation,” launching the REDD
mechanism. The principles for an international REDD framework were put forward
during the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-15), which was held
in Copenhagen in December 2009.
A series of multilateral forest finance mechanisms have been created in order
to funnel money into REDD initiatives across the globe. These mechanisms are:
- Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (World Bank)
- Forest Investment Program (World Bank)
- UN REDD
- REDD+ Partnership
While civil society groups support the concept of conservation with the
intention of reversing climate change and protecting biodiversity, the reality
is that with each of these forest finance mechanisms come grave dangers in
implementation. It is crucial that civil society organizations actively monitor
and critique the REDD process in order to ensure that it is successful, or at
least, that it is not harmful.