REDD was one of the main themes covered in the media reporting on the first week in Poznan. While there was much discussion about REDD in side events and outside the formal UN process with a flurry of reports produced on REDD, there was little or no progress in the negotiations themselves.
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Allowing carbon credits from forests to be traded under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would create a enormous loophole, allowing EU Member States to buy their way out of emissions reductions. A coalition of European NGOs is campaigning to keep forests out of the ETS. The December 2008 issue of FERN’s EU Forest Watch provides a succinct summary of the current state of the EU/ETS discussions. As REDD-Monitor has pointed out several times, the way forests are defined is crucial to whether REDD helps to preserve or destroy forests. The UN’s failure, in its negotiations on REDD, to differentiate between forests and industrial tree plantations, creates the risk that governments and companies could replace forests with oil palm, eucalyptus or rubber plantations and claim carbon credits under REDD schemes. Clearly, this is deeply unsatisfactory to anyone who cares about people and forests. Yet the UN continues to define plantations as forests. On 11 December 2008, delegates entering the Poznan climate change conference saw a “Plantations are not forests” banner on the edge of a protest in favour of womens’ rights. Protesters chanted “Plantations, down! down! Monocultures, down! down! Women’s rights, up! up!” On 10 December 2008, the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change attempted to read out the following statement at the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice’s final session in Poznan. The chair closed the meeting before the statement could be read out. A video of this is available here. New research released last week raises further questions about the effectiveness of relying on carbon markets to fund reductions in tropical deforestation. The paper, from researchers Martin Persson and Christian Azar of the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, warns that increased prices of carbon credits worldwide – upon which most forest carbon trading scenarios rely on – would also simultaneously drive up the prices of biofuels such as palm oil, thus making forest clearance more profitable then REDD payments. Sarwadi Sukiman, an Indonesian farmer, tells the story of what happened to the forests and farmland of his village, Tanjung Lebar, in Sumatra, Indonesia. First the forests were logged to produce timber and paper. When the loggers had destroyed the forest they left and the villagers reclaimed their land. They recently lost their land to a conservation project, the Harapan Rainforest project, run by Yayasan Burung Indonesia, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and BirdLife International. John Lanchbery, head of Climate Change Policy with the RSPB, is in Poznan. At a side event last week he emphasised the importance of involving local people, “otherwise it just won’t work”. REDD-Monitor looks forward to Lanchbery’s response to Sarwadi’s testimony. The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) held its final session for COP14 yesterday. Three interventions were prepared: from the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change; the International Youth Delegation; and the Global Forest Coalition. The first two were read out during the SBSTA. “The last words that SBSTA heard for 2008 were ours on REDD,” says Josh Wyndham-Kidd from the International Youth Delegation. “There were a few moments of stunned silence following the statement.” On 9 December 2008, the day before international human rights day, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand removed all references to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities from the UN technical discussions on REDD (taking place in the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, SBSTA). Third World Network released the following new update from Poznan earlier today. On Tuesday, 9 December 2008, I visited the Sheraton Hotel for an event titled “Making Forests Competitive: Practical solutions for permanence”. Organised by the legal firm Norton Rose, in association with the UNEP Finance Initiative and Carbon Markets and Investors Association, the event looked at the possibilities for the insurance industry to insure forest carbon. The principle is simple. There are lots of risks associated with storing carbon in forests. If you are buying or selling carbon you want a contract and want it to be insured. While insurance cannot prevent the carbon being released to the atmosphere, it can insure against financial loss, thus making financing forest projects more attractive to investors. The point of insurance is “de-risking investment in forests”, as Phil Cottle from ForestRE put it. The International Youth Delegation is a consortium of over 500 young people from over 50 countries. “We are the largest ever youth presence for a conference of this kind,” they say. “We are here in Poznan to provide the youth voice in the negotiations and to remind governments that they are bargaining with our future.” Here’s their position on REDD. |
 
 
 
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