I was asked to provide a paper for the Green Economic Institute’ Annual Conference at Mansfield College at University of Oxford last weekend of the 31/07-01/08. The paper I presented was about REDD but an alternative agenda, namely, SEEBIF.

Whether or not my Initiative was successfully assimilated I cannot say as I had to introduce the whole concept of deforestation and the contribution forest destruction in the tropics made to this current condition.

Suffice to say that my Initiative made an impact on the UNEP representative present who wanted more information.

SEEBIF is critical of REDD in many ways; not the initial concept but some fundamental integrative policies which all humanity can fully appreciate, because in the end it is we who are the businesses and make up governments. It is we in the carbon polluting countries that make the mess and we all have to pay (G20)to put it right. And in doing so have a right of allocation of funds of how much AND TO WHO!!!!!

I have other concerns…all forests offer a similar fundamental function to carbon sequestration and storage and they all have to be part of the answer but in a manner again by which such knowledge has to be part of the awareness assimilation process.

Copenhagen is to be too late for a fundamental reorganisation of the REDD programme. I mentioned to my colleagues of your comments about the general outcome of the Bonn Climate Change Meeting. Therefore the top down approach will never work, ever. The carpet bagging oligarchs and their nepotistic criminal colleagues in companies like Barito Timbers on Borneo and APP in Sumatra ARE the reasons why REDD in its current remit is unworkable.

Also yes,a previous colleagues description of FAO’s definition of forest is vague….but now resotoration ecology and biodiversity proaction of the 850 million hectares of degraded forest has to take preceedence over arguments of forest cover definition…

Let us get to grips with the SEEBIF principle, and get it broadcast into the mindset of 100% of humnity for without it there is no hope to reduce, rather than expand the current 18-20% of the anthropogenic carbon which enters to atmosphere from forest destruction and degradation. There has to be a parallel protocol to Contraction and Convergence in general relationship to anthropogenic carbon emissions in relationships to global forests and the holistic role they play in this current debacle not only for carbon sequestration and storage, but biodiversity permanence and choice achievable sustainable development.

Such is the monstrous perversity we are headed towards as REDD is squeezed into a climate agreement, due to the fact that, under pressure from the governments of Australia, Canada and other fast-fibre producing nations, and with the collusion of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN uses a definition that considers ‘forests’ to be anything more than 0.05 hectare, with the *potential* to achieve a canopy height of 2 metres, with a ‘canopy’ cover of 10%.