REDD-Monitor

The Guardian reports that after only two days, “The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray.” The problem is a leaked document that Denmark hoped that world leaders would sign at the end of next week. The text “hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations,” John Vidal writes in The Guardian. The text was developed by a small group of countries, including the UK, US, Australia and Denmark, and was shown only to a handful of countries after being completed last week. The Guardian has posted the “Danish text” on its website.

read more »

On 26 June 2009, the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and Energy and Climate Secretary, Ed Miliband, visited London Zoo to launch “The Road to Copenhagen“, a report outlining the UK’s vision of the climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009. The report claims to be setting “ambitious” goals: “The UK believes that the over-riding goal of the Copenhagen agreement is to limit climate change to an increase in global average temperature of 2°C. This means the deal needs to establish a credible trajectory for reducing global emissions by at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050.” But as George Monbiot points out in The Guardian, “a global cut of 50% offers only a faint-to-non-existent chance of meeting their ultimate objective: preventing more than two degrees of warming.” The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that to have a high chance of limiting climate change to 2°C requires global cuts of 85% by 2050.

read more »

On 23 June 2009, the UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee interviewed Kevin Anderson, Research Director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Anderson is one of the UK’s leading Climate Change scientists. The interview is available here.

It is highly recommended listening. Anderson points out that the UK government’s planned carbon cuts would have a “50-50 chance” of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2°C. He notes that this is not really an acceptable level of risk, given the dangers involved of runaway climate change.

read more »

The International Institute for Environment and Development published an important new report last week, “Tenure in REDD: Start-Point or Afterthought?“. Written by Lorenzo Cotula and James Mayers, it is a welcome addition to the discussion on REDD.

Like a football match, this is a report of two halves. In the first half, the authors discuss the issues surrounding tenure of land and trees in the context of REDD: “the systems of rights, rules, institutions and processes regulating their access and use”.

The second half consists of seven country studies. The authors note the “often apparent gulf between policy and practice” in looking at the land tenure situation in the seven countries. “The current international drive to explore REDD could do more harm than good,” if it focusses on the letter of the law rather than the practice, Cotular and Mayers write.

read more »

The UK news and current affairs magazine Private Eye reported recently on an appearance by Johan Eliasch in front of a Commons select committee. Private Eye notes that he seemed to have little interest in the matter under discussion.
read more »

In a new response to the ‘Eliasch Review’, the London-based Overseas Development Institute has warned that ‘capacity strengthening’ of long-neglected forestry institutions in order to undertake REDD programmes could take ‘decades’. ODI states that the challenge of overcoming bad forest governance in the tropics has been understated, as ”recent attempts by the international community to support sustainable forest management do not give much cause for optimism.  Twenty years of experience shows that international funding does not necessarily secure improved, sustainable outcomes”.  ODI has also warned that the review is “over-optimistic” concerning the problem of measuring and monitoring ‘avoided deforestation’.

As this short article concisely covers many of the key issues at stake in the current REDD debate, we include it here in full.
read more »

Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, will today launch the long-awaited report of his Special Representative on Forests and Renewable Energy, on how to save the world’s forests and prevent climate change.

REDD-Monitor has learned that the report by businessman Johan Eliasch will call for tens of billions of dollars to be invested in avoiding deforestation, and that this can best be achieved by private investors and the carbon markets. The report will claim that trading in forest carbon could cut deforestation by 75% by 2030. The report points out that deforestation alone will account for an extra 40 parts per million of carbon dioxide to be added to the atmosphere by 2100, and will push total levels of CO2 above dangerous levels.
read more »