|
“Curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has the potential to offer significant reductions fairly quickly.” With this statement from his 2006 report, “The Economics of Climate Change”, Nicholas Stern, Lord Stern of Brentford Kt, FBA, gave REDD a huge boost. But how much truth there is in this statement? A dramatic new advertising campaign by US-based NGO Conservation International (CI) depicting the destruction of tropical rainforests as being like diseased human lungs could serve to further deepen confusion about the causes of deforestation. The advertisement, which is the latest offering in CI’s high-profile ‘Lost There – Felt Here’ campaign, could lead the public to believe that poor farmers in tropical countries are to blame for deforestation. A growing number of forestry, conservation and remote sensing experts are questioning the role in the REDD debate being played by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Centre (WHRC). The Centre, which is widely recognised for its high quality research, such as by Dan Nepstad, who has now left the organisation, is a relative newcomer in policy discussions on forestry and climate. But questions have been raised about WHRC’s work in other parts of the world, and about the scientific integrity of some of the organisation’s recent ‘policy’ positions, such as the extent to which industrial logging contributes to forest degradation and climate change. |
 
 
 
|
 
 
|
|
|
||
