Preface: Deforestation is accountable for 18% of carbon emissions in the atmosphere (source: Friends of the Earth: REDD myths). REDD is meant to reduce deforestation.
The basics of market-based REDD:
Part 1 Putting a price on carbon stored in trees (ie. Money trees).
Part 2 Create credits to purchase this carbon. When credits are purchased, there is a promise to not to cut down forests and plantations that absorb carbon.
Part 3 Allow corporations to buy these credits to ‘offset’ their ongoing emissions. Ie. Invest in carbon credits = buying permits for continuing to pollute.
Part 4 Since REDD credits are calculated as little as $4 USD, corporations can opt to buy these credits and continue to pollute. Buy a forest here, continue with coal fired power there.
Huh? Wait. What??
I know. Sounds like a joke. It’s not.
Status of REDD: While some argue that we need non-market mechanisms for REDD (clearly preferable), as the Indigenous Environmental Network describes, market-based REDD is already happening on the voluntary carbon market and is rife with scandals, speculation and carbon criminals.
REDD is on the table being negotiated at the Bella Centre (where Copenhagen climate negotiations are taking place). It has been predicted that there will be an agreement on REDD and that it will likely be market based.
REDD, as long as it is based on a definition of forests that includes plantations, will also hamper efforts to mitigate climate change. Large scale monoculture tree plantations cause serious environmental social and economic problems (Friends of the Earth: REDD Myths), they also only store 20% of the carbon intact that natural forests do. Further, what is being proposed in REDD is to allow the UNFCCC to sanction processes that allows natural forests to be replaced with plantations.
As reported by Friends of the Earth, if REDD is funded through carbon offsetting it will undermine current and future emissions reductions agreed to by industrialized countries. Allowing countries with carbon intensive lifestyles to continue consuming inequitably and unsustainably, by permitting them to fund cheaper forest carbon ‘offsets’ in developing countries, diverts critical resources and attention away from measures to address fossil fuel consumption and the real underlying causes of deforestation.
In the absence of clear land rights, Indigenous Peoples and other forest dependent communities have no guarantees that they will receive any form of REDD ‘incentive’ or reward for their extensive forest conservation efforts.
From Reaping Profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity: “An estimated 60 million indigenous peoples are completely dependent on forests and are considered the most threatened by REDD. Therefore, indigenous leaders are among its most prominent critics.” The International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change declared that: “REDD will steal our land States and carbon traders will take control over our forests.”
