Model by Alice Cho, Photograph by Mark Weiss
When international leaders met in Bali last December to begin hammering out a new global pact on climate change, they butted heads over many things but agreed on this: Conservation of the world's tropical forests should play a critical role in the protocol that replaces Kyoto in 2012. The carbon dioxide released from deforestation accounts for roughly 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and reducing that rate could be among the easiest and cheapest ways to slow global warming, according to experts. But with many of the planet's remaining forests located in developing nations—where the economic pressures to clear land for agriculture, timber, minerals, and, increasingly, biofuels are substantial—how could these countries reasonably be expected to participate?
The solution they settled upon, though clunky in name (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation), is elegant in concept: REDD mechanisms will assign a carbon storage value to forests, and nations that forego razing their trees will receive credits, which can then be sold on the carbon market. "These plans have the potential to shift the balance of underlying economic market forces that currently favor deforestation," said a team of researchers in Science. But REDDs will also test a much bigger idea: that it is possible to put a monetary value not just on nature's goods—like oil and timber—but also on nature's services; that we might begin accounting for the role an intact ecosystem plays as a carbon sink, a filter for water and air, a pollinator, and a home for biodiversity. As the first global experiment in this premise, REDDs will attempt to weave nature's services into the fabric of a capitalist economy, and in so doing will test whether markets can begin to drive the protection of Earth's resources, rather than their exploitation.
Advertisement
The carbon cap-and-trade market—a system already in place in Europe and soon to come to the US—provides the economic framework for the proposed REDD scheme. If a country exceeds its allotted carbon emissions allowance, it can buy extra credits to offset the balance. For example, if Spain emits 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide but has allowances for only 1 million tons, it can buy 500,000 tons of reductions on the global carbon market, paying a country like Indonesia for credits it has earned through reducing deforestation. Although the price for REDD credits has not yet been fixed, avoided deforestation is expected to pump several billion dollars into the economies of developing nations each year.
The plan has received widespread support from the scientific community, leading conservation organizations and The World Bank. After rallying support from global leaders at the 2007 G8 summit, the Bank announced in Bali the launch of a new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. This mega fund, which has received contributions of between $5 million and $40 million each from nearly a dozen nations, will begin piloting REDD schemes in five rainforested countries in 2008. And it is urging the global community to begin preparing 20 to 30 developing-country governments for full implementation of REDD incentives by 2012.
Response has been mixed among developing nations. The top-down implementation of REDD—with little input from either the recipient governments or from the forest communities—has been one major concern. Another is a long-standing criticism that carbon offsets merely provide a mechanism for industrialized nations to continue polluting. And in countries like Brazil, says William Laurance, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, "the concern is that in exchange for a one-time payment, they would essentially be promising not to deforest that land forever."