At a meeting in Paris last Thursday hosted by French President Nicola Sarkozy the first steps were taken to kick start a global REDD scheme to put an end to deforestation and build on the progress in Copenhagen. A ten nation steering group has been established to drive the implementation of a global avoided deforestation and forest carbon enhancement mechanism over the next three years. In addition to that a further $1 billion has been promised to finance the scheme.
This closed door International Conference on the Major Forest Basins was the first high level gathering on forests since the UN’s Copenhagen climate conference in December. Present were representatives from more than 60 nations, among them donor developed countries and forest rich developing nations as well as UN and World Bank representatives.
The purpose of the conference was to come up with a workable, concrete and detailed plan for setting out a global REDD+ scheme to take to the next annual UN climate conference in Mexico this December. The group is also expected to meet again in Oslo, Norway in May of this year. REDD+ includes activities aimed at reducing emissions due to deforestation, reducing emissions due to forest degradation, boosting forest carbon stocks and sustainable forest management.
One of the few areas of major progress, REDD negotiations in Copenhagen were only stopped short of a final accord by a lack of an overarching climate agreement. Crucially a number of technical and social issues surrounding avoided deforestation activity were resolved at the Copenhagen talks. To enable REDD+ the US, Australia, Japan, Norway, France and the UK made pledges worth $3.5 billion for fast start funds.
This amount was increased to $4.5 billion at the Paris conference with additions from other donors. One of those, Germany has promised (subject to Berlin’s budget planning process) 20-30% of its overall 2010-2012 fast start climate change funding to the initiative.
Appointed to form the REDD+ steering group were delegates from ten nations, both developed and developing nations. One of their first and most difficult tasks would have been to consider how to carve up the billions in early funding among forest nations fairly. These include: Brazil, Congo, Indonesia as well as a whole host of smaller tropical countries.
According to the WWF’s Forest Carbon Initiative Leader Chris Elliott, the new group represents a critical opportunity to mobilise early action and financing on REDD+ and that’s an opportunity that cannot be ignored. Elliott went on to stress that a broad agreement had been reached on principles of REDD+ and safeguards for forest and indigenous peoples. As well as the WWF other various international forest stakeholders, developing world governments, environmental NGOs, the UN and the World Bank to name a few are keen to see that the momentum is not lost.
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April 14th, 2010 at 7:03 PM
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