Markus Sommerauer's blog

So, illegal logging fell in the last decade (reported by Chatham House and World Resource Institute).

One week of Cancun talks have passed by and I just can't stop wondering!

Seems the world gets more wired any time when people meet for negotiations on what should happen to forests.

Last weeks had been quite busy regarding News in the context of forests, REDD+ and all this environmental stuff. Even before and during the last climate meetings in Tianjin (UN Climate Change Conference) there have been dozens of news messages, articles and stories all dealing with forests and REDD+ and Conservation...

But since begin of this week (18.10.2010) all sources are silent. There is near to nothing regarding REDD+ and forest in the news...

Even REDD-Monitor is silent...

What happened?

The reason is a simple one:

Background
Deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging, fires etc., account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

Climate change mitigation support to emerging or developing countries should be given by western industrialized (so called ANNEX I) countries. In Copenhagen leaders of the world have agreed to start some financing activities in the fields of climate change aid. Our bosses had been in the opinion that it would make sense to immediately start these financing activities and therefore called it “fast start funding” or “fast start financing of climate change mitigation”.