REDD Danger

The UK Government recently made an embarrassing U-turn on their proposal to sell off 18% of England’s forests. This was largely due to the energies of a host of vocal opposition groups across the country. Key arguments centred around the risk that private ownership would reduce public access and the idea that people living around and using forests are entitled to be involved in decisions affecting their future. Campaigns were rooted in the fundamental principle that forests are more than just commodities to be bought and sold.

However, while England’s publicly owned forests will remain off the table for private interests, the same cannot be said for forests worldwide as plans to implement a market-led scheme for forest protection gain momentum. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) will see countries in the global south paid to preserve their forests in order to stem carbon emissions. The latest formulation, REDD+, includes mitigation measures from conservation, sustainable management of forests and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

There is now widespread acceptance that forest conservation must be a key element in the drive to tackle climate change. Deforestation and forest degradation, mainly through agricultural expansion, logging, conversion to pastureland and infrastructure development, account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As governments fail to pass legislation to tackle their fossil fuel dependence, support for the more politically acceptable REDD+ scheme has increased.

A final agreement has yet to be reached, but pilot projects are numerous and the UN already has a programme to prepare countries for REDD+, in anticipation of an agreed international framework. The system of funding has also to be finalised but, given existing structures and key players, it is assumed that a market mechanism will be favoured. The World Bank is deeply embedded in the process, having established the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in 2008. This consists of the Readiness Fund to help countries prepare for a system of financial incentives and the Carbon Fund, a private-public partnership which will buy emissions reductions after its planned launch in 2011.

The UK Government, while bowing to anti-privatisation campaigns regarding its own forests, is lending both rhetorical and financial support for the development of REDD+. In Copenhagen it promised £300 million over the 2010-2012 period to ‘catalyse early action on REDD’.
REDD+ will see a plethora of profit seeking private actors becoming involved in conservation and reforestation projects. Numerous pilot projects have already seen some of the world’s largest energy companies invest in initiatives which will earn them millions of pounds by generating credits for the carbon market.

The lucrative nature of such endeavours and the profit-making zeal of corporations makes a dangerous combination for those living in or near forests to be conserved or land earmarked for reforestation. Many of the most forest-rich countries have weak land rights regimes which are already taken advantage of by mining and logging companies whose activities frequently force people from their land. The involvement of seemingly more benign environmental NGOs by no means guarantees the rights of indigenous and other forest dependent people, for many of whom conservation has meant eviction from their customary lands. There is intense opposition to the very premise of an international carbon market – that over-polluting countries should be able to carry on business as usual by paying other, poorer countries to reduce or stabilise their emissions - a new form of colonialism, some argue. Environmentalists too are sceptical of leaving the fate of the world’s forests in the hands of the market - the shortcomings of which are at the root of the environmental crisis.

Yet while anti-privatisation campaigners in the UK were able to persuade their government to heed their demands, voices opposing REDD+ at the international level within the UNFCCC process, struggle to be heard Legal responsibility, unlike the consequences of fossil fuel use, does not flow easily across borders, so country delegates advocate only for the interests of their own populations. Many forest dependent people, however, cannot depend on their own country delegations to represent their views and find themselves forced to the fringes of international negotiations.

The dangers of private involvement in the management of natural resources are well understood and as relevant to the world’s forests as the UK’s. The British public protested loudly against the idea that trees can be reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold; an idea embedded in REDD+. In countries where many depend directly on forests for their homes, livelihoods and cultures, it is much more than a principle that is at stake, yet voices of dissent have so far been lost in the global democracy gap.