Forest-carbon scheme gaining favour in climate talks

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – A scheme that could unlock  billions of dollars for poorer nations by saving their forests  is set to be included in a new climate pact, a top U.N.  official said, but issues such as funding still need to be  resolved.

Deforestation contributes nearly 20 percent of mankind’s  greenhouse gas emissions and support is growing ahead of U.N.  climate talks in December to back a scheme that rewards  developing countries for preserving or replanting forests.  Called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation  (REDD), the scheme aims to increase forest cover to soak up  carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels blamed for  rising seas, greater extremes of weather and melting glaciers.

“It’s very likely we’ll see REDD included in a Copenhagen  agreement,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change  Secretariat, told Reuters.

“What I see is everyone constructively working towards a  solution and that’s different from the debate a couple years  ago,” he said in a telephone interview late on Wednesday.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations meet in the Danish  capital, Copenhagen, at the end of the year to try to agree on  a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and REDD has been a major  focus in talks ahead of the December meeting.

Some nations, such as Australia and Indonesia, want a  market-based scheme in which tradeable REDD credits can be  issued for forest projects that can prove carbon is being  locked away for decades. Poorer nations could sell the credits  to the carbon market or rich countries could buy them to offset  home emissions.

Estimates vary but annual revenue from REDD credits could  reach between $5 billion to $20 billion, the U.N. says.

The European Union, though, is worried cheap REDD credits  could flood the market and discourage rich nations from making  deep emissions cuts at home. Norway says emissions cuts from  REDD projects should be additional to any abatement efforts by  developed nations.

“Part of the challenge for Copenhagen will be to find an  adequate balance and such a balance could be found, saying, for  example, that REDD-related credits may only represent a certain  percentage of an industrialised country’s reduction effort.”

There is also debate as to whether a REDD scheme, once all  the measuring, monitoring and verification systems have been  agreed, should be funded entirely by the market, only by public  funds or a mixture of both.

“If REDD is to be brought under a market-based approach  then questions of volume and what that volume would do to price  are also an issue,” de Boer said.

A major point of debate was how to calculate real emissions  reductions from REDD projects. For example, emissions  reductions needed to be measured against some kind of reference  level.

But there was debate over whether this would be past  deforestation rates or projections for deforestation or forest  degradation in the future.

De Boer was confident a broad outline of a REDD scheme  would be agreed and said it did not make sense to work towards  a Copenhagen agreement without it.

“Forest countries like Indonesia, where deforestation is  taking place on a massive scale, are never going to be able to  stop that deforestation unless they manage to offer poor people  an economic alternative.

“People don’t cut down trees because they think trees are  ugly. People cut down trees because there’s an economic  advantage to doing that.”