BALI, Indonesia: Fighting illegal logging has for decades mostly been
marked by failure. There was never enough money or political will to
overcome the corruption and poverty that drove people in tropical
nations to cut down trees.
But with new evidence showing deforestation contributes about 20 percent
to global warming — emitting more heat-trapping gases than cars, ships
and jet planes do every year — delegates at the U.N. climate conference are taking a fresh look at the problem.And, for the first time, they are expected to include forest protection measures in negotiations on replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. They also are likely to set up a mechanism that would resolve a problem that has been at the heart of the deforestation — how to make it more
valuable for governments to protect their trees than allow timber and
palm oil barons to cut them down.
"If we lose the world's forests, we lose the fight against climate change," Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Michael Somber told conference delegates Wednesday. "Action to reduce emission from deforestation is too important to wait."
For nearly three decades, saving tropical rain forests, especially in
the Amazon, Indonesia and Congo basin in Africa, from chain saws has been marred by missteps and disappointments. Efforts to include protection schemes in the Kyoto agreement were rejected over concerns that credit for saving forests would take
pressure off the West to reduce emissions, but also because some nations were unconvinced it would be possible to verify reforestation efforts. Western governments, instead, rolled out programs aimed at getting villagers in Africa or Southeast Asia to shift to other businesses or ensuring logs being exported from, say Indonesia or Brazil, came from sustainable sources.
But few efforts have been able to slow the pace of deforestation, resulting in the loss of 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forest each year or twice the size of Panama, according to The World Bank.
Brazil and Indonesia — where 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation — are the hardest hit mostly because of rampant illegal logging and the growing demand for biofuels and other commodities like soybeans.
"Changing forest-use patterns in developing countries is at least as difficult as cutting industrial emissions in developed countries," Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told delegates. "Yet it is a task that must be confronted ... Positive incentives from the international community would greatly help that effort, especially in the case of the poorest countries."
Ten years since Kyoto's signing, donors, environmentalists and tropical countries say they hope results will be different. Dubbed Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation or REDD, the tentative program will essentially pay countries who can show they are making efforts to reduce their levels of deforestation and, in the case of Indonesia, protect peat lands. The program is being hailed not only as a climate change solution, but also as a way of helping protect biodiversity and providing a cheap way to shield communities from the worsening floods and landslides that are so common in much of Southeast Asia.
"If you agree with Al Gore that we have a climate emergency, you can't afford to have 20 percent of the problem off the table. We have to do it," said Frances J. Seymour, the director general of the Center for International Forest Research in Indonesia, referring to the Nobel prize-winning former U.S. vice president.
"There are so many other reasons to conserve forest from sustainable development forest." Still with as much as US$23 billion (euro15.6 billion) expected to be available for forest protection, countries have been jockeying in Bali to include language that would make them eligible for REDD. Some like India and Costa Rica are pushing to be able to gain assistance for conserving their forest since they already have strong protection measures in place. African countries want to include the word
degradation — tree loss to such things as farming and small scale logging — since their deforestation levels are relatively low.
"Everybody is sure that reduce emissions from deforestation will be in there so they all want their little piece of it," said Douglas Boucher of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The form of assistance has also been an issue with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea leading an effort for countries to get carbon credits for conservation — which they could eventually trade on a commodities market for cash much as emissions are done in Europe. Brazil, on the other hand, supports creating a fund created through direct aid from Western countries, or taxes on such things as international air travel or the energy sector.
Other concerns are the methodology for verifying a country's reforestation efforts, the corruption that remains rife in forest departments and concerns that the bid to save forests will force indigenous people off their land or deprive them of their livelihoods.
That debate played out Tuesday outside a World Bank meeting, where seven Western governments were announcing plans to donate US$160 million (€109 million) to the agency's newly created Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Norway on Thursday agreed to contribute US$5 million (€3.4 million) to the fund, bring the total to US$165 million (€112 million). It is a forest protection program that will fund pilot projects in five developing countries to better understand what methods will best work for REDD. So far 30 countries from Africa, the Asia-Pacific and Latin
America have requested to participate in the program.
"We reject REDD," said Mina Susana Setra, a member of the Indigenous People's Alliance Archipelago and one of 60 people protesting the plans with chants of "Hands Off World Bank". "Who will take control? Who will benefit? When these projects happen, we are forced from our land."
World Bank President Robert Zoellick insisted the projects would consider the concerns of indigenous people while at the same time providing a global solution to climate change. Countries involved in REDD have 85 percent of tropical forests, and proponents of the scheme note that doing nothing to protect the trees — which release carbon dioxide into the air when they are cut or burned — would be like allowing the United States or China to continue to pollute unabated.
"This signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it," he said. "This can change economic options for many people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods. There is now a value for conserving, not just harvesting forests."
BBC
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