Within the year between the UN Copenhagen climate negotiations in 2009 and the Cancún negotiations in 2010, the framework of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism advanced from a bracketed text to a nearly established architecture depicting the future of the forests. While, the Cancún text sets the foundation for REDD+, it leaves several questions unanswered and many concerns unaddressed.

The REDD+ language is couched under the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and outlines a general agreement, although the text is unfinished and many key issues remain unresolved.¹ Yet, interested countries, conservationist NGOs, multilateral financial institutions, logging industries among many others, move forward developing REDD+ programmes outside of the UNFCCC framework. Crucial issues have been left aside or vaguely touched upon, such as appropriate methods for measuring, reporting and verifying, financing national mitigation actions, forest definitions, safeguards, phased approaches and market-based financing. Although these sound like technical procedures, most of them are highly important for how REDD+ is implemented on the ground and its impacts on local environment and communities.

Although “safeguards” are no longer included in the operative text and have been moved to the Annex I of the LCA text, they are pre-disposed to the words “should” and “should be promoted and supported”, which leaves the rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-based communities subject to the interpretation of, the ‘buyers’ of the land, including logging and plantation companies. The safeguards presented in the text are thus inadequate window dressing, not legally binding and gloss over a series of fundamental problems with such schemes.

Furthermore, the Annex 1 “notes” that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has been “adopted” by the United Nations General Assembly which is not the same as adopting the UNDRIP within relation to the REDD+ mechanism. Indigenous and forest-based communities have few formal titles to their lands and many are still struggling for legal mechanisms that recognise their rights and territories. REDD+ in this regard will be difficult to challenge legally for forest-based peoples and will likely lead to property speculation, and dispossession of local populations.

The Annex II of this text calls on the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technology Advice (SBSTA) to set up a method to measure, report and verify deforestation rates. In addition, the SBSTA has been given the mandate to develop a methodology for Reference Emissions Levels (REL) which establishes the level against which the country’s REDD+ performance will be calculated. Concerns remain on the levels in which countries will determine potential compensation based on their RELs. If levels are set too high, countries could be rewarded with emissions reductions they have not actually produced which would mirror similar problems within the baseline problems seen in the Clean Development Mechanism, the UNs biggest offset scheme.

The Cancún text also opens the way for interim “sub-national” projects to be launched in the short term and reported within the national monitoring and reporting systems. Many subnational REDD projects are targeting Indigenous Peoples’ territories which could be very harmful and, in some cases, threaten cultural survival. In essence this will “fast-track” projects which would otherwise be stalled while national forestry accounting is being prepared. In addition, being project-based raises questions around leakage and future linking to the CDM.

The text now includes a statement add-on addressing drivers of deforestation which, “Encourages all Parties to find effective ways to reduce the human pressure on forests that results in greenhouse gas emissions, including actions to address drivers of deforestation,” however, nowhere does the text outline who or what those “drivers” would be. The problem becomes a reality on the ground when local communities and Indigenous Peoples are blamed as “drivers” while logging and plantation companies are purposefully over-looked and benefit from these schemes.

These risks are exacerbated by the lack of forest definitions which REDD+ aims to address. The five recognised actions include: reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks and sustainable management of forests. However most of these five actions remain undefined.   “Management of forests” by the current standard within the UNFCCC includes tree plantation and so-called “managed forests” raise serious concerns over the power given to tree plantation and logging companies. Reports of evictions to cut down forests and cover with tree plantations have already been accounted. The text does nothing to prevent such human rights violations, in fact, the LCA “promotes” it. Further, “forest degradation” and “conservation” are also undefined which leaves natural and old-growth forests up for grabs.

 

Several other pending issues subsist within the architecture of the LCA text relating to REDD+. One of these is the glaring absence of language addressing market-based mechanisms (carbon trading) as a financial vehicle for REDD+. This will likely be addressed in the lead-up to Durban in 2011. The Guardian reported, “As one senior diplomat said, ‘Because it does not explicitly say “no markets”, in legal terms it is still open for them.’”² Although Paragraph 7 of the Copenhagen Accord already includes “opportunities for markets”, and as it stands within the new LCA REDD+ framework, the door is wide open for big business to sell REDD+ credits which are already being traded on the voluntary market.³

 

The LCA text also fails to recognise the links to the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) – voluntary mitigation “actions” from developing countries. Questions around whether actions in the “fast-start” and early stages of REDD+ will be included within the NAMA records remain. The NAMA registry will only be taken into account after the “fast-start” finance period which leaves further questions around reporting and verification. The text invites Parties and observer organisations to submit comments by 21 February 2011 on the issues of NAMAs.

 

Beyond the question of market-based REDD, more fundamental questions remain regarding how the money will be distributed on the ground and to whom, how local communities will be impacted by these forest-projects, who and how will projects be monitored, how will corruption be handled, how will biodiverse forests be differentiated from monoculture plantations, and on and on. As Craig Rucker from the National Journal stated, “Watch for REDD to become the textbook example of corporate rent seeking and the law of unintended consequences for ECON101.”⁴

For Northern countries aiming to meet their Kyoto reduction targets, REDD+ is viewed as a convenient mechanism which will make meeting these GHG emissions targets easier. However, funding REDD+ remains unclear, particularly in the long term. For the first phases, REDD will be financed in an adhoc approach through various funds set up by Northern countries and through private sector voluntary carbon markets.

Most Southern countries viewed REDD+ as an opportunity for financing although some countries such as Tuvalu and Venezuela raised questions on financing, most counties pushed for REDD+. Bolivia stood alone in Cancun against REDD+ and for this was marginalised in the process – accused of being obstructionist for raising serious concerns. While other developing countries made critiques against REDD+, it was clear that they would support REDD+ as long as it was kept out of the carbon market which may have been one reason why the UN was forced to postpone the decisions on financing and REDD+ until Durban.

Although REDD+ offsets are not mentioned by name in the LCA text, it is certainly setting the basis for it. REDD+ offsets distracts from the responsibility to reduce GHG emissions at source, and initiates a path away from phasing out fossil fuels in power and industrial sectors. REDD+ will essentially allow industrialised-country governments and polluting corporations to “pay” for the supposed preservation of forests in order to obtain rights over the carbon and land in those forests.

REDD+ will not address climate change but rather displace the responsibility of mitigation from polluters and shift this burden to local communities dependant on forests. Further, the cheap “pollution licenses” from these offsets for fossil fuel-dependent corporations will likely harm communities elsewhere who are suffering from fossil fuel extraction or pollution for which those corporations are responsible. The REDD+ text is primed to authorise Northern governments and corporations to trade forest carbon credits as a means to escape emissions reductions obligations at the expense of the world’s remaining forests and the Peoples who have protected them for generations.