Cancun Climate Conference debating Forest Plan
A United Nations program under debate at the climate change conference in Cancun could help millions who live in the world's forests earn more while slowing the deforestation that accounts for 20% of the carbon dioxide emissions blamed for warming the planet. It's a simple idea with a complicated name, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD.
Unlike old piecemeal forest-protection efforts, REDD is a global effort with standards, monitoring and a pay-for-results system that would give people incentives to leave their forests standing and to keep from emitting more carbon into the atmosphere. The delegates in Cancun are trying to hammer out just what shape it will take: Who will administer it, who will fund it, who will enforce it and even what some of its most basic rules will be. Anything that protects forests such as alternate income for communities, solar panels to forest guards could be included in REDD.
The program was touted as one of the biggest potential deals at Cancun, but the talks have been stymied by disagreements over how to finance and evaluate projects, and over safeguards to guarantee that forest-dwellers won't be evicted by the process. A watered-down text may be all negotiators can achieve when the conference ends on Friday. But some poor countries would need immediate aid to prepare for the plan's rigorous accounting procedures.
The REDD negotiations have turned into minefields because countries disagree whether companies in rich countries should be able to use sponsorship of green projects in the developing world as a way to offset pollution in their home countries.
Proponents say such markets can help fund the estimated $30 billion annual cost of reducing deforestation by 50%. But critics say that would mean restricting the economic options of the countries with forests, and the people who live there, so that big companies can go on polluting and rich countries can go on producing.
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