World’s forests wanted alive

“Forests are worth more dead than alive. Today we commit to change that equation.”

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg?s words last 27 May in Oslo may have marked the beginning of a new turn in the fight against global warming.

Norway is taking the lead in a UN-sponsored scheme called UN REDD plus to halt deforestation by contributing $1 billion to the fight in Indonesia, accounting for a quarter of the current overall budget.

While announcement of the budget was made last May 27 in Oslo, ethical repercussions are slowly making their way round the world.

The UN REDD+ programme, otherwise dubbed the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, is an ambitious project which aims to make trees more valuable standing than cut down.

The scheme, which was approved at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen last December, encourages rich nations to voluntarily finance forest-protecting projects while cooordinating that aid to avoid waste and ensure transparency.

Put simply, it is an environmentally friendly bribery system where rich countries pay for trees to stay alive, making it economically viable for poorer countries to ignore forest-cutting contractors.

?It is predicted that financial flows for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD+ could reach up to US$30 billion a year,? the REDD website says. ?This significant North-South flow of funds could reward a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions and could also support new, pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services.?

Deforestation and forest degradation account for 20 per cent of global gas emissions, making them more damaging to the environment than the emissions from the world?s entire transport industry ? ships and planes included.

Other major financial contributors include Germany, Norway, France, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Australia Japan and the US.

As for Norway, rules have already been set up with Indonesia. The Scandinavian country will pay its southern partner a fixed sum per ton of CO2 emissions reduced through rain forest preservation.

Indonesia?s first step to save natural forests will be to revoke forestry licences held by palm oil and timber firms.

Beyond answering an environmental need, REDD could also mark the formation of new kinds of relations between developed countries and developing countries, showing the former prepared to make extraordinary contributions to the latter.

In recent years, developing countries and many civil society organisations such as Oxfam and ONE, have denounced a form of injustice. Whereas rich countries are the clear culprits for causing global warming, poorer countries are the ones who will have to most severely pay its consequences.

www.un-redd.org