Friday, 8 November 2013

UN-REDD: A Grand Plan to Save Our Forests

 



Created in 2008 the UN-REDD (United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is a programme aiming to help reduce emissions caused by deforestation by subjugating conservation and sustainable forest management in the major tropical forest bearing countries, that may not be able to afford this development themselves. This will not only reduce the amount of emissions being produced by deforestation, but hopefully better the forest carbon stocks too. UN-REDD is part of a greater REDD+ climate change mitigation scheme which will be looked at in future posts.

It appears that there are a lot of people, including the FAO, are backing this programme and it seems to be well prepared for the large task ahead. From reading the UN-REDD strategy, it is planned that by 2015 the programme will develop a 25% reduction in global deforestation rates, a very significant and ambitious statistic.

To implement this change, the programme needs a financial sum of US$22-38 billion which will be used to aid developing countries in creating monitoring systems to better understand their forests and also to help them to be managed in a more sustainable manner. So far Norway is leading the funding with hopes of many other countries to follow. However, the programme must be careful how they obtain their funding. Some countries may see the funding as an offset for their own emissions, but this should not mean that they do not try to reduce their own emissions too.


These are the countries benefitting from the programme (coloured blue and red)

 

This scheme seems like a great and noteworthy project, but it does also have downsides. As in most scenarios there must be a trade-off and within the UN-REDD strategy it may be that biodiversity may be at risk when forest carbon stocks are enhanced. Of course this trade-off will be carefully monitored to ensure indigenous people and rare species are not affected.

In a 2009 paper by Oestreicher et al. they look at how some environmental policies work in Panama, with the aim of discerning whether REDD could better the policies for future use. The paper mainly focusses on Protected Areas, a policy which they feel could be enhanced by proper funding, something the UN-REDD programme can provide. They also state that 'effectively reducing deforestation will rely on a mechanism that endorses a blend of different environmental policy instruments and conservation program structures that are able to adapt to local conditions while functioning under the umbrella of a publicly administered REDD scheme'. This is exactly what UN-REDD is, so hopefully the programme will work!

Be sure to check out the UN-REDD website for more information on how the programme is getting on!

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