| Abstract: |
| Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (and Degradation) in Developing countries (REDD) is a target with the potential to reduce (halve?) the 18% of net greenhouse gas emissions that is due to land use change in the tropics. It thus deserves considerable attention. However, there were good reasons in previous rounds of the discussions in the Kyoto protocol to avoid the issue, as questions on additionality, leakage and permanence make it nearly impossible to implement REDD at pilot scale. It will require assessment and design for large areas, providing livelihood alternatives, dealing with direct drivers of deforestation, and providing good data quality on changes in emissions compared to an agreed baseline. ICRAF joined a team of international and national consultants to the Government of Indonesia in the Indonesian Forest Climate Alliance (IFCA) in 2007 to explore the issue.
In applying the realistic/conditional/voluntary/pro-poor framework, a major dilemma was identified in the ‘efficiency’ versus ‘fairness’ tradeoff. If all attention and investment will go to the situations with the largest emission reduction per $ invested, the focus will likely be the current hot spots. The lack of attention to other situations (countries, provinces) where forest is effectively protected, will provide a ‘perverse incentive’ to increase the level of threat there. If on the other hand, the focus is on a ‘fair’ level of reward for the active and actual guardians of forests, little ‘efficiency’ can be shown. There are some ways to reduce this dilemma, but we first of all need recognition that short as well as long term efficiency will have to be secured, and that benefits will have to be spread across the CREDD value chain. |
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