December 1, 2011
What’s a rhino or two worth?
Talk about irony. Just outside the COP17 conference center in Durban South Africa, a large rhino statue greets incoming delegates. And in the past few weeks, two rhino sub-species have gone extinct - the Vietnamese Javan rhino and the western black rhino. Extinct. As in, never again in nature on this Earth.
By all indications, multitudes of species will go extinct in the near future. Despite the promise and excitement of REDD+, for these rhino subs-species REDD+ was too slow. The price of ivory has skyrocketed. The resources of developing countries to fight poachers are inadequate. Goodbye rhinos.
Since 1992 at the Rio Conference, the world has known deforestation is the main cause of species extinctions and the second cause of global warming. Each year, this planet permanently loses thousands of species and emits billions of tons of carbon dioxide as a direct result of cutting down rainforests. And 20 years ago, UN reports indicated reducing deforestation significantly would cost tens of billions of dollars per year (a few dollars per person per year) to stop two global ecological calamities from happening.
No significant help arrived for tropical forests between 1992 and 2005. And then, in Montreal Canada, a new ray of hope emerged in the UNFCCC process. In 2005, world leaders agreed to launch a REDD+ process. The idea was to leverage substantial new resources, potentially billions of dollars per year, to help developing countries reduce deforestation.
And now in 2011, at the next round of climate change negotiations, how are things going? For good news, REDD+ has spawned significant creativity and attention surrounding tropical deforestation. Donor governments have pledged $4 billion in new funds to help arrest deforestation. The private sector is being proactive on REDD+ even in the absence of a compliance reason to reduce emissions. Developing country governments are taking measures to reign in deforestation, clarify land tenure, address drivers of deforestation and get a better grip on where deforestation is happening and how to stop it.
The bad news is that REDD+ funds are slow to reach the forest communities where they are needed. There is not enough money yet. About $1.5 billion per year has been pledged, but around $30 billion is needed. And the entire UNFCCC process is faltering. There probably won’t be any meaningful global policy to slow climate change in the near term. Similarly, efforts around REDD+ have stalled. There is no UN REDD+ Mechanism. There are no clear rules for how to account for carbon emissions or avoided emissions. There is no link between the $4 billion in REDD+ funds and the UNFCCC.
Still, here in Durban South Africa at COP17, climate change negotiators are working on a few elements of REDD+ that could add up to important progress. There are discussions of a Green Climate Fund with aspirations to funnel $100 billion per year to developing countries to prevent and adapt to climate change. Some groups have called for a dedicated window within that fund to stop deforestation and promote climate-friendly agriculture. And technical experts here in Durban are hammering out three key REDD+ issues under SBSTA. The first is how to build systems that monitor impacts of REDD+ on local and indigenous people. The second key issue is how to establish measurement, reporting and verification procedures for REDD+. And the third issue, probably the most important, is how to establish REDD+ reference levels. These three issues were first discussed in earnest today at the negotiations, once in open meetings and once in closed door meetings. By tomorrow morning, there will be draft text that TFG will report on.
Diplomats and observers to this process can’t do anything for the two rhino sub-species that just vanished from Earth. Maybe the statue that greets the 15,000 negotiators, press, and observers will remind us of the urgency to reach an agreement before too much more irreparable damage is done.
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