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December 4, 2007
Coalition for Rainforest Nations: Safeguarding Our Planet’s Ecological Security
Are the rainforests quivering with optimism? Maybe, maybe not? Remember 25 years ago, during the Rio Earth Summit, everyone had a “Save the Rainforest!” T-Shirt? The idea of saving tropical forests was so popular, no one bothered to follow through on it. A little noticed 1999 UN report said that even 7 years after the Earth Summit, deforestation was steady and not declining. The report suggested $30 billion per year was needed to significantly dent global tropical deforestation rates. The ensuing years of the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism and the World Bank’s GEF never mustered much financial muscle. While estimates still vary, global spending on tropical forest conservation by wealthy countries is less than $1 billion per year.
There has been some incredible on-the-ground conservation, often led by true Earth heroes, albeit ones with very shallow bank accounts. But globally, at the macro-ecological level, anyone with a calculator would have to conclude the international community has not done its job. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent and the situation remains where it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Kindness/official development assistance (ODA) has done some good things, but not enough.
Which is why today, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations is one of the most important diplomatic collections of countries for our planet’s ecological security. A few years ago, if you said saving tropical forest should be part of the carbon market, you would have found yourself with very few friends here at a COP. By advocating that real measurable reduction in national deforestation should be financially compensated by carbon markets, the Coalition has allowed the possibility to exist, that serious new funds could be allocated to save tropical forests.
The Coalition’s diplomacy and novel approach is to reward national reductions in deforestation rates with access to carbon markets in the post-2012 regime. With the Coalition’s work - the world is again revisiting the stark reality that if we want our grandchildren to experience rainforests - we must change the economic paradigm. The world needs palm oil, soy beans, and coffee (mmmm, espresso!). And the global marketplace pays for these commodities. Like it or not, soy, coffee, palm oil, timber and pulp mean forests must fall before communities - anywhere in the world - can make a serious livelihood from their forests. The global economy rewards deforestation.
The Coalition for Rainforest Nations has a credible plan to change this paradigm. Delegates at Cop13 should follow the Coalition’s arguments that REDD must be a part of the post-2012 carbon regime. Anything short of that is failure.
United Nations. 1999. Matters left pending on the need for financial resources: Secretary General’s Report, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Intergovernmental Forum on Forests. Third Session, May 3-14, 1999. Document E/CN.17/IFF/1999/4.
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